575. Alastair Reacts to Burnham’s Speech and Rory’s Viral Stare

We like to say we want our politics to be about big issues and Andy Burnham has just given us all, friends and enemies alike, plenty to chew on. The building of a national care service, reform of the pensions triple lock, education reform, electoral reform, a VAT cut on electricity bills, greater public control of utilities, more council homes, leasehold reform, reform of right to buy, a warning to absent landlords, some pretty big claims on AI leadership and clarity that Brexit has gone wrong and therefore plans for a new relationship with Europe. Barely a mention of the opposition parties as he renewed his call for a more consensual politics. Plenty of mentions of his deceased father recently passed away and a lot of emotion as he promised to dedicate his leadership to building a country his dad would be proud of. He got a genuinely rapturous reception in the conference hall here in Liverpool but given the number of big debates he has launched on so many big issues what matters is the reaction outside. How do the other parties respond as the debate unfolds and the detail is thrashed out? And what does the great British public make of it all? So many big promises at a time of so many big challenges. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. £100 that is what one message to a friend could earn for you. Fuse Energy has one aim, keeping energy prices down for everyone, not just for those who ring up and threaten to leave. Their tariffs are already among the lowest on the market and now they're doubling their referral offer. Refer one friend and you will get £100 off your bills. And that's each of you £100 off your bills. So the maths does itself. You save on the tariff and then you both benefit from the referral on top. Simplicity rarely seen today in today's political climate. 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All kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying. If you don't have a virtual private network, when you're sitting in that Starbucks. Well, I think you're not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this. Or should I say Fiona managed to do this? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash rest is politics. That's nordvpn.com slash rest is politics. And the link is in the episode description. Welcome to the rest is politics with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And Alistair, you are in Liverpool at the Labour Party conference. You were there for the big speech of Andy Burnham. Give us a sense of what it was like. And how many conferences you've been to? You must have been to 30, 40, right? Oh, my very, very first conference was Neil Kinnock's big speech in 19, 1985. That was my first Labour conference. I've been to most since, not all. That's a good 40 years of conferences that you've come and gone. Yeah, it's a lot of conferences. We'll come on to that. And in addition to talking a lot about the conference and the Burnham speech, Rory, we are going to have to at some point, perhaps towards the end of the episode, reflect on your meme virality, I believe it's called, of the that. We're going to talk about that. Anyway, let's start with Andy Burnham. I was there. It was a very, really interesting speech. And I thought very, very powerful. I mean, it felt incredibly powerful in Liverpool, in the hall. It really felt like the guy was connecting in a way that very few speakers do these days. And I think partly that was because they really wanted him to do well. But also, I thought it was a well-crafted speech. It was well-delivered. I did think that it was chunky. It was meaty. And so, yeah, I counted 11 standing ovations. And before we get onto the content, which is obviously what people can, you know, see a little bit more of on the BBC, give us a sense of feeling of it. I mean, watching it on television, it looked like it was very, very, very natural. I mean, he was walking up and down the stage, but it wasn't sort of stagey. It sounded incredibly sort of relaxed. He managed to almost catch the tone as though he was speaking to a much, much smaller audience, working his thoughts out when, in fact, he had this enormous call. Well, it is of all the conference venues. I mean, they're all pretty big, but this is Liverpool is big and it's very wide and it's quite cavernous. He didn't have a lectern and therefore he didn't have a traditional autocue. I think he had a kind of Ed Sheeran type autocue somewhere down below. So he was kind of looking down a fair bit, but he was very natural and also the there were points of the speech where he allowed the kind of just very very simple thought or concept just to land he only got he really only did the kind of rousing rhetoric when he was either coming to the climax or when the audience were kind of you know were getting going as he was speaking now listen i've got to say one of the things i've said i said this when we did the becoming burnham series with andy with steve rotherham the liverpool mayor he's he has grown so much as a politician he really has that that was a it was a pretty formidable performance i thought and so many kind of interesting angles to it as well it's a speech i i wonder whether it's not a speech that really a style that really benefits from having been mayor of manchester that it's not a house of commons style nobody will let you make a speech house of commons any pause you put be interrupted by someone shouting from the back it's not even the kind of speech you give to business people or fundraisers it's the speech of somebody talking in a much more relaxed way to their constituents or their electors i mean it was uh and it you get a sense of real confidence that he's not worried about where the laugh lines are or he just trusts that his vision and story is going to be enough to carry i also think he he maybe this is unfair but i get the impression that he's also quite good at judging the eyes in the room and the reactions in the room and timing his um his rhythms to what he's getting back from the room yeah there's a couple things i'd say to that the first is i spoke i did an event last night with hamish fortner the government minister in charge of europe and he was saying that his generation younger mps he's in his early 40s don't really think about big speeches as much as maybe my generation let alone sort of you know previous generations did and but i think andy's always been somebody who actually does think a big speech matters um i can remember when he was became i think it was shadow health secretary ages ago and he was you know really worried about making his first big speech you know that was a really important moment and so this was an important moment but the style is very interesting it's it's kind of it's quite folksy it's very emotional i mean there