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LBC's Political Editor Natasha Clark joins Shelagh Fogarty to discuss Andy Burnham's speech where he said Labour has not 'done enough.' Andy Burnham was delivering a major speech as he seeks Labour nomination for Makerfield by-election Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #andyburnham #shelaghfogarty #LBC #labour #uknews #news #politics #starmer #politics #debate 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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If you look at the last 50 years, Britain has been on the wrong path
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40 years, 40 years on the wrong path. A path that has damaged communities across the north
0:19
The de-industrialisation of the 1980s was devastating for places across Makerfield, like Ashton in Makerfield, Oral, Winstanley, Hindley, Plattebridge
0:34
There was a degree to which, not in its totality, but this was a rolling back of huge swathes of Thatcherism
0:42
Yes, and obviously, you know, from Andy Burnham and what we expect
0:45
if indeed he is confirmed as the candidate for this by-election, as everybody expects him to be
0:51
a few things stood out to me from that speech. Firstly, a shift to the left, that's quite clear
0:56
That is obviously what we know about Andy Burnham. And obviously, and again, it feels obvious to say this, a shift to the north
1:02
And that's exactly the two things I think he was trying to get across in this speech
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He wants to be a prime minister to represent those left behind areas
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You know, politicians have passed. We've had Boris Johnson be that man that says, I'm going to stand up for those left behind areas
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the places that feel that they've been ignored by Labour for too long
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And that, I think, is going to be a real important message in this by-election. Who do you want to represent you down in Westminster
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and that's always been an issue, hasn't it, for people down in London that feel that the rest of the country
1:33
just doesn't work for them, that it doesn't work for the people that are making their decisions
1:37
and that those two things are not combined properly. But yes, we found a lot from that speech
1:44
about what life might look like under a potential Burnham prime ministership
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if indeed that he does trigger a leadership challenge. And we are getting ahead of ourselves slightly
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but it's certainly worth theorising on. It is, and this is the first time since
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he has confirmed that he wants to run for that seat, that we've heard him speak in those blatant
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terms about what exactly that would look like. He talked about the fact that parts of the north
2:07
have had severe repeat flooding and he doesn't believe that there's been enough funding there
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He talks about wanting to build more council services. He said, I want to make the basics
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of life more affordable. That means rents, bills and fares. So some really big, quite radical
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policies coming out from Andy Burnham We could just listen to what I thought was the sort of main key bit his pitch to the nation as it were at the very end of his speech If I get to stand a vote for me will be a vote to change Labour
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because Labour needs to change if we're to regain people's trust. It'll be a vote to make life more affordable again
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a vote to power up places, a vote to re-industrialise. This is the choice in this by-election
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Do you want Makerfield and the North to stay on the same path it's been for the last 40 years
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Or do you want a new path which brings the country back together and makes it work for everyone
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I know why I'm standing. I know what I'm offering. I know what my party has offered in the past has simply not been good enough
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The loss of faith of voters across the North, so many of whom once saw us as their natural party, is our fault
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And nobody else's. I want to help fix that and I hope people will give me the chance to make that case
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So he's saying a serious rewiring of the country, transferring power back to local areas
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That's what I want to do if I return to Parliament. Max devolution from national back to local
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Time for local servants to be transferred back to local authorities. So a really big, in his eyes, change from how things are being done in Whitehall at the moment
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And he prepared to any notions that he would be campaigning in the slightest to rejoin the European Union
3:51
Yes. And obviously, that's been the entire debate over the weekend, hasn't it? With Wes Streeting's first major intervention, first major speech since he resigned as health secretary last week
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making it very clear that when that leadership challenge comes, and we all expect it to come at some point
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he will absolutely be campaigning. And he didn't say, you know, now, but he did say, one day, one day, I want to rejoin the EU
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But Andy Burnham, and look, West Streeting's team know what they're doing with this, Sheila
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This is a Leave voting constituency. It's an incredibly difficult one for someone like Andy Burnham
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They're trying to kibosh Andy Burnham. They are trying to kibosh Andy Burnham's leadership chances before he's even got started
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And he was very clear on Brexit. He said, now is not the time. The last thing that we should try and do is rerun those arguments
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or Britain will be stuck in a permanent state of chaos. He said it's time to bring people back together
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And obviously his focus at the moment will be Makerfield, the north, the areas around
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Makerfield, but specifically Makerfield obviously because that's where he's campaigning. But he was, because it's an area I'm from, I don't mean Makerfield but the north west
4:51
and I reported there for years to hear him throwing out place names like Bickershaw Hindley you know that just aren typically spoken about in our national politics I mean there lots of places in the south east south west as well that aren But hearing those names he is saying enough with this north thing that as a nation we have never
5:11
