No hope! Was Burnham’s teary speech just ‘performative politics’?

I thought Andy Burnham's conference speech was disingenuous but compelling. Our very own Bill Clinton sold a new vision of socialism with tears in his eyes. Bill Clinton, more like Clinton cards. It was performative hat stand. And if the answer to this country's ills is more socialism, we're all doomed. I'm just going to defend the Prime Minister here. He was sloth-like, Tim. He is coming on and speaking not just to his party but to a country that hasn't really taken a look at him yet. And he is carefully and systematically going through what it is he believes in, what he's going to do and why it matters to him. It felt a little bit like he was wading through northern gravy at points. Oh, heavens. Tim, have we had the wildest 24 hours in history? We came back from Liverpool. We saw Jacob Rees-Mogg on the train. We did, yeah. We came in so early this morning that you couldn't really tell night from day. You've never been in this office earlier. I started to hallucinate. We were in at 8 o'clock because we had to address our new German owners and tell them how great the daily tea is, which we did. Then you've had a trim. I went to see my dad. He's just had a little procedure in hospital and is now fine. How did that go? I haven't asked you how that went. It's all right because he'd be busy. So I was there. He's fine. He came out of his general anaesthetic and my brother's taking him home. Hopford did it back here to watch Burnham in full tilt. And I'm quite angry. You're impressed by this, aren't you? You think the Prime Minister… I'm angry about the… The substance or the complete lack of it. Right. But I was very impressed by the delivery. Were you? But just to say on the substance, he has just courageously persuaded a Labour conference to accept more spending, nationalisation of public utilities, proportional representation and going back into Europe. Tim, this is like literally offering a Pope a Bible, a balcony and some communion wine. Exactly. But my point is, I say courageously because he framed it as… I am here. I'm going to break the mould of politics by being honest. Oh, come on. And he was not honest. Of course he wasn't. Apart from a couple of vague references to the fiscal rules, he was not honest about the country's financial situation. And he did not tell us what savings would be made in the forthcoming budget. And it is worth noting that it is 50 years to the day yesterday. That… Jim Callaghan, when the IMF was called in because Britain was spending too much and lost control of its finances, Jim Callaghan genuinely courageously told his party conference, you cannot spend your way out of a recession. And that started the neoliberal experiment in government. Do we know what neoliberalism is yet? Well, OK. It's this silly catch-all word that basically means government getting smaller, market getting bigger and the marketisation of services. Because government isn't providing them very well. It is the revolution which made everyone's life so much better in the 80s and 90s. And Burnham is genuinely proposing to reverse it. Yes. He doesn't think life was great in the 80s and 90s. He wants to go back to the 70s. Even though he talked about his mother and father and their home in Keeble and how well he had done and his own social mobilisation all the way to Downing Street from pretty humble beginnings. Yes. And his story is that's thanks to the government. That is thanks to Labour governments since 1945. Only Labour. Not the Tory governments that were in power during that period. But thanks to Labour governments, we all had what he calls a common wealth. This speech was full of lovely rhetorical flourishes like that, which was then privatised and handed over to rich people in the 80s and 90s. And the reason why we are so divided and angry and poor today is because we have lost control over our lives. So Brexit was speaking to a genuine problem. A sense of a loss of control. But the solution the Tories presented was the wrong one. What we need instead is to have greater control of the economy plus devolution to local government. I know. But this whole we have got not enough control over our lives. Westminster's got too much. And then juxtaposing that with literally giving mayors more new powers than Tom Holland in the last Spider-Man movie. Like, oh, mayors are going to have the power to do this. Mayors are going to have the power to do that. Mayors are going to have the literally Soviet-era powers of customarily purchasing empty properties in their areas. Now, I get all that. I think having empty properties when you've got a million people on housing waiting lists is literally the definition of madness. But again, at the heart of most of his claims, there is a contradiction. On empty properties, I looked it up at the weekend, there were 714,000 in 2024. There are now 774,000 in 2024. That has gone up on Labour's watch. So at every turn, when you're saying, oh, we want to remove government from your lives, but we want breakfast clubs to feed your kids Weetabix, teachers to brush their teeth. At every stage, OK, it might not be