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Andy Burnham used his first speech outside Downing Street to pledge a radical shift in power away from Westminster, declaring: “We will take power out of here, and carry it into every postcode in the land.” Reform's Robert Jenrick and Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram join Tom Swarbrick to discuss how the new Prime Minister can deliver on his promise to take power out of Whitehall. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #tomswarbrick #robertjenrick #steverotheram #andyburnham #primeminister #downingstreet #cabinet #news #uknews #ukpolitics #politics #whitehall #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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0:00
Steve Rotherham is with us, Labour Mayor of the Liverpool City Region and Robert Jenrick
0:04
is here to Reform UK's Treasury spokesperson and MP for Newark, both in the studio
0:07
opposite sides politically, but united in here on this day. Gentlemen, thank you for coming in
0:12
Steve, let me start with you. You were on Downing Street this morning. You had Babe in Arms as Andy
0:17
Burnham came up the street. Have you spoken to him today? Have you been inside number 10
0:22
Very briefly, I've spoken to him. We've just been in number 10 and had a little walk around
0:27
to see what's happening and for the family for the first time
0:32
to have a look inside that most famous of addresses. And he's absolutely buzzing
0:39
You can imagine what it's like when you've wanted something for so long
0:43
and look at it, he's made no secret, you know, it's 16 years that he's been trying to get the top job
0:48
and he's going to be absolutely brilliant because he's got lots of plans. Do you think he's nervous
0:54
Yeah, we're all nervous, aren't we, when you have that step up, I suppose. it was the first outing today as the Prime Minister
1:00
So it's like if you were to get an uplift in the football team
1:05
to play for the team of your dreams, you're bound to be a bit anxious
1:09
But of course he'll settle in and he'll do the things that I know he's capable of
1:14
He's certainly leading the team out on the pitch. Robert Jenrick, this is a day that Andy Burnham says
1:19
he's going to do politics differently, be much more consensual. Do you hope that that happens
1:23
Do you think that's what the country needs? I think the country needs change
1:27
and I hope that Andy Burnham delivers that obviously for the good of the country
1:31
we all want him to succeed I have to say I am worried that
1:38
there isn't really a plan I read that Andy had asked Keir Starmer to stay on for a bit
1:45
because he wasn't yet prepared True? No, I mean look, we get this all the time
1:54
don't we with the Westminster tittle tattle down here somebody will say something
1:57
and then all of a sudden it's the truth you can't repeat things because somebody somewhere
2:02
might have said something at some stage otherwise we'd all get into
2:05
that rabbit hole I think the really important stuff is that he genuinely does have a plan
2:09
so you can imagine that over the last 18 months as Sir Paul from the party
2:17
had started to ebb and we saw some of those local election results we were saying
2:21
well what is it that we would do differently and some of those things will form part of what he announced over the next few days
2:29
Well, I hope that's the case, obviously. It's felt to me to be quite confused
2:35
I mean, I'll give you a few examples on energy. If you want to re-industrialise the country
2:41
whether that's places like Liverpool or Nottinghamshire I represent, it's very clear you need to get rid of or massively change the approach to net zero
2:50
or else you never have a car manufacturing industry, steel making. And yet it sounds like Andy Burnham is going to broadly keep the net zero agenda
3:00
although maybe with a different energy secretary to the one that we've just had
3:04
If you want to help with the cost of living, you need to bring down working people's taxes
3:08
And yet Andy Burnham said there room for movement on tax which implies that he going to increase taxes And he has been someone who proposed quite a lot of taxes you know a holiday tax for example a tax on a car parking space at work
3:22
You know, these aren't things that just hurt the rich. These are things that hurt the kind of people that you and I represent
3:28
These are working people in the Midlands and the North who just don't have any spare money at the moment
3:33
There won't be anybody in your place, anybody in my area that is against what's called an overnight visitor's levy
3:40
When you go to abroad, I'm sure you do, Robert, all the time because you've got great wealth
3:45
You don't ever dictate where you're going on the local tax regime
3:50
So if you stay in Barcelona, it's not like you're going to say, I'm not going to Barcelona because they charge eight euros a night
3:57
Or I'm not going to Milan because they charge two or whatever it is
4:01
That's not how it's done. So why would people stop coming to places like the Liverpool City region with the visitor economy we've got and the cultural offer we've got
