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Labour and Reform UK have confirmed their candidates to stand in the Makerfield by-election. The announcement comes after a by-election was triggered by Labour MP Josh Simons, who announced he would stand down last week, paving the way for the Manchester Mayor's return to Westminster. Following the announcement, Mr Burnham said he is "proud and humbled" to have been selected as Labour’s candidate for Makerfield. #shellinginflorida #emilymaitlis #andyburnham #keirstarmer #nigelfarage #labour #reform #ukpolitics #manchester #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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0:00
Let's talk about this very pleasant and warm Labour Party tweet
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about Andy Burnham being their candidate in Makerfield. Congratulations, good luck, my gosh
0:10
That's a real recollections-may-vary moment, isn't it, for the Labour Party? Yeah, I mean, what else can he say, frankly
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What else can he say? He wants the party to do well. And if you've seen Andy Burnham's video that's kind of doing the rounds
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with the Oasis soundtrack... We can hear it, actually. Shall we hear it
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Go on then, let's have a listen. Some say this by-election is unnecessary
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I say it's the most consequential of our lives. I don't take anything for granted
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and I'm ready to accept the consequences of whatever choice people make
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Well, we need somebody that's one of the people, but somebody that understands the common person
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We need somebody like him for the next Prime Minister because he will be, definitely
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What is he doing now? I think a lot of Manchester love him for that. You know what I mean
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Everything that he's used in Manchester, it's time to take it to the rest of the country. Honestly, it's just what it needs
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I'm good. One of the things that made me most proud recently is someone saying on a doorstep
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Andy's all right. He's for us. I am for us. All of us
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It's not a particularly slick video, which I think works to his advantage
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because what you get if you watch it in full is just a bloke who's really comfortable in their own skin
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and that was the thing that struck me. I haven't heard that ease for so long
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and it's not about labour or reform, it's just about somebody who can walk around their own patch
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who can feel recognised by people because he's been there, frankly, for so long
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and who doesn't sort of leave you wincing when they say what their football club is
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or what their pint is or what, you know. He sort of seems to inhabit the world
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that he genuinely is and that I can't explain that just it feels very different when you watch it
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and we had on the news agents today Neil Lawson who's the co-founder of Compass somebody who's
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tipped possibly for a job within a sort of you know Andy Burnham future sort of shaped government
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who knows he obviously yeah he would deny that and he'd say there are plenty of steps between
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you know now and and there but he was the one who said um I think you should go and do this video
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he sort of he had the concept of the video send annie burnham out and said just walk from there
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to there and see what happens and i said oh come on don't tell me all those people sort of magically
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appeared and he said well obviously you use the best clips you don't use the terrible clips
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but it was pretty organic you know people do know him around that area you don't use the clips of
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the busy woman going no not yeah so i guess you know he was quite honest about the thing and
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And what we trying to get to the bottom of and there are several steps between sort of now today where he just been declared as you say the Labour candidate and whatever happens over the course of the next five weeks and maybe three months of the summer is the shape of things to come
3:05
So let's talk about the by-election first of all, because that's, you know, pretty much in our sight lines now
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The tactical voting numbers are really interesting on this. So these are people who are not Labour supporters, who would not normally vote for Labour, who say they would vote for Burnham in this seat
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Sixteen percent of current Tory voters, Conservatives, would vote Burnham. Six percent of reform voters would vote Burnham
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Thirty-five percent of Green, 46 percent of Lib Dems. And, OK, that's just one seat and it's one race and it's one person
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but it seems to speak to something that neil was talking to us about neil lawson which is
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a more consensual type of politics and i don't think we've had that or heard of that or seen it
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ages ages and he used the example of when you know andy burnham was making a speech in manchester
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and the person who introduced him is a lib dem right it's not about being labor at that point
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it's about being manchester it's about pulling in the other parties i remember like a zillion years
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ago when Andy Burnham was health secretary hearing him say we need to find a cross-party
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consensus on social care I don't I just want to solve the problem I don't care about party
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politics I want to get the bottom of this of course it never happened right and they never
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got the cross-party support and look where we are with social care you know 20 years on absolutely
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nowhere and so I think if I'm honest that's given me a bit of a kind of like a political chill well
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sort of warm feeling i like the fact that things might get done um what i would say i mean i and i
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think that two things can both be true i would also say that i'm feeling from some parts and
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certainly from some of our listeners and some of our viewers there is a queasiness to the speed at
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which we are all talking about this and maybe talking it up and and imagining a future and
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people kind of going, you know, what are you doing? Don't think that more political instability
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is going to generate a better economic outlook or a calmer country or, you know, stop the
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frayed nerves, that you are actually creating this sort of slightly faster than you can
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breathe momentum of change, change, change, change, change. Neither is remaining, staying, making the same decisions that don't seem to be working
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A good idea, is it? I mean, that's the thing, right? So you're stuck with sort of both things