centralised control. We want local control. Labour is all about control. They said about Gordon Brown, who seems to have been the hero of conference, goodness knows why. We had John Healy glazing him as well. Gordon Brown was the prime minister. Of whom this was said, when a control freak loses control, all you're left with is a freak. OK, so this harking back to the old Labour of the 70s, which most people do not remember as fondly as John Healy sees it bathed in the light of a miner's lamp. Yes. Anyone with half a brain can see this for what it is. Well, neoliberalism, if you want to call it that, happened in response to the crisis of the old Keynesian system. That Burnham is now bringing back. So let's just run through a couple of things that he has proposed. Yes. And I should note, some of this is Keir Starmer era stuff. He's turbocharging rather than inventing it. Oh, by the way, thank you, Keir Starmer, he said. Thank you so much, Keir Starmer. And can I say that it does disturb me that I am one of many prime ministers who have been elected to office in the last decade. And we need to end the political turbulence. You unseated this guy. You caused political. This is one of many lies. This is one of many lies that I am going to unwrap in this podcast. But carry on, Tim. Well, I agree with you there. Why is he saying that the last 40 years was a disaster and then saying, thank you, Keir Starmer, and giving a shout out to how great Gordon Brown was as a chancellor. But here's some of the things he wants to do. One, great British energy. Kind of already knew about that. In brackets, be more pragmatic in relation to the North Sea. But hang on a minute. Again, we want to be a world leader on AI. Then I'm sorry. Andy, would you mind making a decision on Jackdaw and Rosebrook? Yeah. Because we're going to need quite a lot of power for that. Yeah. He's kicked that can down the road. But what he's saying on great British energy is that one reason why companies can't develop faster is because they can't get connected. So he wants GBE to step in and help with that. Secondly, public control of water in the sense that local mayors will have the ability with a rewriting of Thatcher's rules on water to take control of the water. Oh, because by the way, polluting our rivers and our seas is all Thatcher's fault, even though she died years ago. Housing back under stronger public control. And what he means by that is the right of councils to seize control of properties that are not being properly maintained. Sure. And also, this is a big one because the speech was all about working class aspiration, an end to right to buy for new builds. He's introduced this new scheme, which is basically going to allow. Younger people, particularly to have a 2.5% deposit on a home with a 20% loan in order to get onto the housing ladder, which is all well and good. But again, that's not any good if you can't meet your housing target. So he glazes again, along with Gordon Brown, that other great lefty, Angela Rayner, in the conference floor because he knows that's going to win him applause. OK, down with Thatcher, up with Rayner. It's common, lowest common denominator, like Labour bants. But all this stuff. It's going to win applause with many people watching at home as well. But the finer detail, Tim, I'm just saying, Steve Reid, the former housing secretary, came on my GB News show on Sunday and admitted they're not going to be able to build 1.5 million homes. Right. So, OK, he can come up with this stuff all he likes. The proof of the pudding is going to be in the eating. Well, this brings us to the biggest one of all, which is a new social care service. Now, we know this is out to Casey's review. But we got more hints. We've got more hints, of course, of what it might look like, that it will be free at the point of delivery, that the money for it won't come off your pension and therefore we have to ask how it's going to be paid for. And all week we are wondering if or when they were going to address the subject of the triple lock. We reported it in this newspaper and actually some people inside the government pushed back against that reporting. They were clearly very nervous about that, partly because the unions and MPs were saying to the prime minister, you know, you're not going to be able to do this. You're not going to be able to do this. The prime minister's office said, are you sure you want to do this? Remember that Keir Starmer fell because of the winter fuel reform. Yeah, it's like of all the people you could pick on, do you really want to be choosing pensioners? I promised in our manifesto to keep the triple lock unchanged throughout this parliament. I will honour that promise. And I'll do more. I'll do more. That promise will take the state. pension to a record high. From there, in April 2030, we will adjust it. The state pension will continue to rise every year at least by prices or 2.5%. And it will hold its value relative to earnings over time so that pensioners will always share in the rising prosperity of the nation. But this change will generate significant savings which we will use to build up our national