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Rachel Reeves says she is “backing” Andy Burnham to be the UK’s next prime minister amid speculation she could be replaced as Chancellor if he takes office. Ms Reeves, who is predicted to be replaced if Mr Burnham becomes prime minister, would not be drawn on reports she may accept another role. This leaves the all-important Chancellor position open if Andy Burnham takes power, so who would take her place? Andrew Marr makes his guesses. #andrewmarr #andyburnham #ukpolitics #labourparty #ukpolitics #politics #lbc
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Overnight, we heard Donald Trump swipe gently at him for being extremely liberal
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and he's certainly been highly critical of the American president. But beyond that and his instinctive pro-Europeanism, where is he going to take us
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Let's hear now from Baroness Cathy Ashton, former European High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security and a former Labour minister
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We first spoke about how both economic and foreign policy are not mutually exclusive
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Not at all. If you want to get economic growth, You've got to think about what your relationships are beyond your own shores
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If you're going to develop business, you're going to develop trade agreements, you're going to develop relations with big trading partners like Europe
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then it's all foreign policy. So I would always argue that foreign policy is actually domestic
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Keeping people safe, dealing with the big issues of the day cannot be done in isolation
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It's all about the relationships that you build. Now, Manchester has many things, but it's not so far had its own foreign policy
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So this is still a slightly cloudy area, I guess. Andy Burnham has been instinctively pro-European in the past, but he seems to accept there can't be another referendum or another jump back into the EU in the short term
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So where does that leave his opportunity to go further? Well, I think the big question that he's got to look at is, is this sort of incremental approach, which has been very much the Keir Starmer approach, to trying to sort of very gently move forward in very particular areas, focused on economic growth, of course, but small things
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Whether that's the approach that he wants to take or whether he wants to go for a much bigger approach in the context of two things
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One, overall foreign policy, obviously a big supporter of Ukraine, but is there more to be done on defence, security, foreign policy, in what you might call the intergovernmental world of member states working together, where you can form alliances, coalitions and so on, that are EU plus
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And whether you want to do more in the economic sphere, because so much of what he wants to do will depend on getting that growth, which means he needs to think about the institutions as well as the member states
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If he decided, you know what, I'm going to go for a lurch forward with the EU, I'm thinking again, what would that mean? Because there are still the red lines on the customs union and the single market. Would he have to break those
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Well, I think he'd have to decide what message he was trying to give the country
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And one of the things that we all talked about in the context of the Keir Starmer government was a sort of lack of a story to tell of a narrative And I think he in a good position to be able to say we need to look at this I not suggesting he breaks those red lines now
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but if he thinks in the future that they are an impediment to growth
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which a lot of people would argue they are, then he needs to say, well, what is the context of when he goes to the country himself
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that he's going to give people to think about? In the meantime, how far can he bump up against them
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How far does he want to bump up against them? And how far does he want to prepare Europe for what he wants to do
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Because that will be part of the challenge. And there is a sense that I get from talking to member states and leaders and people around
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Europe that this sort of bit-by-bit approach leaves them wondering what the end game is
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and the advantages for the UK versus the capital that you expend
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Quite small. In a sense, you're saying he has to mobilise the pro-EU majority that exists in the country again now and sort of sharpen it and make that argument
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I guess the other side of this, however, is so long as the EU think that he might lose that election to Nigel Farage, they're going to be very reluctant to go further
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So, in other words, the next election is going to have to be the crunch moment. I think a lot of European leaders will be looking at Britain and recognising the challenge that we face in the next election
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Many of them you will see from what's happening across, not least in France and beyond
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are also facing their own challenges from those who would want to split Europe further apart
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or at least could take it in a different direction, even if not to attempt to do what we did with Brexit
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And so there'll be a lot of conversations and politics to be done in this next period
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about trying to look at what is going to make the greatest sense for the cohesion of nations
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who need to sit together with their values and ideals and plans and strategy being worked as a
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group and a team rather than individually. I can see there's some very important politics in all of
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this, Cathy, but I'm still not sure, given the enthusiasm of the Starmer government to go as far
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as they could without crossing red lines, whether there is much more in practical terms that a
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Burnham government could do before an election. Well, that may be the case, but there's a lot you
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can do to prepare for what you're going to do. And I think sometimes it's about saying, this is
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where we're going now, but this is where I'm planning to go. And again, that's when you have
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to move away from the kind of drip drip bit by bit stuff to actually saying there a much bigger prize here And it will be a political choice is the political choice that actually the best way to get economic growth is a bigger stronger relationship with Europe And if so what does that mean And telling the country and explaining
