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The last few days have been spellbinding. Andy Burnham won a by-election, he became an MP, and within weeks of that, he's going to be prime minister. We are in an extraordinary period and because it's moving so fast, you can lose how astonishing it is. Steve Richards, podcaster and UK political commentator. Nigel Farage has definitely been an actor in this Labour drama, hasn't he? Reform have been ahead and opinion poles in Britain for a long time now and part of his task is to turn that round. I think what he will try and do is become the figure, all those who want to stop Farage becoming prime minister feel
okay about coalescing around. From Bloomberg Weekend, this is The Mishal Husain Show. We did a UK politics episode here a few weeks ago, but so much has happened since that it was time to return. A new prime minister, Andy Burnham, looks set to soon be seen walking up Downing Street and taking the reins of power. Part of the background to that, the Labour Party deciding to replace its leader midterm has been the rise of Nigel Farage. And this has been a week when he has again dominated the headlines. There's been scrutiny of his donors, his benefits, his property portfolio, and he has responded to that by calling for a rerun of the contest for his parliamentary seat.
I've decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. So there is a lot happening in British politics right now. Labour is hoping to look refreshed and revived through bringing in Andy Burnham, someone who was until recently the mayor of one of England's great cities. I interviewed him when he was in that role in Manchester. He talked about his ambition, his responsibilities, his sense of mission.
He was very far then from being a national leader. I've been thinking too of the change in Keir Starmer's fortunes, from the moment that we stood together on a TV debate stage days before the last UK general election, only two years ago, but he had the wind in his sails then. He was the coming man. Taking us through all of this is Steve Richards, longtime political commentator and now podcaster, host of Rock and Roll Politics, a podcast with a loyal army of listeners who he calls the 'cooperative.' Steve is particularly knowledgeable about Labour politics and leaders.
He has written many books. Some of them are on the table when he came into the studio and I've put details in the show notes. And do have a look at bloomberg.com/mishal because that is where you will find my notes and reflections on each and every episode, including what I read before and after the conversations. And this time with Steve, we begin with his writing and a very early observation of British politics. I'm sure we're going to talk about characters in the present day, one in particular. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a great story that you share about Wilson and seeing him have an egg thrown at him and the way he responded to it.
Yeah. It's absolutely, for me, a moment where politics came alive. I was there and I was very young and it was just so exciting. It was electric. And the fact it seems to bring him alive, such a horrible experience. He was soporific. He looked about 90, and this happened. And he changed, came about 30 years younger and the whole mood of the hall changed. And I was about 10 or 11, but I found it fascinating. I can do it with the Harold Wilson impersonation, but half your audience will be lost. Go on, share it with me now though.
I want to hear it. So he sort of looked up with this egg down him and said, "Now here we have six months of a Labour government, which goes to show you could only afford to throw eggs under a Labour government." And the whole audience laughed and erupted and I say, Wilson looked about 50 compared to 90. And it's the humor, as a power of leadership. And the presence of mind. And to act quickly, exactly right. Because he's before the social media era, but hearing you describe that, I can imagine him in the era of being doorstepped with a camera and having phones in your face all the time.
Yeah, exactly. Steve, I wanted to start with the theme of your latest book, Turning Points, because it is about moments of crisis or change. Some of them are British political crises. Some of them are international, the decision to go to war in Iraq, the pandemic, the global financial crash. But it made me wonder about something relating to now. Technically, what we're about to see is effectively a handover from one Labour prime minister to another. But do you think it could be more than that?
Do you think that this transition could actually be a turning point for Britain? I think it could, and it's not automatic. When there is a change of prime minister midterm, the external challenges remain the same. A lot of the government remains the same. But in this case, the rise of Andy Burnham, it could be because he has got a very clear agenda for what has gone wrong with the British state and how Britain is governed and how he wants to put it right. Now, if he, and it's a big if, if he implements his plan, this will be a turning point. And no one quite knows in advance how a prime minister is going to perform. But certainly his ideas, partly learned from when he left Westminster many years ago,
has the potential to be transformative. This great rebalancing of power, the biggest rebalancing of power in British history or recent British history, which he has stated, and we don't have very much detail on that, and I have, and you have much more than me heard people who are about to lead or want to lead making these big speeches. I'll reduce welfare spending. I'll build more houses. But you think there is something more fundamental that he wants to do? Yeah. So one qualification in British politics quite often, leaders who are about to become prime minister, whatever the context,
often claim their big idea is a change in the way power is exercised. I think the difference here is Andy Burnham means it. I think his experience of being a mayor of Greater Manchester, where he saw certainly in transport, the power of local leadership translating into an actual policy development means that he thinks this is a way forward. And I think he's got views also on the way the British state has become pretty dysfunctional more widely beyond the need to devolve power.
He calls it the outsourced state. A lot of Britain is run by unelected agencies and private companies and the paths of accountability and responsibility are so blurred. It's very hard for a government to get anything done. Now, how he finds the money to deal with this is a huge, huge question. And we're going to dig into all of that, the ideas and how to implement them and what they'll cost. But I want to talk for a moment about how the UK got to this point in time where a prime minister who won a huge majority less than two years ago ends up being booted out by his own party.