care service. People are saying that's an interesting fudge because the triple lock is obviously the pension going up by either wages, inflation or 2.5%. Now, Rishi Sunak added a comment. It's a kind of triple lock plus addition in that he said, and also, by the way, if the state pension rises so much that it drags OAPs into income tax, that we should insulate them from that. So it looks as if Burnham's borrowed a bit of that but is obviously dropping the tagged to wages element of it, which some economists have said it's a bit of a weird way of presenting it. It's another can that's been kicked down the road because, of course, he said we're thinking about this in April 2030, by which point. We might not be able to see him for the dust trail left by his, you know, Oasis-flagged Manchester City emblazoned Ford Cortina. Whatever. I mean, I'm thinking about a 1970s car because clearly he occupied. A DeLorean, perhaps, because he's in some kind of time warp here, but no matter. So, OK, that's interesting. But again, I'm going to make two criticisms. First of all, I found it absolutely staggering that he made an apology to care workers, and NHS workers, for the failing state of our health service, but not actually patients. And second of all, wasn't it this Labour government, Tim, correct me if I'm wrong, that increased national insurance contributions by care providers and even slapped hospices with that extra stealth tax? So I'm a patron of a hospice. They've been absolutely crippled by that increase because they also can't afford to pay NHS wages. And yet he said. And they're willing to get staff. So this is, again, a fire of their own making that he's now trying to hose down. Well, and he actually said that he watched care workers looking after his father on poverty wages. And he said, I'm sorry for the way that you've been treated, but you are suggesting that, in factual fact, Labour governments have contributed. Of course they've contributed. to that low-pay culture. And also, Labour governments have created this environment where they think every care provider is somehow on the take, which is completely wrong. How do you think the cost-of-living crisis, has affected the care sector? How do you think energy prices have affected their ability to deliver care? And I've got a letter on my desk. I might write my column about it. Why is there always this thing in Labour circles that anyone who works in care is brilliant and anyone that works in the NHS is brilliant? I've got a disturbing piece of correspondence downstairs from a woman whose husband has got carers coming into the home that are permanently on their mobiles, coming at the wrong time, not able to heat up food, not really engaging with. She's having an absolute nightmare. I've heard that anecdotally the length and breadth of the country. So I just think if you're going to try and improve the NHS, you should be putting patience at the heart of it. And I thought it was absolutely. But why do you think he's not doing that? Because he's in a room full of people wanting to champion the workers. In his speech, he said, my grandmother had her ring stolen in her care home. I don't think he's shying away from the reality. On the contrary, I think social care demands. He demands reform precisely because it's of such a variable quality. He should have mentioned patience beyond his own familial experience. You know, he was the health secretary when mid-staffs happened. That is a failure of patience. It's not a failure of staff. He's obviously making it all about the staff because they're. some of them are private care workers. This was a crisis in which patients were left doing to do things on the ward like hydrate themselves by drinking water from a flower vase. But he's talking about trolleyways. Do you know what? I think actually it might be quite. quite distressing for staff in hospitals to be treating patients on trolleys. I'd imagine it's much more distressing to be the patient on the trolley. And I just thought that was an omission. That's true. No, I take your point. But I also think he's. I also think he's right. I think he's right that social care is a very cruel tax. Yes, I agree. It's something which robs people of their assets. Yes. And it can leave them very vulnerable. And I think it's a reasonable compromise to say, rather than raising the pension, we're going to instead say that you get the benefits via improved social care. Although, as he said, the pension will still go up. Yes. It's just it won't go up by the. But that's. Elevated amount that we. It's been going up. But even that, I don't know whether it makes economic common sense to actually project it like that. I think that he's saying that because he wants to provide himself with some cover for the change to the triple lock so that people like Sharon Graham and others don't say, oh, you evil Blairite, what are you doing to old people? Yes. But actually, if you analyze. Yes, of course, we have needed a social care system in this country since Dilnot came out with his recommendations more than a decade ago. It has been a nettle that successive governments have refused to grasp. There