was a point at which i think everybody in the hall thought he was about to start crying and he is somebody again back to the the chat with steve rother and me andy burnham is somebody who really wears his heart on his sleeve and you've probably had moments like this where you're making a speech i get this maybe doing eulogies in particular where you there's a bit maybe when you've been practicing rehearsing as it were that you know there's a bit that can set you off and i you could see that he was coming up to a bit it was obviously going to be about his dad everybody in the hall thought he's about to talk about his dad but what was so interesting was the point that he made on the back of it um he mentioned john swinney the snp leader who said on coincidentally he didn't know that andy's dad had died but he said that andy burnham will be the last prime minister of the united kingdom and he just he went into this really and i thought you i actually thought if you thought rory will love this bit because it was so powerful about kind of feeling for the union and that sort of that emotion kept coming out and i don't know whether you you could see it but he was when when there was a lot of applause he was kind of walking over to where there was a kind of podium just sort of taking a sip of water and coming back and he didn't mind long pauses and quite long pauses no i thought as i thought as a as a performance as a speech that will come onto the content but i i thought he delivered it extraordinarily well and look we've we spent the first five minutes talking about the um performance and i know there will be people who'll say well that's not the point and in fact a lot of journalists when i was looking at some of the reporting have tended to ignore that and focus largely on the performance of the speech and i think that's a really good point on you know what are the policy announcements in it but i would say that it's incredibly important i mean what in the end brought down kiasama it was the inability to communicate what do we know about donald trump he is an extraordinary communicator and so i think so much of modern politics is about this and look at mamdani it's not exactly as though he's actually brought through an incredible number of radical policies yet in new york it's the feeling of the guy so i i would begin by saying actually that communication thing is worth sitting with because policy analysts are going to miss this that one of the reasons why andy boner might be in a position to win the next election is if he can keep that degree of confidence and communication because the fundamentals and this is i suppose where we can flip it around to policy the fundamentals remain unbelievably difficult so let's sort of look at it from the point of view of what do we need to be able to do in order to be able to be in a position to win the next election so let's look at it from the point of view of what do we need to be able to do in order to be in a position to win the next election britain has had basically zero growth since 2008 yeah basically zero growth for almost 20 years it's unheard of britain's not been in that position since probably the napoleonic wars at 200 years and at the same time median incomes have stagnated and inflation has grown and debt has grown and in the last five years particularly the amount of tax cuts and inflation has grown and debt has grown and in the last five years particularly the amount of tax we take as a proportion of our national income has gone up by five percent of national income's huge increase in tax which again um is without any peacetime precedent massive transformation the british economy and he's stuck with a situation where broadly speaking people don't really believe that the british economy is going to be able to get growth and we can come on to that later where he can't borrow because they've maxed out the borrowing and already they're paying you know they've added about 180 billion in tax revenue they're spending about 160 billion just in servicing their debt incredible amount of money and he uh therefore has basically to raise taxes a bit cut services a bit and then on the side he's trying to deliver a project of transforming and changing britain and rebuilding the britain that his father was proud of the thing that really struck me as well i was at a business event last night and i was talking to this business woman and i was talking to this business woman and i was talking to this business and she we were talking about this vibes thing and she she said what you just said she said it really does matter because you need confidence breeds confidence and she said we have felt just a bit more confident since andy burnham has replaced the rather sort of doom and gloom everything's going to get worse before it gets better etc and so i thought with all these big challenges that he set out and i listed them at the top there's some really big challenges i mean every single one of them you think there's a lot of detail that's got to come out on that but on all of them it was this kind of you know we can do this we've done this sort of scale of thing before we can do it and i think that is a a very very important message now and and i also thought i thought you know we'll come we'll come on to the big policy stuff i also thought it was genuine interesting that he i think the only non-labor politicians he mentioned were john swinney who i mentioned uh list trust as a bit of a gag boris johnson because of the boris where so-called boris wave on immigration um and margaret thatcher in basically saying we're going to roll back a lot of the thatcherism in relation to you know public control and public ownership and he did it as you say with such kind of confidence and not i think not caring people sort of say he's a people pleaser and i was i was actually watching a few of the some of the journalists who were kind of you know nodding to each other talking to each other whatever and i could see them not quite knowing how to go at this speech it'd be very interesting to see how they try to but one i saw one journalist saying actually i think we'll have a go at him for almost crying well of course the public won't mind him almost crying at all because what it shows is a man who you know loved his dad we talked this week on the podcast about the triple lock and um i come as you arrive i know we both discussed before this idea that you know if you're going to do the triple lock don't just do it by saying getting rid of the triple lock link it to something big and he's done that to social care now i think that will settle down maybe settle down the bond markets and i think a bit um but again a lot of detail still to come and it's a long-term thing and he's putting into the next parliament let's let's start the triple lock because it's you know a good