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Andy Burnham has arrived in Westminster after Sir Keir Starmer dramatically announced his resignation as Prime Minister today with an emotional statement from outside Downing Street. Former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham confirmed he will put himself forward for the leadership following Sir Keir's resignation, saying it 'marks the beginning of a transition'. LBC's Lewis Goodall joins Shelagh Fogarty to discuss Burnham's 'political heist' and Starmer's legacy. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #shelaghfogarty #lewisgoodall #andyburnham #keirstarmer #labour #primeminister #downingstreet #ukpolitics #uknews #news #politics #debate #lbc LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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Here to talk about it all with me is Lewis Goodall
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presenter of Sundays with Lewis Goodall on LBC, which we're all glued to yesterday
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and co-host of Global's podcast and newsagents, which will all be glued to today. Listen, we're becoming all too familiar with this scene, aren't we
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The podium outside, the lectern outside number 10. It used to feel special, didn't it
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It used to feel special. And then the obligatory... You don't bring me flowers anymore. No, the obligatory pictures as well of an incoming..
0:26
Well, in this case, he's not even an incoming Prime Minister, to the incoming MP for Makerfield
0:31
making his way through central London and black cab. Did occur to me, Sheila, of course, as we know
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we on LBC have, well, a lot of black cab listeners who tend to listen to us
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So right now, the incoming Prime Minister probably could well be listening to us
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Andy, if you are listening, I think you're going to go past... 0345 6060 973
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Let's be a bit more ambitious than that, Sheila. Let's get in. He's got time. He's got to go to Westminster. Oh, he can come on the way back
0:53
Don't worry about it. It'll still be in your time. Don't worry. We won't be handing it over to Swarbrick. Don't worry
0:57
Look, I think that, yes, you're right. I mean, this is now the sixth prime minister in the last ten years to resign
1:04
We'll be on the seventh with Burnham, as it seems almost certain to be. There's lots of people who think that that is about ungovernability
1:10
For myself, I don't really think it's about ungovernability. I think we've had certainly some big structural things that have been going on
1:15
I think we've also had a series of quite poor political leaders and poor prime ministers
1:19
Actually, I think it's a combination of both of those two things. But it is certainly true to say that, you know, let's just take a step back here for a second
1:28
This is, whether you like him or dislike him, whether you like Keir Starmer or dislike Keir Starmer
1:34
just watching these pictures now of Burnham coming in, down on the Avanti
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having to come through in the absolute nightmare that is Euston, like all of the other passengers
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This is a hell of a political heist that he's pulled off. It is an extraordinary act of political statecraft
1:49
When you think about two months ago he was denied the right to stand by the NEC
1:53
and now the very NEC is organising probably his coronation. For the last 12 months or so, if you take your mind back to the Labour Party conference
2:00
he gives an interview with the new statesman, he sort of talks about sort of building himself up
2:05
He leaves the Labour Party conference in Liverpool with his tail tucked between his legs
2:08
He's considered to have screwed it up, messed it up completely. As you say, Keir Starmer's fortunes continue to decline
2:14
he keeps like a battering ram, trying to get back into Parliament, to be told no, no, no again at every turn
2:22
And then, at the moment of maximal prime ministerial frailty, Keir Starmer, in the wake of those local elections
2:29
he hatches a plan, a heist, a putch, a coup, whatever you want to call it, with Josh Simons
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Josh Simons stands down in one of the most marginal Labour seats in the country
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Burnham pays no political price, but let's be honest, what is a lot of game-playing going on
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from the top of the Labour Party, provoking an unnecessary by-election, campaigning that by-election
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saying that he would stand for a full term in Manchester, doesn't do it, stands in Makerfield
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wins not just a victory, but storms a by-election on the Thursday
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and by Monday morning, the incumbent Prime Minister, who won a majority of over 160 seats
3:04
less than two years ago, is standing down, because he knows that if he doesn't do so
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Burnham will take the crown from him. Whatever you think about it, whether you think that's a good way
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or not of politics to behave. Fortune favours the brave. And my word, fortune has favoured Andy Burnham in this case
3:21
I agree with you. It is absolutely astounding. And it was, again, whether you like it or not
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it was a bold, courageous move. Because he laid, he being Burnham here
3:31
laid a lot on the line there, didn't he? He laid his entire political career probably on the line there
3:36
Well, what you have to have to succeed in politics, Sheila, of course, is an unbending and unyielding will to power
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and Burnham has displayed that. You know, he comes across as a quite self-effacing
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you know, northern dad kind of thing. I mean, yeah, he may be all of those things