4:10
But how are we going to enhance what we've currently got? We need a funding stream
4:14
And that's where the overnight is. Just a second. I'm going to jump in. This is a small thing
4:18
But it's quite important because it cuts to whether or not Andy Burnham
4:23
despite all his years in Manchester doing good work as mayor, really understands how tough it is for people down on the ground
4:29
You know, of course, it might not make much difference if you're staying at, you know, the Hilton in Liverpool or Manchester
4:34
But, you know, the other day I was in Cleethorpes visiting Haven holidays there
4:38
and they offer holidays for families who've not got much cash at all for as little as 80 quid
4:44
Now, that kind of holiday in a caravan in Cleethorpes will go up by 50% if this nightly charge came in
4:52
And the fact that Andy suggests these things makes me think, does he really understand how hard it is for people
4:58
Can reform really understand it with a multi-millionaire leader? Well, I've never taken the view that understanding issues
5:06
and having a plan to fix this country is dependent on where you've got to in life
5:13
It's not about that. The things that need to be done to get this country back on the track
5:17
are a sensible energy policy. So we're not impoverishing people with their energy bills
5:22
and we can actually re-industrialise. It does mean cutting waste so you can bring down people's taxes
5:27
and the taxes that should come down first should be for working people, not for the rich or the asset rich
5:33
It does mean getting people off welfare and back into work And that, I think, is going to be one of the central questions for Andy
5:40
Does he actually have a plan? And is he able to get it past the Labour backbenchers to get the millions of people who are currently on welfare
5:47
or as many of them as possible, back into the workplace? I haven't heard any solutions to that so far
5:52
Steve, what do you take Andy Burnham to mean when he talks about failed neoliberalism
5:57
What does that mean for people who aren't policy wonks or engaged with that
6:01
What's he talking about there? I just think it's a bit rich, isn't it? He's been in post five hours and Robert's saying he's a bit disappointed that he hasn't heard all the policies coming out
6:12
So let me just tackle the one that he's just spoken about, which is around welfare
6:17
I'll tell you how you get the welfare bill down because we did it in the Liverpool City region
6:21
And I think it was working in tandem with you, believe it or not, when you were a Tory
6:25
And what we said was there a different approach that you can take And your government at the time was sanctions first You remember it was all about sanctions If somebody turned up late it was about sanctions
6:35
And it was punishment and punitive measures. What we did, we had what's called a housing first approach
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And we got people back into homes and then through something called household into work, back into jobs
6:49
And it cost less for the state per person than it did through the sanctions first
6:54
because we gave a wraparound support and those people went back into the world of work
6:59
Just on jobs, someone who's out of theirs, Liz Kendall, we understand, has now gone
7:04
as science, innovation and tech. Liz Kendall out. We wait to see who she is replaced by
7:09
But can I come to this neoliberalism? Failed economics. What exactly is he referring to there
7:15
What does that mean? So you possibly remember in the 80s under Thatcherism
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there was a guy called Professor Patrick Minford and he talked about trickle-down politics
7:26
and he said basically what happens is the rich all get rich and then eventually that percolates down to everybody
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so everybody is raised by it. But over the 40 years that we've seen this
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certainly areas like ours and, you know, Placton and others, they haven't seen the benefits of this trickle-down approach
7:46
Devolution, by the way, started with people like Robert and others. Devolution is targeting and focusing what we can do locally
7:54
So is that to say there's going to be a ceiling to wealth beyond which everything gets taxed
7:58
Or you don't want the rich to get any richer without people who aren't seeing the effect of that, the positive of that, getting richer themselves
8:06
What does that mean in policy terms? So in reality, what it means is that through devolution, you can do things in your own area differently and you can get better growth and better returns on the investment than you can from, say, a monolith like a government deciding what happens in an area
8:23
So in our area, for instance, it's known for football, it's known for music
8:28
And I do want to just mention, if I can, about the devastating news about Kevin Keegan's death and what that'll mean to my area, but areas right the way around the country