central place to start so uh the triple lock was this weird thing introduced by george osborne and it it meant that pensions were always going to go up whichever was the higher of the three measurements and over time that is adding 18 billion pounds a year more than might have been projected so we're now ratcheting and ratcheting and ratcheting and one of the reasons why kemi badenock didn't want to get rid of it is that in the short term it doesn't deliver huge savings somebody calculated potentially in the next year or so it would only cost 600 million so she maybe looks at that and thinks well is it worth having the biggest political fight of my life despite the fact everybody in her party you know people like me have been against the triple lock david gork's against the triple lock tom tugenhart called it a ponzi scheme and he's now her uh shadow foreign secretary um so she she she ducked that she ducked that because she could see political pain and not a great deal of of gain he's done it he's done it 2030 which is um you know unfortunately not as soon as it could be but it's a good bold statement and he's come up with a formulation a double lock instead of a triple lock which softens it a bit and the said well may not be perfect but it goes a long way and as you say it's something more than vibes it's a responsible if you wanted to sell it it's a responsible long-term move that the other political readers have ducked yeah yeah so that's good that's brave and he did it i don't know you know we all woke up this today program this morning with one of the heads of the trade unions saying on no account is he to get rid of the triple lock and the lib dems you know ed davey your friends saying this was terribly regressive and that's going to pay the cost so that's an interesting beginning and farage has come straight out and said he will cut your pension i will stop the boats i will cut the immigration blah blah blah and i'll cut international aid which incidentally barely exists anymore there's there's basically no yeah yeah i and i do think this will if i were the opposition parties they all come straight out with a kind of instant response on this because they know that it's very about this if i were them i would go away and think very very carefully because i i think the other thing that he did i really why are you laughing at that well no could i just come in on you that because i'm fascinated by this problem imagine you're a tory so imagine you're cammy bay not and you really wanted to get rid of the triple lock and you ducked it and your whole party wants to get rid of the triple lock and he does this what's your best case scenario for responding are you able to ignore it are you able to welcome it i mean what the hell she can she do i wonder if you don't go and you don't get rid of the triple lock and you don't get rid of the triple lock you see there was so much in the speech so i wonder whether for example given that margaret thatcher has this hallowed status in the conservative party whether they go into the whole housing agenda but then you know the water agenda but i mean you know standing up for the water companies that's that's not a very good position arguing it's more council houses arguing it's leasehold reform i think he's i think these i think i could they could go in europe they could sort of go big on you know do we really want to revisit this i actually wanted a little bit more on the european front i kind of all i knew he was going to say something about europe but it is it's a start and because he's basically saying he's going to set out all the options well the option does include can we get back in yeah well let's let's do that as the second thing because i guess that's the second big headline which is that he stood up totally unembarrassed on that stage and said brexit did more harm than good yeah and he basically dated the decline in the british economy to 2016 the brexit referendum and the political instability of 10 and he blamed all the immigration that people hate on brexit which is quite a sort of clever jujitsu move he's basically saying to the far right voter the immigration that you're complaining about was delivered through leaving the european union um and as you say he's letting out all these options which certainly should include a customs union potentially single market potentially a route back in and it's a good time to be doing it i would say geopolitically given trump and china and all this thing we do need that third third leg that middle power leg um But wow, I mean, why was Keir Starmer not able to do that? that I never heard Keir Starmer stand up and say Brexit did more harm than good I never heard him stand up say all options are on the table make Brexit work I mean make Brexit work and I the reason I was always so angry about make Brexit work so I just felt it it conceded um a reality that just isn't real it conceded that you can make Brexit work I mean you can live with Brexit but you can I don't think there's any way that you can say that Brexit can be good for the sort of things that both Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham said I got everybody after these speeches always sort of pinging messages at each other all that and I got one message from a an MP who actually was you know kind of pretty loyal to Keir Starmer to the end and and said you know it actually underlined just how little vision we really had for two years um these changes are all hard to do but it surely demonstrated why the change had to be made um and and so I I think there's there was that feeling as well that I mean look you've got to be very careful you've been to lots of Tory conferences I've been to lots of conferences of all the parties but you do get this extraordinary kind of well first you're in a bubble you've been in the bubble for a week sort of trapped inside a secure zone yeah you then you then have the bubble of the event with the sort of build up and what have you but this one and I've been involved in a few speeches where you come out thinking that was amazing and it turns out it was and the public felt as well the same but other speeches they're sort of just wow where did that come from and I'll tell you the other one Rory that came on which maybe a little more surprising was electoral reform now we've always known he believes in that but that's another big fight it's another big fight and another big debate but but you see I think that now that he's done them and and it's interesting because he's couched off on this as people please there are now you know he wants to make everyone happy coming out that firmly on Brexit doesn't make everyone happy in fact the risk averse thing to do is to do what Keir Starmer did which is sort of waffle around in the middle pretending he's going to make Brexit work while signaling that actually