got to grips with, ever. I mean, I was just talking earlier about the Elizabeth Gaskell novel
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Victorian writer, North and South, if you haven't read it. It is just, it's extraordinary to read a
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book that was written over 130, 40 years ago and see how pivotal it is still to our politics because
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we have never got that North-South divide right. Yeah and Andy Burnham has been the champion for
5:33
the North right. People call him the king in the North and he has made it his entire you know
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career for the past five years or so to be that representative and arguably he's had some successes
5:46
Yeah well since he you know took that seat you know he left Westminster politics, he lost a
5:50
leadership election he decided he didn't want to be in parliament anymore for the Jeremy Corbyn
5:54
years and moved up to Manchester thinking he could make more of a difference there and arguably has
5:59
had some real successes people in Manchester do talk about the economy about the transport network
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being two of his his very big strengths that he's had since being the mayor of Manchester other
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people you speak to say well actually the council did far more this has been a sort of in train for
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many years Andy Burnham is taking credit for a lot of what was already happening in Manchester
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so how much of that we can put down solely to him um is is of course up for debate but he is
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absolutely trying to be at forefront um of of now this campaign of course in maker fields and like
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you say we don't we don't talk about these places very often on the radio do we of course he's running
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an election we have to keep that in the forefront of our minds um but yeah we saw really clearly
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exactly but we but seeing really clearly i think a lot of people are going to resonate with this
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message and you know saying we need labor to change um rather than change the country and
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that was the sort of message from Sakhir Starmer we know he was changing the Labour Party and now
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he's saying actually I don't believe that we should have done that we shouldn't have changed the Labour Party we shouldn't have gone um to to the right of politics to try and win that election
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so it's a really big shift and he was talking about uh having seen over that 40-year period
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um you know from Thatcherism to present day and what it did to towns like like Makerfield and he
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named he named others as we said um he and I are a similar vintage and I probably around the time I
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went to university I mean the the depression that you could feel in cities like Liverpool and
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definitely the surrounding areas as well like Wigan say Skelmersdale it was a real depression um in in the economies in the industries in some of the people as well you know it just wasn a great time and then when I became a journalist in Liverpool then what four four or
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five years later um I was going out and reporting on the impact of those things the impact of
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deregulation of deregulation the impact of de-industrialization the impact of all the
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privatisation of things. And what you saw were communities and individuals reeling and trying to
7:55
fight back, but not quite knowing what to grab hold of in order to fight back, you know. And it's
8:00
extraordinary to think that 40 years on, we're still at that, you know. Yes. And, you know
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many people will say that's the natural way that the economy has changed and the different parts of
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the country haven't adapted enough to the way that the economy is changing. But, you know
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Mandy Burnham is saying today, I want to re-industrialise. That's going to be music to the ears of people in those constituencies
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that want to see more jobs. Modern manufacturing. Exactly, modern manufacturing. We're not talking about mills
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No, exactly. We're not going to reopen the mines or anything like that. And I don't think he's suggesting that
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But building more council houses, putting more people there from Whitehall, transferring of power, those sort of things is what he's saying
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And he's saying we gave away too many levers of power. We don't have the control of the basics, things like public spending in our own areas
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And he, you know, I can see Angela Rayner making the speech that she made today. They clearly are on the same sort of page in terms of what she was trying to do when she was housing a local government secretary
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Put more power in the hands of local authorities and take it away from Whitehall
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Take those spending decisions and give them to local people in order to try to best improve their lives
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and my review for what it's worth at the end of that speech on a much more shallow level
9:11
is go to the opticians and get your glasses properly fixed and give your speeches a bit
9:16
of welly yes i think he he had a few moments there where i think he did come out of his shell
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and we saw we saw burnham sort of fired up it's a particular audience he was speaking to it's
9:25
worth remembering yes exactly it probably was um but yes a very interesting first speech and
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and you know i think like i say it set out exactly what what he wants to do and talking about you
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know technical qualifications universities um like I say rents bills and fares services coming
9:40
into the um transport network a reduction in the cost of travel like this is all you know
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Andy Andy Burnham's laying out his manifesto for his first hundred days already isn't he
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um this is what you should expect if you if you are voting in this by-election and the question
9:54
for Nigel Farage as well um sort of fits into that and the reform party those thatch right
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policies that you just mentioned
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