is something inherently cruel about treating somebody with cancer on the NHS, but dementia, if you treat somebody with dementia, basically people having to sell their homes and sacrifice everything. Yeah. And I have to say, as a voter, I would vote for a party. It provides an answer to that, even at the cost of a generous rise in my pension. But when all of these Labourites were very busily trying to kill off OAPs with the assisted dying bill, where was the cogent argument? The Prime Minister advised them not to vote for it. I know he did because of his Catholic beliefs and all the rest of it, and I get that, and you and I do agree on that. Where was the far more cogent argument for the best place for anybody in end-of-life to be? Hospices. Yes. So hospices in this country, have been absolutely clobbered. There is great palliative care in hospices, and yet this Labour government has broken hospices with its NIC rise. That is a fact. Okay, I've got a vested interest. I'm the patron of a hospice in Watford, whatever, but it doesn't make sense to me. You know, we could have supported the institutions that are already there to provide this care, and now he's basically using some jiggery-pokery so that the triple lock decision doesn't make him unpopular. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll come to the constitutional stuff in a moment, but just on economics, what I think is interesting is here is a man with an analysis and a philosophy of government, and that's not something we've seen for a while. Sure. The analysis is that since the 1980s, we have reduced the power of the state, and the consequence has been that actually we are more vulnerable, vulnerable to recession, vulnerable to personal crises, vulnerable to global shocks, and that what needs to be done, and he spelt it out here. He said, I have a theory of growth based upon a philosophy of social security. Remember when he mentioned social security in the Commons? Why are you talking about that? Because he's living in the past. Well, but his theory of growth is it begins with greater public control over the economy. Then you devolve the power so that the decision-making is made by people who are most directly affected by local governments, and then, through doing that, you optimize the conditions for businesses to grow. Yeah, but first of all, that is suggesting that it is the state that allows businesses to grow, and it is the businesses themselves that grow themselves and take the risks to create the wealth, to employ the people, and to increase the wages. Yes. If you're just going to pay ever-increasing amounts to public sector workers without actually having much accountability on productivity or result, you're probably never going to reform a system. So we still have that. The NHS isn't as productive as it was before the pandemic not being solved, while at the same time, workers in that system have been given pay rises. That doesn't make economic sense. On a more macro level, he needs to make his mind up, because how can anybody looking at our bloated state right now say that it has in any way abandoned the people? It is enveloping the people in a massive, great, big, taxpayer-funded hug. It has got more, more people on benefits than ever before. Yes. Yeah? It's got people paying more tax into the system than since the Second World War. It is borrowing more than it has ever borrowed. And his answer to that is, I will spend more to get people off benefits through things like training. Because, of course, that's historically always worked really well. Just to throw in, so if his approach is government creates the conditions for growth, I think it's worth just contrasting that with this so-called neoliberal approach of the last 40 or 50 years, which essentially saw government as a dead hand and thought that growth occurs when you get out of the way. That human beings naturally want to enrich themselves. And the best thing that government can do is regulate or direct or encourage them to compete against each other. It's not that government disappears altogether, but rather that government sort of, things don't begin with government. Yes, freedom from the state, not to the state. Right, right. So that's, I'm just saying because that's why I think we've all been wondering for the last few weeks, who is Andy Burnham? What is he all about? And I've been very sceptical about Manchesterism. But in this speech, I think I finally think, OK, I understand what he wants to do. And yes, it is different. But I don't. Hang on a minute. OK, fine. Now, he says that he's putting all of these ideas through the Makerfield test. Let me just point out another grotesque contradiction. Well, what would the good people of Makerfield think? OK, this is a largely white, non-immigrant population that is apparently at the posh end of Wigan. We've been there. We liked the constituency. It voted 65 percent leave. Now, when we voted in 2016, that was, to quote Meghan Markle, a degree of finding our own freedom, right? Yes. That was freedom not just from the state, but from the shackles of Brussels. And this man who thinks that centralisation has had