he'd rather we remain but he's not going to say it right so I think there's something interesting about Burnham which is that the sort of vibe charisma confidence gives him a form of political courage gives him and and what it then does and I don't want to sound too much like the Alistair Campbell disciple here but one of the um one of your moves here maybe is that you're then setting up an argument with the other side which I think you're going to win I'd really like to see the Brexit side come out and make a whole series of passionate arguments for Brexit at the moment because it's not that easy 10 years on to make the great arguments for Brexit I'd love to see people make a great argument for our electoral system when everyone thinks everything's broken I and as you say I mean you've made the point on the water companies already but even the housing stuff look I am somebody who thinks that you're going to win if you're going to win if you're there was something very empowering for millions of people buying their houses but that's something that happened a long time ago in the 1980s there are very very few people around today for whom that's current thing what people feel today is a million people on a housing waiting list unable to get houses so even if it transformed yeah a lot of working class lives and it did I mean there's good evidence that actually it delivered a lot of wealth to people on low incomes in the 1980s in an extraordinary one-time fashion I don't think there's many people who are enthusiastic about it now or defending it now I thought it was also quite clever the way he he quite cleverly linked the one million people who are currently on the homeless register with the one million who got their own homes and then the sort of and also that you know the loss of power and the loss of control for for councils the other confident bit that was shown in relation to Brexit wasn't in the Brexit section but it was through the speech this use of taking back control and the only really kind of very harshly sort of Alistair Campbell style go for your enemy hard line was when he said you know the people who lost control were the were the right not the left um and I so I thought that was a kind of another little judo move that that that he worked quite well well so let me let me now channel my inner Tory um and I think there will be a lot of people from the right listening to that who'll be a little unsettled the way there were moments on it where there were little kind of hints of the pitchfork too much working class aspiration going on right yeah a lot of that not not a lot of talk about what in America we'd call the middle class that's right um and actually it's an interesting I mean it's a very interesting and it's still such a powerful dynamic when actually Britain is in traditional social class terms the predominantly middle class country that we talk about it I mean Britain is very interesting compared to America people on similar incomes in America identify as being middle class they overestimate their class and in Britain people underestimate their class they like to call themselves working class when in sociological terms they'd be different um and we've got a great interview coming next week where we get get into this discussion with a fantastic lady and she gives and she is with Shabana Mahmood the homosexual she gives you a very good slap down Roy I really enjoyed that very good slap down by the way anyway um let me let me make the critique they're more serious which isn't this sort of tone it's that the 1970s which he's implicitly seems to sort of gesture towards and he doesn't he's not and that's where he's quite clever because it's a little opaque but if he's saying the problem was neoliberalism and basically Thatcher it's worth remembering the 1970s were not that great 1970s we had effective top rates of tax at 98% we had inflation running at 28 at 25% a year we lost 75% of the value of the British exchange in the early 1970s we had a call in the IMF and incomes grew pretty steeply during the 1980s and actually this last 40 years if you took the snapshot of um 1991 to 2008 which was the kind of height of the neoliberal consensus was the first time since 1870 when British GDP per capita was growing faster than that of the US where our productivity was the second highest in the OECD and economists looking at the glory days that he's talking about, 1945 to 1980, would say that, yes, there were great strengths in terms of equality. Britain became a much more equal society. The NHS was created. But it was also a moment where British industry really struggled, innovation struggled. We got stuck in some very strange situations with unions. And people were pretty depressed about the future of the British economy when many other countries, Germany, Japan, and then increasingly, the Asian tigers were shooting ahead. So, there's something which if you're, you know, gentle, soft, right, pro-business person, you're sort of slightly thinking, well, you know, because he also said one of the things he was against with Thatcher was deregulation. Most businesses in Britain feel we are much, much too regulated. And that one of the ways in which we could get growth is by quite a lot of deregulation. So, I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. So, anyway, that's over to you. No, that's why I say I think that is maybe where the Tories will try to go. But it'll also be very interesting to see whether Farage, who's from his initial reaction seems to think, well, I just carry on banging my old drum. I don't need to adapt to this. Whether actually that adds to this sense that I think is developing about Farage that he's slightly yesterday's man in the political debate, which is why I thought it was clever. That Andy Burnham didn't even mention his name. There has been a lot of talk of Farage at this conference. I've heard a lot of people say, oh, Farage this, Farage that, but not so much in the speeches, but just around the place, because he's still probably a bigger threat than the Tories. But no, I was, I left kind of pretty energized by the whole thing. And, but I think on the electoral, just to go back to electoral reform, that is another, by the way, where you shouldn't think, despite the fact that Farage is a very, very good man, he's a very good man, he's a very good man, he's a very good man, he's a very good man, he's a very good man, he's a very good man. the fact it was one of the 11 standing evasions. It was one of the 11 standing evasions because people were just loving the boldness of the whole speech, right? But I saw quite a few people study up who I know are very much opposed to electoral reform. But your point about winning arguments, this is what to me is what politics is at its best. It's all about is having really big arguments over time. And