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I don't feel I have a dog in this race particularly. I can totally hear people who say to me you know just calm it down Just stop sort of you know speeding this into a new kind of drama of change and we must change we must break and change and break and change because that not actually helping the
5:54
economy at all those tactical voting stats you just gave really interesting because they reflect
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something that um a guest we had on the program from more in common at the tail end of last week
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was telling us that um they had completely coincidentally done a deep dive into makerfield
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would you believe before any of this happened quite recently and they found particularly on
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reform voters because of course reform did very well in the in the local elections there in that area um that it was a very mobile electorate and it and she the guest i was
6:23
speaking to felt it could travel to burnham and and your figures there seem to bear that out
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i mean i think the point about the reform vote has always been uh or has long been
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it's about rejecting the status quo right so you kick the people that are in power because you want
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to be the anti-establishment vote and so if you're hurting or if you feel there's injustice or if you
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feel that you're forgotten or if you feel you're left behind or if you just feel angry frankly with
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whoever is in power then you choose reform because you think it's about breaking the system but you've
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just used language very similar to what Andy Burnham was saying yesterday completely he's going
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to be the rebel he wants to be the insurgent now and he wants to be the i'm manchester taking on
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westminster and if he can beat reform at their own game in other words saying oh no you've been
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around for ages in the form of you know farage and brexit and all the kind of you know recent
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turmoil that we've seen in this part of the world i mean i don't think i'll mention brexit but
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certainly reform arguably are the establishment now in the sense that this is what we're living
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with now we are living in a post-Brexit land that they required they've announced their candidate
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as well in a campaign video for their new candidate Robert Kenyon he's a plumber in the
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caption they write Makerfield was Andy Burnham's backup plan for Robert Kenyon it's his home this
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battle will be David versus Goliath let's take a listen to some of it I mean look plumbers do very
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well right Gorton and Denton everyone loves a plumber yeah if I was the opposition I'd be saying
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don't let another plumber be taken out of the system right you'll never get a plumber
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exactly but i think it's probably quite a smart choice it is a smart choice isn't it and and
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equally you know they are going to come at reform are going to come at burnham's time in office you
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mentioned him as health secretary that's just one example but they will come at that won't they
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look i mean it's very easy um to say this man who's portraying himself as an insurgent has been
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in the Blair government, has voted for the Iraq war, has worked under Brown, has done key jobs in office
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And don't let him tell you he doesn't know Westminster or you know he never been part of the system He was the system And I guess you know of course they have a point you can erase your history i think burnham response to that would be yes you know i have worked pretty loyally for all the leaders that i have served because i believe that the
8:49
job of somebody in the cabinet he makes the manager player ogy the manager player exactly
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the football ogy and then in in manchester he's been his own person and he's had that
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executive power and he's you know created somewhere along the lines a brand right manchesterism we
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don't know what starmerism is we don't really know what rainerism we don't know what street is
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we we don't know any of that but we we kind of understand manchesterism as this idea of in their
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words business friendly socialism in other words you don't scare the horses but you do still put
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you know the people at the heart of the decisions you're making rather than the corporates
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And if you're an ordinary voter, a voter in Makerfield, and we've had some great calls from people who will be voting in that election, seeing just those two, obviously there'll be other candidates, but seeing those two candidates, they might say, well, hang on, why would I vote for a guy who wasn't born here, whose only real ambition in this town is to get into Westminster and try and become prime minister
9:50
Again, I would argue Burnham's probably got an answer for that as well, which would be not born there, grew up there, went to school there
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sent my kids to the same school there, you know, which is all in that video. I think it's quite hard to make a case that he's not local
10:03
He literally points to the rugby fields that he played on. And he's the mayor of Greater Manchester
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And he sent his kids, as you say that. I don't think people are going to be like, oh, show me the, you know, the hospital ward, right
10:14
The tourism. Exactly. Like, where's your certificate? I think people get that if you come from a place, you come from a place
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But I also think, I mean, this is where it gets really interesting. There is a pride, isn't there, in feeling that you could be choosing your next prime minister, right
10:30
I mean, again, we're getting ahead of ourselves. And in anxiety. I had a caller last Friday who said she felt anxious about it
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And what? Why? She just felt it was a weight on her shoulder
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Too much responsibility. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like Sedgefield. The people of Sedgefield have never forgotten, for better or for worse
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that they were the place that made Tony Blair, right? And I wonder if there is that sort of sense of, you know
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you know what a big step it is. This is a big by-election because let's just imagine
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let's flip it for a moment. If Robert Kenyon, born in Makerfield, plumber, takes the seat
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that's the end. That's the end of Manchesterism or Burnerism. It's all gone, right
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And then presumably Keir Starmer kind of lives to fight another day
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and that's... Only just, though. Well, right. I mean, yeah. Interesting times we live in. Thank you very much indeed
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Have you got your train ticket booked yet to make a field? We've got Luke Child planning us a very nice, you know, constituency... Visit
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Look, visit. Brilliant. Look forward to it. Thanks very much, Emily
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