too much control over people's lives now wants to re-litigate Brexit. So he's come out with this announcement that, you know, there's going to be a few summits and I'm going to, like, put a few ideas on the table, including, as we read in The Independent this morning, rejoin. Now, yes, I'm sorry. OK, either that is like super devolution. He didn't say that in the speech. He didn't. But I think we can reasonably guess that if you're going to put all the options to the public, one of them will be a referendum on do you wish to rejoin the EU. Right. Well, first of all, how on earth can that pass a make a field test where 65 percent of the population voted leave? Maybe they've changed their minds, but I'm not sure to that extent. And second of all, so sorry, let me just get this right. You don't want Westminster to have control, but you want to give more control back to Brussels via mayors. So it's just moving control around. Yeah. How can you say we're going to we need to be free to do what we want to do? In this speech, he tried to justify it as one problem. We lost control over immigration. Yeah, he thinks it's Brexit. Well, also, we would regain free movement, of course, if we rejoin. And by the way, we would regain being a rule taker and not a rulemaker and all the other plethora of nonsense that would be literally forced down our throats. But that's a reminder that despite 10 years and despite the Red Wall and despite Labour supposedly talking to and and rebuilding its relationship with the working class, it does not. It never has understood the Brexit vote. It just thinks the Brexit vote was an act of self-harm that was caused by lies from the right with a bit of racism thrown in. Yeah, that's right. Because, well, now we've got Labour MPs literally thinking Labradors are racists. Right. And going to the pub. Have you seen all this? We've had two loony things, by the way. Well, all of this has been going on today. Loony lefty Labour moment number one, Lucy Powell addressing the Labour friends of Israel and saying, everyone here seems a bit depressed. Yeah. You've got pro-Palmaniacs outside literally carrying babies around, accusing anybody who is pro-Israel of being a genocide or maniac, wanting to kill everyone. It's no wonder the friends of Israel left in the Labour Party, God love them, poor chaps, we met a couple of them while we were at conference, are a little bit down in the dumps. I mean, you've literally just shafted them, point one. Then you tell me about loony lefty Labour right number two. And an example of that is Jenny Riddle Carpenter, who is, not only a minister, but a minister for nature and an MP for a rural Suffolk constituency, said this. I do believe that the next election is going to be fought on a battle line of nature and rural affairs. And that'll be the far right deciding and determining what that looks like. And it'll be a vision, a nostalgic vision of Britain that never really existed. It'll be that warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn't exist. And it'll be a very, it'll be with symbolism, the fox hunting all around them. And it'll be a very far right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don't want to have, never really existed. It's just so funny. I mean, imagine, has anyone told her about those Lloyd's adverts featuring those black horses? I'll tell you what, they're racist. What about that black beauty? What a bigot. Well, this triggered online people saying black labs matter. I wondered if Andy Burnham was going to come out and take the knee for black labs. Hashtag that folks. This is why we will never leave that platform because there's some absolute genius on display there. But this poor woman who, if she sees a whole load of dogs, thinks it's the far right, if she ever watches Cross, it must look like the Nuremberg rally. Literally, she needs that organisation that said, are you experiencing sensory overload? I'm surrounded by too many dark haired dogs. Of course, it took the algorithm all of 0.4 seconds to discover an old tweet from 2015 in which she put a photograph of a black lab by a fire and said, this is what living in Suffolk is like. Extraordinary, isn't it? But I'm just fascinated by the new strategy of the left. It's not just to say that something is bad, but it doesn't exist. Yes, that's right. That black labs, pints and being English don't really exist. I think someday I'm going to come. Or shouldn't exist. No, it never did exist. I think someday I'm going to come down in the morning and find Lucy Powell in a bathrobe waiting for me. And I'm going to say, everyone. And she's going to go, Tim, it's always just been you and me. Also, by the way. The rest of the country never existed. Don't bring in your, you know, colonialist, empirist, racist dog. Oh, my cavalier. Yeah, because the clues in the name. How dare you? Because we're on the theme of just the nonsense being spouted by, I'm sorry, I'm being negative. Maybe I am kind of like. Let's be honest. I mean, it wasn't tub thumping. It was tear jerking. There were big pauses and moments of emotion because he's lost his father. I felt for him in those moments. But I