that's why the chatter had the Amish Fortner about, you know, they're the TikTok generation. Well, Andy, Andy Burnham's, very, very good on social media. But what he's done today has shown that there is a lot more to him than that. And you and I have always known that there is. And the other thing I like about this, going back to the, and in fact, if people haven't listened to the series with Steve Rotherman, he really does understand Andy Burnham. And what I like about the sort of Andy Burnham, Steve Rotherman stories, they wrote that book, Head North. And so much of what we've seen today that we're sort of saying is, is new, and it is new a lot of it. But it's actually stuff he was writing about back then, including electoral reform, including housing, including pensions. Maybe the speech was so confident, so fluent, and so authentic, because basically, he's been giving versions of that speech in Manchester for many years now. And it's really, he's really sat with it. And he really knows how those, those values and ideas connect. On the working class point, Roy, did you, did you, were you sort of thinking that actually, there's a middle class, a middle class out there that maybe is, thinks this isn't speaking to them? Because the care thing, the care service speaks to the middle class as well as working class people. Well, I think what spoke to everyone. everybody and would speak to the middle class and would speak to someone like me is the idea of solidarity and unity and union. You know, the strongest bits for someone like me is that he's describing a society where we all have obligations towards each other. I mean, I'm very happy to pay the top rate of tax so that other people can have good public services. I'm very happy. And I think many people will feel like this. Maybe not, you know, the full libertarian, right? But I think a lot of gentle, self-right people feel that it's right that they pay 45% income tax. And I think we all share his horror with homelessness. I mean, and a real sense that that's something that's fixable and that he pretty much fixed in Manchester. I mean, there's been some debates around that, but he made a lot of progress. Well, part of what happened in Manchester is that because people knew that Manchester had this scheme to get people off the streets and give them accommodation, that people were coming from outside Manchester. The numbers went right down and they went back. Back up again. There's a really, you know, I mentioned in the, was it last week, I talked about James Graham's new play about Keynes. I know Keynes was a liberal, but I really do think Labour ministers should go and watch this play. But it was really interesting how Keynes' big thing was about the purpose of economics being to have a good life for ordinary people. And I don't know whether Andy's aware of the play, but he used that phrase twice about, you know, about giving people a good life. And I just think that is, that should be there. Yeah, that's a guiding light. And putting housing at the centre of it. I mean, one of the things he does in his speech is it's not all a sort of complete logical argument, right? It's not actually true that maybe housing does quite as much work as he thinks it does, but it's a good idea. It's a lovely thing to get behind and it's an offer. I mean, if you can, I do think that the universal offer, he's got an instinct for that, that if you can say to everybody in the country, look, we may not be able to sort out inequality, we may not be able to sort out growth in the way that you want, but we can say that you're going to get a good house, you will get good healthcare, you'll get a decent care system, you'll get good education. That's my sort of, that's where I hear Tessa Jowell. I mean, that's what she was always saying to me, her endless test around saying, would I put my mother on my back? My grandmother in this school, in this house. And he of course started as a researcher. Can we take a quick break though, Alistair? Maybe after the break, I'd love to talk to you about the Labour Party politics and where he might get into trouble. Because in the end, that's what undid Keir Starmer. It wasn't the public. He had this huge majority. It was the party itself. So maybe a quick break and then back for more. Okay. See you shortly. This episode is brought to you by Lloyds. One thing that politics teaches you is that certainty, not an illusion. At Lloyds Market Summit earlier this month, I sat down with Cathy Kay from the Restless Politics US, and we got into a very interesting discussion about the challenges that chief execs from large companies and institutions face every day. Governments come and go. Markets can be unpredictable. The conversation kept coming back to the same point. Ambitious organisations need more than capital alone. And one of the key issues for leaders of large corporates and institutions the world over is this. How do you act? When certainty never arrives? Well, the best leaders don't wait for that certainty. Instead, they build confidence through insight, expertise, and trusted relationships. Whether it's through summits or their insights hub, Lloyds helps their clients understand the forces shaping global markets. Search Lloyds Corporate for daily global market analysis, the download on tokenisation and how to manage your company's energy transition, or from Lloyds Corporate and Institutional Banking. Bank on Lloyds. A better help ad. Imagine carrying a backpack every day. Every conversation, every mistake, every expectation. You probably wouldn't notice how heavy it was until someone asked if you wanted to put it down. Sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all. Better is personal. It's therapy, tailored to you, to help lighten what you've been carrying. Match with a therapist who truly gets you. Visit betterhelp.com slash restpolitics. Welcome back to the Restless Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Okay, Alistair, this is the thing that worries me. So Keir Starmer won a stonking majority, had a majority of over 100. And he was taken down because the Labour Party turned against him. And actually, I got this, I had a conversation with one of the whips shortly after Starmer went, he's actually a Tory whip. He said, the point is that they don't have a working majority anymore. In fact, nobody has a working majority. Politics has changed so much that none of us can tell any of our MPs what to do. So his implication was Andy Burnham was absolutely screwed because he doesn't have a working majority. It doesn't matter what the figures look like. He's never going to be able to get anything done. Has something changed? And if so, how? Alistair Campbell You almost pulled one of your faces there, Rory, which I will promise our listeners of yours, we will talk about it. Essentially, if I may plug my splendid