8:36
an absolutely fantastic man got to know him and he gave me some brilliant advice
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just a few months ago when he was sick he said I was going to Hamburg and he said
8:48
say this and I spoke in Scouse German and the crowd laughed their head off
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so it was something that Kevin had sort of conjured up so that I could endear myself to the
9:01
German audience just on some of the stuff that we want to do around
9:06
devolution. It means, for instance, that we can accelerate some of the work that's already going
9:15
on and the machinery of government can move to one side. Would that also help in areas that are
9:20
run by mayors from other parties? For instance, Reformer have mayors in part of them. They would
9:25
be able to accept more power from the state in order to bring change to their local area. Presumably
9:30
that's something you'd want, Robert. Yeah, look, I see merit in mayors. I don't think it's a panacea
9:36
And it not something that the public are particularly clamouring for And there are good mayors and bad mayors Some people have done well and Andy built a good reputation as a mayor Don get me wrong The things that the country really want to be focused on now
9:53
are the cost of living, immigration and crime, as well as delivering decent public services
9:59
like getting the NHS waiting lists down. So I just want a government that's going to focus relentlessly on those things
10:05
And it does feel a bit outdated to be having a conversation
10:10
about Margaret Thatcher, it's not interesting from a sort of historical perspective
10:17
but no one under 30 can even remember who Margaret Thatcher was
10:21
She's as distant to a young person as Winston Churchill was to me when I was born
10:27
It's not Thatcher, it's the Thatcherism. It's the approach. It wasn't Margaret Thatcher as the figurehead for it
10:33
It was, as I said, about Patrick Minford and others, believing that there's no such thing as the state
10:39
Well, there is. The state's got a huge part to play as a facilitator
10:43
And we've seen locally... I'm not here to defend that. Reform is not a party of kind of reheated Thatcherism
10:49
We're a workers' party. You've got a lot of Thatcherites in here. I don't know about that, actually
10:53
I think people in reform generally see that the problems of today
10:59
are very different to those of the 1980s. They'll need different solutions
11:03
And many of us, myself included, see that whilst Thatcher turned round the economy in some respects
11:10
it left deep scars. It did in places, you know, my dad grew up in Manchester
11:13
my mum in Liverpool. I grew up in the black country in the 80s
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and the heavy industry that had provided pride and purpose to that community was almost all lost during that time
11:25
and North Nottingham, I'm sure I represent today, is very much the same. So, you know, reform is not a party of just trying to go back to the 80s
11:32
and wrap ourselves in the clothing of Margaret Thatcher. That's the Tory party, really. What we want to say are practical solutions
11:38
to the problems that people face today. And I didn't hear that in this sort of arcane historical debate
11:44
about neoliberalism and Margaret Thatcher. We'll see what solutions are offered by Andy Burnham
11:48
when this cost of living idea happens tomorrow. We've got the cabinet being appointed now. We're going to have to get to that in just a few moments
11:54
Steve, if you were a betting man, who's going to be chancellor? I know who's going to be chancellor, and I wouldn't be telling you
11:59
Come on, Steve. Give us a hint. I'll tell you a bit later. I'll keep it to himself
12:03
Male or female? Man or woman? Come on, what does that first name begin with? Letter E
12:06
Over the last few days, when I've been asked a question like that, I've been very careful not to go he or she
12:12
or whatever it is because people jump to the conclusion. How come you do know? Sorry. How come you do know
12:16
Because me and Andy speak about politics. It's what you do with... But you've been advising him about who should be in the cabinet
12:21
I haven't been advising him. No, he doesn't need advice off someone like me. No
12:25
Look, the one thing that you'll find is that he's got a very clear vision of what he wants to do
12:31
Whether he'd agree with it or not, it's very clear. And that over the next few days and weeks and months ahead
12:38
people will either like it or they will reject it. But I think the vast majority in the country will say
12:44
this is what we've been waiting for. Thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Steve Rotherham, Labour Mayor of the Liverpool City Region
12:50
Robert Jenrick, thank you for coming in. Reform UK's Treasury spokesperson and MP4 Newark
12:54
There has been some movement at the door of number 10. Some flowers have gone in. presumably for celebration rather than commiseration
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