did think it was all a bit performative. And can we not have stuff like I left the Labour government because of Hillsborough? No, not really. You left the Labour government in 2017 because you saw a huge big opportunity to be the mayor of Manchester. OK, you spent more time in Westminster. You're now saying not a Westminster insider. OK, you were for literally two decades. You got your first job in Westminster. You then became an MP in 2001. You were that MP in the inner circle of Blair and Brown for all that period, all the way up to not even 10 years ago when you went up to Manchester. So can we. That's also complete fallacy, isn't it? Yes. Yes. He's also committed to things that I don't see the point of, one of which is electoral reform. He's going to have a commission to looking at the voting system, which presumably means that we will get proportional representation. Well, only if 30 percent of the population want it, Tim. Right. I think when you take that, you add this conference's heavy emphasis upon a two-state solution. At times, it's felt more like a conference taking place in Gaza than it has in Liverpool. Although our producer, Dave, did point out that actually when Andy Burnham said two-state solution today, he was applauded. Not so much for Ed Miliband when he used that kind of show you have two states. It was lukewarm. Yeah. It was lukewarm for Ed Miliband. But maybe Miliband just had the fanatically pro-Gaza crowd. Yeah. Whereas maybe Burnham benefited from some people that do believe in the only functioning democracy in the Middle East and don't like terrorists as much. But if Labour leaders, at least since Kinnock, have been trying to move towards the middle, assuming that the country would never go for a bold progressive manifesto, and if we take Corbyn out of the equation because he was insane. Yes. Bonkers. Then Andy Burnham is, I think, does meet his own hype as the first leader to actually redirect the party towards the left. To go back to what I said at the beginning about Jim Callaghan. Okay. That was about trying to persuade a party conference to move to the right. Here is a Labour leader trying to persuade a party conference to move to the left with the only truly controversial issue for them being the future of the triple lock. But if you have everything else on the table, nationalising, spending more, PR, going back into Europe, this is a party which of course is going to embrace him. Yes. Because he's giving them everything they want. Right. So you're saying it's like the same old socialism, but just like in slightly better tailoring. Okay. We had Kinnock's Mac. We had Corbyn's compo outfit. We've got Burnham here basically just giving it better presentation, notwithstanding the lack of the tie. Yes. Which I didn't like, but I'm a traditionalist. Okay. Whatever. He's kind of, it's the same old, old Labour, but it's just slightly more presentable. Well, I think it's back to the past. This is one reason why I find all the fuss about Black Labs and pubs really interesting. By the way, on that point, with Labour backing down on immigration, it looks like the party is now officially anti-Labrador and pro-Afghan. Boom, boom. Very good. Tim Stanley for the next post of Cross, ladies and gentlemen. So Labour has its own version of patriotic nostalgia, and it's all about mining and the Northwest. Yeah. And this was a speech in which he referenced his grandfather, his grandmother, that period in history when I think it's fair to say that the British working class really did make huge gains materially and politically in their lives. And that was a period that aligned with Labour governments and particularly with trade union activism. And he's really about going to that stage. This is why I think he's new in the sense that he's really really, really old. And in that, he sort of leapfrogged Blair, even Miliband when he was leader. This is a far bolder pitch for social democracy. But the bit that we should close on a consideration of was the part of the speech in which he actually appeared very moved. And let's listen to it. Although for people listening rather than watching, there's quite a lot of silence. Where I can't agree with others, I will fight hard for what I believe to be right and what I believe to be in the best interests of this country. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. On the day my dad died, the Scottish First Minister said I would be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I quote that not to seek sympathy, nor to criticise John Swinney. I don't think he knew the news at the time. And anyway, my dad, Roy, would have been the first to defend his right to say it. I relay it because I want you to know how it made me feel. He was utterly determined to prove him wrong. I initially didn't know what was going on and thought he was using the dramatic pause, as one might be taught in a GCSE drama performance. I thought the autocue had broken down. Indeed. And to be fair, he didn't have a lectern, did he? So he was kind of freewheeling. And I thought, oh, there's a moment, something's going to. Clearly, he was choked up. And I'm sorry, I don't