book, Percivalience, coming out soon, I actually write about Blair, Starmer, Burnham in the context of who's got Percivalience as opposed to Resilience. And I make the point that Keir Starmer, in large part, became Prime Minister with such a majority by not being the Tories. Okay. Andy Burnham has become Prime Minister in the way that he did in, to some extent, by not being the Tories. By not being Keir Starmer. So you are right that the Labour Party, as it were, turned. But I think the Labour Party turned because for two reasons. MPs didn't feel their views were valued and respected. They did think there was a kind of number 10 operation that held them rather in contempt. But the most important thing was that Labour MPs were going out into the country and getting the dislike of the government, the new government, from the public, from their electorate, and starting to think, I'm in trouble here. And the reason why I think it was, and I said this night, this event I was doing last night, somebody was asking, you know, what should we know about Andy Burnham that we don't know? And I honestly didn't mean this as a criticism of Andy Burnham at all. I said, what you need to know about Andy Burnham, he's really ruthless. He's become he's become Prime Minister inheriting somebody else's majority. When he listed the great election wins of the Labour through history, he didn't even mention 2024, 1945 to 1997, then it stops. Otherwise, the next one is the one that he's thinking about. So he, he, that, and that was an extraordinary thing. But that was him. And look, I think I've told you in the back of a car once that I went, I did have a conversation with him in Manchester a while back. Quite early on in Keir Starmer's leadership, he was based on this, this isn't going to work. It's not going to do politics properly. So he, he's basically, he is basically going to take the MP seriously. And that means they're more likely to stay on site. I was really struck when we interviewed him on leading the first time we were the way that you two were talking in the margins of that. And, and just how bleak his vision of what was going on was on the ruthlessness thing. I mean, I think I'm right in saying that he basically turned up at last party conference as a fringe speaker, basically leading a kind of rebellion against Keir Starmer with all Keir Starmer's loyalists saying, who the hell is this guy? So this idea that he's a sort of people pleaser who doesn't like making anyone unhappy, that takes a hell of a lot of balls to turn up at your party conference against the wishes of the national executive and run fringe meetings, basically plotting how to topple the sitting prime minister. No. And I mean, if you think about it, the, the main narrative around the conference last year, um, Andy Burnham's on the prowl and the main outcome was Keir Starmer has seen off Andy Burnham for good. A year later, he goes through the by-election where he was blocked. He then goes through, re-engineers another by-election, which he wins and wins it in such a way that even Keir Starmer is sort of saying, well, it's obvious now I've got to go and he comes in. And people then saying he won because he's a nicer guy. It's an incredible feat. No, it's very weird. It's, it's, it's, it's very weird. And actually, yeah, very weird. And a lot of the, um, he's all about the vibes and he's not serious. Wasn't initially produced by the Tories. It was produced by Starmer loyalists trying to write him off a year and a half ago saying, you know, he doesn't and, and, and you sometimes got a bit of this from Starmer. He gets sort of impatient that Burnham, you know, didn't understand some aspect of, you know, fiscal policy or have got his numbers wrong or, you know, nobody can be prime minister if they, you know, say whatever he said about waspy women. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So no, I, I think it's, I think he's, I think he's, um, yeah, there's, there's something, there's something going on there. Okay. Let's, let's lean into the labor party there for a second. So my big idea that I had today, I was just up in, uh, Dunbarton and Loch Lomond. Okay. Uh, and I was with a conference in one of these big conferences that you go to, and a friend of mine who I admire very much, he's an economist, um, was saying, all the politicians in Britain know how to create growth. They're just too overt. afraid to do it. They quoted, I think, Jean-Paul Juncker, who said, we all know what to do. We just don't know how to get reelected once you've done it. And I said, and I want to try this idea on you, that that's wrong. The reason why the politicians are not doing what the economists want them to do is that they are prioritizing other things over growth. Let's take a couple of examples. So, you know, why did the Tories not push through radical planning reform? Well, because actually, as conservatives representing rural constituencies, they actually were really on the side of the NIMBYs. It wasn't that they were afraid of them. They agreed with them. They want to keep their green and pleasant land. Why does Labour stop big cuts to welfare or changes to the winter fuel allowance? Well, because broadly speaking, they're on the side of the people getting winter fuel rounds and welfare payments, and they're putting that ahead of growth. And you can keep developing this. You know, why is it that Ed Miliband stood behind his energy? Well, because he believed in what he thought he was doing to combat climate change and be an ambassador for the world on climate change. So, this idea that there is a sort of range of options, which a lot of the economists are peddling, which is cut the energy costs, build, drill, deregulate, liberate the capital markets, and we all know what to do. It's just the politicians too cowardly to do it. Isn't catching the actual reality of the values. And I think in many ways, the values of our politicians are not actually about growth. Let's take another example. Let's say that we actually needed some immigration for our economy. Well, Nigel Farage is going to put curbing immigration above growth, right? So, let's center in on the Labour Party. This is, I think the bit that I find easiest to believe that he's going to get through is social housing and more control over water. I don't think he's ever going to have the money to buy back the water industry. I find it much more difficult to believe he's going to be able to deliver growth in every postcode if growth means cutting welfare spending, cutting taxes, deregulating, because I just don't think his party's up for all that stuff. Well, we shall see, because I spent quite a lot of time, up here, with Alan Milburn. I did an event with him yesterday, which is about young people and mental health, but I also was talking about a new campaign I'm getting involved