3:51
but what he also has had clearly now for the best part of, what, 15 years longer
3:56
because he's run for the Labour leadership now. This will be the third time, although he's probably not running for it
4:01
just be given to him on a plate. He has wanted this for a long, long time
4:07
He has been eyeing the prize, the crown from afar, the king over the water for a long time
4:12
He has now got the opportunity to actually be the king, the political king
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Rest not Charles III. He's not coming for your job yet. But we will then see, the question now is
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is what indicators or what indications he gives as to what sort of prime minister and government he will have
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Because one thing we're seeing now, this is a very unusual circumstance. He not even an MP yet He going to be an MP in about 20 minutes time It clear from Wes Streeting retreat from the field that any serious credible opposition to him to be Labour leader will not be there
4:47
I was texting a Labour source earlier and said, do you think there's anybody at all who might be able to corral to muster the 81 votes that they'll need
4:54
They said the chances were absolutely nil. OK. And so therefore, assuming that is right, and it feels to me like this is unstoppable now, assuming that is right
5:03
what we've got, according to Keir Starmer at least, is not the three months that Andy Burnham's team were briefing they'd quite like
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They said they'd quite like to come in in September. Three weeks. Well, three weeks
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And the question is, I think, actually, whether that three weeks is terribly useful to him
5:18
In the sense that, you know, one of the things that we've seen as a hallmark of this premiership of Keir Starmer
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has sometimes been an inability to manage and to corral the kind of media pack
5:29
If I were Burnham or working for him, One thing I would worry about now is that in the absence of a contest
5:36
why does this story go? It stops being about so much Andy Burnham momentum
5:39
It isn't about the contest. It isn't about Keir Starmer anymore. It starts to be about, well, actually, there's one Labour source
5:45
who's someone who's not particularly friendly to Burnham, put it to me. The real scrutiny starts now
5:50
And if there is, as we know, the media abhors a vacuum
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the story abhors a vacuum, and I think that the focus increasingly now
5:58
given that there won't be a contest, is going to be on him, what he will do, of course
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and if he were going into Prime Minister's, as to be Downing Street, say, this week
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he would have all that momentum with him. He'd be able to do things. He'd be able to show, not tell
6:11
This time, all he will be able to do is sort of give hints, do a bit of telling
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and he won't have the shield that he's had over the last few weeks, which is to say, I'm focusing just on make a feel
6:21
I'm focusing just on this by a list. He's going to have to start showing some political leg quite quickly
6:25
without the trappings of office to go with it. And had he had, if he had had
6:30
say from now to September and won an actual contest that may or may not probably not take
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place but had he had until that time he would have had much more time to prepare with the civil
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service for example yes that kind of thing none of that will happen well it might happen but it
6:46
will happen incredibly quickly now rather than at a calmer pace yeah and sometimes I think I mean
6:51
I can understand why team Burnham would like a bit more time but sometimes you know these things
6:56
they happen when they happen and they don't happen in ideal circumstances and ultimately
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Burnham himself has made this happen so he's got to be ready now or indeed whenever it comes and I
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would be tempted genuinely if it becomes clear there's not going to be a contest part of me if I
7:11
were him would be thinking do I want to try and accelerate this further because what is the point
7:15
what is the point either for the country you mean become PM sooner indeed because what's the point
7:20
either for the country or actually for him as well to allow that vacuum that sense of that's down to
7:25
That's down to the NEC, it's up to the Labour Party ultimately. There is no need, if it becomes clear over the coming week or so
7:32
that there's not going to be a contest, the question is why wait? Because even some of the arguments I've heard put forward around Starmer
7:38
which is to say, well, it's important that he's there at the NATO summit and so on. Is it in a sense that wouldn't it not be far better for the other world leaders
7:46
to have a chance to get to know the Prime Minister they're actually going to be working with
7:51
and the guy who's going to be making the decisions rather than what is in effect now for Keir Starmer
7:56
a rather ghostly caretaker prime minister. And we've got some sense of what Andy Burnham might be about politically
8:02
haven't we, over the last few days, I think. There was a lovely long piece written by Patrick Maguire
8:08
about how his Catholic upbringing infuses his politics to some degree. I love the, in that article, there was a lovely observation from his own mother
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from Burnham's own mother, that when all the boys, her sons were altar boys, they used to fight over who got the witch chalice
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and who got in the front and Andy Burnham was always elbowing his brothers out of the way
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so he could be the front altar boy which is a great symbol
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it hasn't changed mothers know best they know their children don't they