want to denigrate the Prime Minister, because I think anyone losing their father at this stage, anyone losing their father is a disappointment, I think. I don't want to denigrate the Prime Minister, because I think anyone losing their father at this stage, anyone losing their father is a disappointment. What I would consider to be a load of hat stand and be believed is because conservatives, small C and large, have stopped making the arguments for the alternative. They have stopped as Thatcher did, and she articulated them much, much better than anyone. And in fact, I got that poster of Abraham Lincoln that a reader had sent me, and you and I agreed that he was coming out with original ideological theory, and it made perfect sense to any righty at the time. You know, talking about freedom from the state, talking about self-reliance. Talking about economic resilience, talking about effectively free markets, growing the pie, creating the wealth, having the jobs. And unfortunately, that narrative has been largely missing from right-wing discourse for a long, long time, because as the conservatives sort of governed left, they became embarrassed. They became embarrassed about Thatcher's legacy when they should have embraced it. And so, Kemi Badenock next week now, I agree with you in terms of like the tone of the speech. She's going to have to start performing, and I don't know whether she did do GCSE drama. I think she probably didn't. I think she probably did triple award science, and that could be problematic. I know some people will have watched it and thought there's a bit of X factor about it, that everyone's got to have not just a talent, but a story. But I thought it was, I certainly thought it was real. He has my sympathy because if I cannot do funeral eulogies because I become a mess. The moment I think about someone who's just died, I just crumble. Yeah, you are a bit macromote. So, if anything, I thought it was actually impressive that he pulled it together and managed to carry on. So, I've no doubt that it's real. There's a part of me which doesn't like it, I'll be honest, because I believe that you should argue for something on the merits and with reason. The moment you start saying, I want to do this because someone I loved died, it makes it difficult to argue against it. It's compelling. It is compelling. Can I just say, there's only X factor because everybody looked at his predecessor, Keir Starmer, and said, why? So, comparatively, he was always going to fare better. Well, and Starmer talked about his own background and his own family a great deal too. Not half as effectively. It's interesting how much more effective Burnham is at doing it. But what I will say to the right right now is even if you didn't like this, even if you didn't agree with this, I am warning you that loads of voters who probably until now didn't even know he was Prime Minister will see it, will see clips of it, and they will really like it. Although, will it clip up well? That's an important question. Geoff Norcott made a joke. Is he literally speaking at times 0.7? Yes. I know some people will listen to this Daily Tee, perhaps on 1.5 or 2, just to speed it along a bit, and there's nothing wrong with that. But my goodness me, it was slow. I don't hate that. I don't hate that. I'm sick of podcast voice. Podcast voice says, here's why you need to listen to me. I have 10 apps in which I can save civilisation. We need to save the white people from being destroyed by the Jews. I'm sick of that voice. That angry, nasty voice. Can I caveat by saying we never do that? No, I know we never do that, but you know what I mean. The AI podcast voice. What Burnham was doing, I'm just going to defend the Prime Minister here. He is coming on and speaking not just to his party, but to a country that hasn't really taken a look at him yet. And he is carefully and systematically going through what it is he believes in. What he's going to do and why it matters to him. Oh, heavens. And by bringing his parents into it, you may see that as cynically deploying it. But other people will see it as, that now makes sense to me. Because in politics, despite what I've just said about reason, sometimes things can appear overly abstract. And it can seem as if politicians are captured by Westminster and don't think or live or talk human. And he's broke through that. So I'm going to say to the centre-right, even if you absolutely hated this, and I'm sure I can go on Twitter right now saying, oh, la-va-rubbish, he spoke too slowly and at one point it almost broke down. Okay, fine. But I'm telling you, in a couple of years' time, he will be in a TV debate with Kemi and Nige. Yes. And Andy will be the nice guy. Yes. And those two who are pitching themselves as being defined mostly by what they are against, rather than necessarily what they are for, are make, if they're not Kemi. And they will be the ones who are most careful come across as abrasive. And this is what I have been saying. I know that, I know online I'm being dubbed Mr. Wet. Yes. But this is my heartfelt warning to the centre-right. You need to talk about social care. You need to talk about