in about young people and their well-being. And he, of course, he was really funny being with him, because, and I've got to tell you, Roy, that the whole selfie thing is out of control at these press, at these conferences now. It is absolutely out of control. We're wandering around, and Alan, Alan was being seen like this, sort of, you know, oh, it's Alan Milburn. He's doing the Neat Review. And the Neat Review was becoming like, and it was like, go on, Alan, you could do it. You've got to do it, or have you? But what's interesting about the way that, and this event I did with Alan was kind of, was an audience, was public. It wasn't as if he was just, you know, talking to me. And he's going to be coming up with some big stuff. He's going to be coming up with some big, you know, really big change, which fits, I think, with a lot of the stuff that Pat McFadden's been talking about on welfare, and that Andy's been talking about on welfare. And I think that, you see, the other thing that's interesting about this, where we are in the parliamentary timetable, so we've had these two years, we're actually, you know, he mentioned Shabana Mahmood getting the small boats numbers down, and getting, you know, the migration numbers more under control. They have done a lot in the first two years, but Andy Burnham is basically saying, right, we've got a new government now, but it's got a very short life. Now, what that means for the MPs, you know this, as you get closer to an election, you've got to be very, very careful about some of the choices that you make, some of the choices, and including the weakening of your own government at a time when it could be very, very crucial. So, and I wouldn't underestimate, you mentioned, you know, talking to a whip. Some of the whips I talked to under Keir Starmer said it was, it was just, they felt they didn't have enough material to keep the MPs on board, not enough arguments. And I think what Andy's doing is showing, he's taking them serious. One MP I 10 weeks, he's been prime minister, and I saw Keir Starmer during two years. So, he's doing politics. He's doing politics. Let's take the idea that Alan Milburn's going to come in with some radical stuff, and that Patrick Fadden's going to come with some radical stuff. What that means for listeners, or at least what I think the newspapers think that means for listeners, is that they're going to make significant cuts to welfare, and that they're going to try to restore the public finances by changing a system which appears to have contributed to a million people being out of work who shouldn't be out of work. But that will mean that if you're a Labour MP in a constituency where a lot of people are out of work, and a lot of the traditional Labour heartland are places where there are far more people on these benefits than would be true in a traditional prosperous Tory suburb, they will have a lot of people coming into their constituency surgeries, and of course, any cuts are either slightly too generous, or they're slightly too mean, and these will be slightly too mean, and there will be lots of people saying, this is completely ridiculous. How the hell am I supposed to live on this? How could I have this cut? Yeah, but Rory, how can it be that we now have 1 million young people not in education, employment, or training? That is a failure of, and this is where systemic failure has to come into it. A million young people And I'd say that the arguments that Alan Milburn, I felt, was starting to make was that we can either just sort of carry on paying the benefits, and if you're on benefits, say, at age 18, the chances of you still being on benefits at 30 are so much higher than if you actually go into the benefit system later. Now, I think, so I think what he's saying is, you know, and Andy was starting to talk about this, I thought one of the most interesting things he did a big thing about older people, and then he just had a line, which I don't think he was expecting to be a clap line, and he basically said, you know, but we've also got to put right at the heart of our priorities young people and their future. And I think this sort of idea of investing in young people, so it is going to be welfare to work, it has to be welfare to work, and again, to go back to his Manchester experience, that is where, and you were sort of, you know, the way he talks to business and talks about business, a lot of the business people felt, I suppose you felt they weren't getting enough out of this conference, but it was very much, you know, I think his message is going to be that they are going to be a big part of this as well. So, look, the Milburn stuff is going to be very, very interesting. And I think we should, I think you and I know you were impressed when we had him on the podcast first time around, we should get him back. Because I think his report is going to be seminal to this government. Let's, let's get him back on, because I think that'll be one of the big things that people will be looking at. And then the second thing is going to be this question around business, whereas you say the business isn't yet fully won over. That they're not, they don't feel the love quite yet. I'm sorry, but I have to, I have to raise something else. Because, well, virtually everywhere I went, two things are happening. Most people under 30 saying, can I have a selfie? Because it seems to be obligatory now. But if you're a national treasure, like, like what I am, you know, you have to have a picture. Which must have been slightly annoying for the Labour ministers and MPs if you were getting more selfies than they were. Yeah, but I tried to do it in a low profile sotto voce kind of way. But the other thing that was happening, Rory, is everybody, everybody was saying to me, what on earth was Rory doing with the swivel and the stare on Newsnight? Now, did you, did you see it? Did you actually see it on Newsnight? I didn't see it live, no. No, but you saw, you saw the clip, right? Sorry, Rory, let me just tell you something. I was doing an event 24 hours later with two thousand for the wonderful 93% club, which is for the state school network against you 7% posh boys. And there were two thousand teenagers, right? Somebody asked me about what on earth was going on with Rory on Newsnight. And I said, well, before I answer that, who's actually aware of that? Hands up who's aware of what that question is about. Two thousand hands went up. Everybody saw it. No, it's absolutely unbelievable. And one single post on it got 22 million views. Was that JK Rowling? No, that wasn't even JK Rowling. It was someone else on a meme. I mean, Rowling got a lot, but that was another meme. And then my godson decided to just put up on social media, him doing it without even referring to me and got 850,000 views immediately. I mean, it's, it's really