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but also that question of what Manchesterism is there's a paper coming out early this week
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about what he intends to do what hopes to do on privatisation
8:45
on the role of the state private sector, faith, charity He seems to see everything in that sort of cube
8:53
Yes, look, I think that this is an opportunity for the Labour Party to do something that, to be honest
8:59
didn't happen very much during the Starmer period, which is to intellectually self-renew
9:05
Keir Starmer, you know, for his merits, which obviously he has plenty of in all sorts of ways
9:11
one of his demerits, and I actually think the fundamental flaw which has destroyed his premiership, is that he is uniquely intellectually incurious about politics
9:17
My view about Keir Starmer is that here is a man who enjoyed being Prime Minister in some ways was quite good at parts of being prime minister particularly on the international stage but whilst he enjoyed being prime minister who didn enjoy politics and
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those two things can't coexist for very long in the end if you are poor politics
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politics will come to abhor you can I say can I ask you can you explain why
9:39
that is because an awful lot of people both calls and people I have conversations
9:43
with at home and there and thereabouts talk about they feel like that about
9:48
politics and they wanted competence and decency and they felt they had that in Keir Starmer
9:54
Why does it matter so much that the man or woman in charge gets the political side of it all
9:59
So it matters, I think, for two reasons. And one is internal, one is external. In terms of internal
10:04
one of the things that I have been most struck by over the past weeks and months and even years
10:08
of the Starmer premiership is the extent to which, bit by bit, gradually, different parts of the Labour
10:15
Party that you speak to, ministers, people who work for ministers, whether they're on the left of the party or the right of the party all ended up saying the same thing we don't know what he thinks
10:22
about anything we don't know what he thinks about anything we don't know what to do and when i think
10:28
kittsdahl was a big problem and again i'm lots of merits and it's a difficult day for him so it's
10:32
sort of these things are difficult to calibrate in a way but but but at the same time i think he
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was a man who i remember the first time that i met him i interviewed him during his the labor
10:41
leadership contest in 2020 i'd met him before i'd not interviewed him properly and i sort of asked
10:46
him a little bit about his politics, where he would place himself in the Labour Party, which politicians from history he most admired
10:52
which political thinkers he liked to read. And he sort of tutted at me and sort of said
10:55
these are silly political games and all of this sort of stuff. And I thought that was, and at the time I thought
11:00
it was quite curious, but over the years since, I've sort of reflected on how telling
11:04
that was. You know, most politicians are interested in politics. You know, they will, particularly Labour politicians
11:10
they'll talk to you all... And they look at what other politicians have done and what worked, what didn't
11:14
Absolutely, they'll sit and talk to you all day long about who fantasy Labour cabinets from history
11:18
would be or who they might be. And you can look at it as Westminster Parlour games, but it's also
11:22
reflective, I think, of a man who he was distinctly incurious about political ideas
11:28
He thought, I think, he thought that the problem with Britain was that the Tories
11:34
were reckless and feckless and useless. And they may well have been
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all three of the above. But I think the root of his ysis was
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that if I, Keir Starmer, Mr Competence, Mr. Managerial, Mr. Sensible, Mr. Sensible
11:49
simply replace them, that that would be enough. And the truth is that Britain's economic and political problems
11:56
were and are such that getting rid of the Tories, who were pretty much all of those things
12:01
was certainly a necessary condition for change, but it wasn't a sufficient condition for change
12:06
And you said a few moments ago that there were big structural things that contributed
12:10
What are you alluding to when you say that? Well, what I was going to say, just a minute
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So internally it was a problem that his ministers didn't know what he wanted them to do
12:18
because he didn't have a well-developed sense of his own politics. He was much more process-driven as a person
12:23
But externally I think that's been a problem for him as well because I think voters didn't understand what he was about
12:29
They never formed an emotional connection with him. And so that meant that every little problem which came along
12:35
which actually in the grand scheme of things probably wasn't that big a problem, but it was magnified, it was amplified
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because he didn't have a sort of root sense of who he was
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and a direction of where you're going. And if you don't have a clear direction of where you're going, then every little gust of wind sort of blows you off course
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than it needs to do, more than it needs to do. And in answer to that second question, Sheila
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is that, look, there are structural factors absolutely at play. It wasn't Orstheimer's fault. And I would sort of identify a couple, really
13:02
One which I think is not talked about enough and will definitely afflict Burnham in exactly the same way
13:07
is actually people sometimes talk about Brexit as destabilising our politics. I can see why they would say that
13:13
There's no doubt, of course, for many years under the Tories, it did. I'm not sure that Brexit is the reason why
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even though you could make an argument, say Farage has just seen off yet another prime minister, I think Brexit has been the main destabilising factor for Starmer