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that and actually promoting it will be a big part of what he has to think about. On the other hand
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there'll be plenty of people saying, well, it's not the only thing. There's lots you can do
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elsewhere. So trying to sort of balance that, not least across the Atlantic, will be an interesting
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part of developing his foreign policy. Well, you lead me expertly on to the next theme
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which is, of course, Donald Trump himself, who has been pretty disobliging about Andy Burnham
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overnight, saying he's the mayor of some town or other. He seems to be very liberal. I don't
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imagine we'll get on very well. And Andy Burnham himself, of course, has been pretty rude about
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Donald Trump in the past. I guess the big question there is Keir Starmer tried to make nice as far as
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was humanly possible and perhaps a bit beyond what was humanly possible, and it didn't get him very
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far, do you think we'll see a change in tone from the next British Prime Minister? Well, the next
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British Prime Minister could well look at what the King did when he went across the Atlantic and how
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he managed with humour to get across a whole range of messages. And I think, you know, I don't say
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that Keir Starmer got it wrong in trying initially to make nice because nobody quite knew where this
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Trump administration was going to go. He was new. The Trump administration was new. It was worth the
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effort, I think, to try and make that work. But we've seen the consequences of that. And actually
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to be fair, he stood up against the war in Iran and took the consequences. I think what
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will be interesting is how far Andy Burnham actually says, well, look, you know, we are who
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we are, this is what we're going to do, and actually tries to meet the Trump administration
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as a leader of the nation that's, of course, different in every possible way to the US
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but actually is of itself trying to develop a future and a strategy that it seems relevant
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for its own people. And what we know about President Trump, if you take the mayor of New
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York, for example, he starts just saying, well, who is this kind of lefty? And then found himself
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in the Oval Office making nice himself with it. You know, you see that with leaders who are willing
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to put forward their own ideas, that President Trump does listen at times and is prepared to
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actually kind of go along with what they doing if not agreeing with it in whole So we have to see how that plays out But I think addressing it with a touch of this is who we are and this is what we going to do is probably the right way forward I was talking a little earlier in the week to Ben Rhodes who was an advisor to Barack Obama
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and I said to him, Ben, what advice would you give the new prime minister? And he said
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don't try and appease Trump. He's a bully. Stand up for yourself. By and large, would you agree
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I think that's right. I mean, there's ways of doing it, aren't there? If you take a kind of
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approach of not trying to cause a row, but actually saying, well, I'm sorry, but this is
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who we are and this is what we think, then that would probably be the way that I would try and
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approach this. And to take advice from our ambassador and people who've been around
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the administration is probably a good idea too. But I think he'll probably try and develop his
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own style and approach to President Trump. In terms of the rest of the foreign policy
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agenda, Cathy. One of the things that's outraged or upset quite a lot of Labour people has been the
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folding in of the international aid department into the Foreign Office and then the cutting of
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international aid to pay for defence. Is that an area where you think we might see a change of
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policy from Andy Burnham? Well, I certainly hope so. I mean, the failure to understand that it's a
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spectrum of activity, that you can't just say, well, we can cut aid and give it all to defence
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as if somehow that's going to make the world a better place. That just doesn't make any sense to me at all
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And it's the reason Annalise Dodds resigned, if you recall, as Secretary of State in that area
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You have to actually consider that this is all part of the same group of policies and ideas
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that are going to get you to where you need to get to. And there are lots of examples that I can give of times when we've had to use defense and aid together
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Somali piracy in my day when we had a real problem of piracy, which was disrupting shipping
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But all of the military people I dealt with said the same thing. They said, Kathy
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the answer lies on the land, not at sea. These teenage kids are going to keep trying to take
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ships as long as there are no jobs for them back at home in Somalia. If you look at the Sudanese
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refugees flooding across to Chad, who took a quarter of a million refugees last year
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they stay there because we offer support and aid to be able to protect them there in one of the
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poorest hottest places on earth what are they going to do if that aid disappears so aid is not
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something separate it's part of how you defend and support your own people by making it a more
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secure world so i do hope we'll see a greater at least understanding of what that actually is all about
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