the environment. You need to explain if you're going to deport people where my mum's carer is going to go and things like that. You need to have answers for these questions. And you also need to have a human story. For too long in this country, the centre-right has cruised on two things. Immigration is out of control. Which it is. And Keir Starmer is rubbish, which he was. Well, immigration hasn't gone away. And Burnham had almost nothing to say about it. But you now have a leader who is almost Clinton-esque in his abilities. Clinton cards. And this is going to force the right to both raise its game and please talk about reuniting. You're massively flattering him there with Clinton-esque. I'm sorry. I'm sorry he is. And I know this is the problem with partisan politics. Because people don't agree with something, they can't necessarily appreciate why other people are drawn to it. I appreciate people. We need on the right to put that to one side and look at this and go, that man is going to go down really well in large parts of this country. I'm not deluding myself. You know, he looks good. He makes jokes. He drinks pints. He listens to Oasis. He eats pork scratchings. It's wonderful. I'm sure he's precisely the kind of man that you'd like to bring home and have a cup of tea and a drink. a slice of Bakewell tart with. He's the prime minister of this country. We cannot exist on vibes alone. We cannot exist on this sort of like young enterprise company presentation. But we vote on vibes. I don't. And the only thing that can save the right is an economic crash, which, by the way, might happen because I'm sure the markets won't have been impressed with a speech which did not say how any of this will be paid for. Newsflash, we know how it's going to be paid for because despite insisting that he doesn't want us all to be divisive and he wants to reach across party lines, he's already pitted North against South. He's pitting Remain against Brexit again. He's pitting Poor against Wealthy. Oh, yeah. He's pitting Young against Old. So, you know, this whole, I'm just here to bring everyone together. What utter nonsense. But we Brexiteers did exactly the same. He's talking about taking back control. Who invented taking back control? We invented taking back control. And he is saying. The Remainers were doing all the divisive stuff. You're all racist and bigots. We weren't saying that about Remainers. No. We were just saying, listen, if you don't mind, because we are this great country that led an empire, would you mind if we just had our sovereignty back and didn't pay a load of useless MEPs and bureaucrats a shed load of our money to do bugger all except dictate what bloody shaped carrots should be? We failed to translate take back control into a domestic policy that would, as was promised, level up. Now, that's not the Tories' fault. That was Ukraine. They didn't deliver on Brexit. It's Boris Johnson's fault. It is Theresa May's fault. It is Liz Truss' fault. I'm not absolving them. He's not thick. He's seen that gap in the market and he's gone, you want to take back control? I'll tell you how to do it. Socialism. So the right now needs to say, no, no, no. The way to take back control is to empower the individual with popular capitalism. Anyone is stupid enough to think that the answer to our problems is giving more control back to our failing state, bankrupting this country with more tax, more spend, and more borrowing, then good luck to them. You make a good point, by the way, about a future debate because the other Achilles heel for both Farage and Badenock is they don't like talking about their personal lives. No, they're going to have to. They seem slightly inhuman. You know, Farage, you go to his kids, you talk about the former marriages. Do we know anything? Anything about his own relationship with his parents? He tells them to shut it down, yeah. Then you go to Kemi Badenock and you say, you know, would you mind talking about what it's like to have these beautiful three mixed race children growing up in leafy South London? What was it like actually coming here from Nigeria? Oh, I don't want to talk about that. No, I'm sorry, you two. We need to know what really motivates you. So let's see what this speech is like. Listen, he's, he's, he's, what's the phrase about gauntlets? He's thrown down the gauntlet. He's thrown down the gauntlet and it's for her now to react next Wednesday. We're going to be all over the Conservative Party conference at the Daily Tea, obviously, with a series of events, Jacob Rees-Mogg on the Monday, Alistair Heath and Annabel Denham on the Tuesday, a bit of Andrew Griffiths in between. We're doing young Tories, old Tories. Yeah, I tell you what, Kemi is going to appear with a pack of black Labradors. I guarantee it. She's going to spend every day in pubs with pints and labs. Well, let's call it a day because as I say, we've had the longest day. It's been the longest, longest day today. And then I think our esteemed Prime Minister is bringing his unique brand of politics to the TV studios as we speak and we'll be able to analyse his interviews tomorrow on the Daily Tea, 5pm. ♪ ♪