extraordinary. And, um, but presumably you've seen me do that head gesture before or something like it. I mean, did it seem totally- Not as dramatic as that. I was on stage today at this conference and I noticed that you, when I was on stage at a conference, I do actually do that all the time. I'm like, okay, somebody else. No, no, you don't do it like that. The thing you do more. And I, and I, and I go, what do I do more? I grimace. I do a lot of grimacing. You sometimes go without anything going on and you go, yeah, I grimace. But this was like, anyway, they made me, they made me, um, mimic it. They made me sort of judge it, but I found it very hard because I felt you, you had to go like that before you go like that, but you just go like that. What were you doing? Well, I also think a little bit like Ed Miliband. I'm kind of a bit weird. I mean, I think my body language and the way that I move is a bit weird. I mean, remember, poor milliband got in terrible trouble was he eating a banana or was that yeah he was eating a banana wasn't he no bacon sandwich bacon sandwich bacon sandwich um i i i think i just my my physical energy and the way that i move is a bit i mean you pointed out the grimacing and yeah and this i think is part of the same thing i but you lent it you lent into that poor woman you were like you were sort of almost in her space as she was trying to contribute to the debate let me because she very very sweetly wrote to me immediately afterwards and i don't know her at all um and this is what she said which i thought was really kind rory high just wanted to say solidarity on becoming the main characters the internet today i hope it hasn't bothered you but i just wanted to reassure you in case it has that i didn't mind and knew you were just being polite and attentive take care and all the best oh that's very nice that's very nice she's from the new york city new statesman yes certainly in the studio nobody thought i'd done anything weird it's only when it appeared on television that it suddenly looked unbelievably weird yeah well it was it was i i had people all over the world sending it to me completely i mean if you think about and new zealand that they've released you know there was a it went totally viral in new zealand every clip of the new zealand parliament had me going like this through every single clip of the new zealand parliament i know it's it's it's amazing because we put all this energy into doing some of the greatest wrestlers politics shows and you know we might get three four million if we're really lucky like literally i think there must be put them all together 300 400 million views for me doing this and it's become like a permanent meme and a meme also that like all memes people sort of get but they can't completely explain yeah i think i think you're you i think you pretend to be very naive but i think you're a genius and you this is a totally deliberate thing you thought because my friend my friend dan who's one of the swimmers in the morning he actually said to me he says listen mate you go up your game we're always getting all the attention these days well it's also true that it's also true that it was rather ironic because he said why the hell are you going on news night nobody knows anything that happens on news night and then sure enough there you go well anyway andy burnham will get almost as much tension as you uh in the next couple of days as people digest what i think is going on in the next couple of days and i'm going to i think is a very very consequential speech i really do well really interesting really exciting and just to wrap up i think you gave us a sense of what it was like in the room you've given us a sense of some of the questions about how the labour party responds you've set out whether there are going to be big cuts to welfare we talked a bit about housing we talked about adult social care we talked about this amazing story around the european union but above all i guess the story that you're communicating is at the moment it feels as though there is a sense of leadership a sense of vision a sense of appeal still to the labour heart which means that in the short term it doesn't feel as though the honeymoon's over he may only have added you know a few points to labour in the polls but if that allows him to have a working majority and get stuff done um business may cheer up even without the deregulation tax cuts if they think this is the government that's here to stay and that they can trust them to be pretty steady in other words he may be able to deliver that and i think that's a very important point and i think that's a very important thing that paradoxically was the one insight of rachel reeves and kirsten which was stability which they couldn't um deliver because stability relies on charisma well there you go and we've got question time tomorrow we're going to talk about uh usa china on the back of the trump g visit we're going to talk about these really alarming events in drum korea northern ireland ethiopia equally alarming brazil election on sunday jürgen klopp and the buyer tapestry and as you said on monday we've got a fabulous interview with the home secretary shabana mamoud and there's also uh your interview with mustafa sullivan is out on leading now and i shall be writing from the labour party conference in liverpool uh for this week's newsletter rest is politics.com forward slash newsletter and and for those of you who are really absolute restless politics super fans um the mini series on existential risk is out at the moment where you can hear you've on a harare you can hear carlo ravelli the great physicist and many many more to come so i'd be fascinated to hear what listeners think of what we're doing there um and you and i getting really enthusiastic about miniseries we're producing so many i noticed they put out two of my interviews on a single day to try to get them out of the way very good my wife is drowning under under trying to keep up with it all okay very good all right i'll see you soon thanks bye-bye speak soon okay bye and we are getting a statement from number 10 on that flight with 350 passengers the great game strategic struggle between britain and russia um we assess uh prime minister with high confidence it was russian holding the russians accountable is world war three they took down a british passenger jet containing 350 people man in the kremlin is playing alex got to ask yourself you want to play or not you're the prime minister you've done nothing we would need to understand the policy context all the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order or frago a frago that says to kill the president of russia yes new from goldhanger who is going to be able to pull this off you're my soldier are you sergeant tom mcduff duffy an audio 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