13:28
Actually, I would identify for Labour a much bigger problem with Covid. And what I mean by Covid is that what would a traditional Labour government do
13:37
when it was in trouble to get itself out of a hole. Turn on spending taps, borrow a bit more
13:42
Now, Burnham and Reeves, Starmer and Reeves have borrowed, but they are limited to the extent that they can do so
13:51
because of something that they rarely want to talk about, which was the enormous COVID debt that they inherited
13:57
When people say they want things to get better more quickly and they want public services to get better more quickly and they want more public money spent on this that and the other Very few politicians are willing to turn around and go well one of the reasons we can do that is because the state paid your wages for two years
14:12
And that is going to afflict in an era since the street that Starmer has been living in
14:18
which is near of higher interest rates, of higher debt payments on our national debt
14:23
One of the things that has really limited his room for manoeuvre has been the COVID overall national debt
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And of course, the other things which will continue to afflict a Burnham premiership as well
14:33
We've seen the international stage continue to be very, very distracting, taking up a lot of the Prime Minister's time
14:39
I think Burnham will resist that as much as he can, but as Stam has found, not easy to do if you're the Prime Minister
14:45
And I think it is also true to say that he, every Prime Minister now is inheriting a political and media culture
14:52
which has become very, very used to, including the public, these rapid changes expecting change very quickly
14:59
But that means it is all the more important that you have a plan, that you know where you're going, and you are communicating that plan every single day religiously
15:11
So that the political situation does not slip through your fingers, as it did with Keir Starmer
15:16
Because, you know, I sort of think, unfortunately, the tragedy of Starmer is that, in a way, I sort of think about him as a sort of inverse Rishi Sunak
15:23
Rishi Sunak inherited a bad hand. You know, he was basically playing with a pair of twos
15:27
and there was almost no way, you know, he could win the game. Starmer basically started playing the game with a royal flush
15:33
You know, you could say that he helped create the flush because, you know, he put Labour Party in a better position. He got a huge majority, 160, huge political capital
15:40
a load of goodwill. And yet less than two years later, here we are, he's out the game
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I think historians will marvel about that because it is a highly unusual situation to be in
15:49
for a Prime Minister to come in on that sort of majority, that sort of goodwill, and for all of it to be spent so quickly
15:56
The first caller I took after one o'clock was not particularly a Labour supporter or he was a floating voter
16:04
He didn't have any particular animus against Keir Starmer. But something he said in his speech on the Downing Street steps this morning really angered this voter
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And it was what he said about the Labour Party he inherited, politically, morally corrupt
16:19
um it angered him he said because there were lots of good good people working for the party at the
16:26
time and for him to dismiss them all in that way was pretty brutal was that was that a kind of an
16:33
echo really in the speech was that an echo of the whole uh um both on it now uh starmer machine
16:42
that got into government that they just went the left the left the left elbered them out the way
16:48
and into the middle distance at the very least. Is that an echo of that
16:53
I think it is. And obviously what Stam was trying to do there was start to write the first draft of history on his premiership
17:00
And I think you can make an argument to say he's been a more successful Labour leader
17:04
than he has been in the prime minister. He's been a Labour leader for six years. That's the longest serving since Tony Blair
17:08
He led the party to one of its best election victories ever. I think you could argue that any decent leader
17:13
probably would have been able to do that given the situation at the time. I think though you know your call is sort of onto something in a sense that in a way
17:21
the way he approached being Labour leader is one of the reasons he actually struggled in office
17:25
which is that let's think back to 2020 when he was running to be Labour leader I was at so many
17:30
of those rallies he used to have this line said we're not going to trash the last Labour government which was a rebuke to the Corbynistas and we're not going to trash the best of the last four years
17:38
or five years under Corbyn which was a rebuke to kind of the Blair outright and that was you know
17:43
he won that election as a sort of unity candidate. He governed the Labour Party very, very quickly
17:48
as a much more factional figure on the Labour right. And that was a strategic choice
17:52
You know, he threw Corbyn out of the party. Again, you might say it was justified, but again, it was a strategic choice
17:56
And one of the things, as Tony Benn used to say about the Labour Party, you can't only fly with your right wing
18:03
And I can do the impression if you want. You can go can't only fly with your right wing. And he, what that cost was in alienating the left
18:10
repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, was when he got into office and then suddenly you see the rise of reform
18:19
He wasn't able to do what Burnham did in Makerfield the other day, which was unite the left, unite the progressive left
18:24
because frankly so much of the left despised him and disliked him. So that was a strategic choice he made early on that I would argue haunted him over the long term
18:33
Thank you very much indeed, Lewis Lewis Goodall, LBC's Lewis Goodall, so host of the News Agent podcast which drops at five today
18:40
Can we just say a big hello to Andy Burnham who's about to pull up to the House of Commons
18:45
We'll go live to the House of Commons in a few moments Thank you very much indeed Lewis
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