Now you are really plugged into Labour politics in particular. Your son, your son-in-law are both MPs. Your daughter is a political advisor too. When did you first start hearing that Starmer was in serious trouble with his own MPs? Well, not from any of them. I find that hard to believe. No, seriously. They're careful what they tell you in case it ends up on air. Yeah. They're really, really careful. I think they see me as an irritant, to be honest, because I just have my own views. I mean, my view is that he was in trouble from quite early on.
Leadership requires sort of titanic qualities and he came into politics very late and didn't have many of those titanic qualities. He had a few, resilience, when he chose to, to have a dogged attention to policy detail. But I don't think he understood how you had to work a government, how to liaise with his MPs who became antagonistic quite early on. Some of them anyway. Should Starmer ever have been leader of the Labour Party then? What would you give him credit for? Well, on one level, it's fascinating because here is someone who not only led Labour to a victory, but a landslide election victory.
And Labour don't win many general elections in Britain. So that was an achievement. There's no doubt about it. And if you step back from all the noise, there were also policy reforms of some considerable significance. The National Health Service is in a better place now measurably than it was. And I think the economy is more stable than it was. But to be honest, after the 14 years of pretty wild rule, the Liz Truss premiership, the Boris Johnson premiership, I think the anti-Tory mood was set. And he'll hate me for saying this, but the degree to which Keir Starmer brought about that victory is questionable.
I think Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and others helped Labour return with that landslide majority. They lost the election. The conservatives lost the election rather than Labour winning it. He did, however, transform the party in the minds of those who were very against it during the Jeremy Corbyn years. And that period, Andy Burnham sat out, because he was running Greater Manchester in that time. Is that an achievement in your view that Starmer did put the party in a position where people who had turned against them completely.
It was partly an achievement and partly a problem. Here's why. The achievement was very quickly he took control of the Labour Party. The Labour Party is really hard to control. And I see Neil Kinnock who led Labour in the 1980s and really had to change Labour from the doldrums of absolute election slaughters. And Neil Kinnock says to me, and I won't use the swear words he put in as well, but he said, "How the hell did he do this?" It took Neil Kinnock nine years. Very quickly, Keir Starmer had the levers of power in the Labour Party.
However, in the way he became a very authoritarian leader, expelling people who challenged what he and his then chief advisor, Morgan McSweeney, regarded as the only acceptable route to take, the sort of sacking of various ministers on the so-called "soft left" of the Labour Party ended up giving those very victims more power than they've ever possessed before. Because some of them ended up being key Andy Burnham supporters, he made enemies that way. But he would say, wouldn't he, Steve, that he was standing up for principles that after that time under the Tories where it seemed that you could get away with anything as an MP or a minister,
he wanted to uphold standards in public life and therefore if people made mistakes, they had to go. I think it was broader than that. So for example, in the buildup to the election, they blocked certain candidates from standing, not for making mistakes, but for what they believe. And I remember speaking to Keir Starmer about this when he was in opposition. And I said to him, "Just be careful because you just end up with a perception of a party that's pretty weird." There is 40 points ahead in the opinion polls sort of turning in on itself." But his view was, or the view of his advisors was you get credit for taking on elements of your party. And I'm not sure whether that's the case.
He also would appear, blocked Andy Burnham from returning to parliament earlier than he has. Yeah, that was for a different reason, of course. Because he didn't want him in parliament and able to stand against him. And able to stand against him. Which has now come to pass. Which has now come to It is the most extraordinary sequence of recent times. Just a few months ago, Keir Starmer with an absolute, overt, ruthless determination went to the meeting of Labour's governing body and personally put the case for blocking him and succeeded because he had complete control of the Labour Party. And yet a few months later, and this was a sign, it was over for Keir Starmer,
he was too weak to repeat the exercise. And Andy Burnham, who looked as if there was no route into the House of Commons, found a route. And the last few days, weeks have been kind of spellbinding from he was outside the House of Commons, he won a by-election, he became an MP. And within weeks of that, he's going to be prime minister. It's extraordinary. Yeah. But even the circumstance of that seat becoming available, the one he stood in was because a Labour MP gave up their seat in order to make way for him, which I haven't seen happen before.
It's never happened before. And this MP was a very ambitious MP. Who presumably will now come back, I imagine. Who will come back in some shape or form. Absolutely. There will be a reward for that sacrifice. And what a sacrifice. It's hard work getting a seat and he gave it up. And in a way, it was like an episode of sort of Fawlty Towers, where No. 10 and Keir Starmer thought, "Well, we've got through it." And then it was announced this MP was standing down for Andy Burnham and that was it. They couldn't block him. In your book, The Prime Ministers,
you have a very useful checklist for if the country's looking to elect a prime minister, he or she must have the following qualifications. And the first one you put on the list is he or she must be a political teacher, which I though teacher was a really interesting word to use here. What do you mean by it? And is Andy Burnham a political teacher? Yeah. A political teacher is absolutely essential because policies erupt around voters all the time. And what many aspiring leaders forget to do is explain why they're doing what they're doing. And more widely,
you have to then explain how that policy fits into the rest of your government's policies and then frame an overall sense of purpose and mission. And teaching can take many different forms. President Trump is a teacher in his own way and Andy Burnham-. In his mastery of social media? In his hunger to be the main commentator on his own leadership. And so he is an around the clock commentator. Now he does it in a very eccentric way, but he is there explaining what he's doing and why he's doing it all the time. Now, Andy Burnham is a completely different political character, but he too is I think a teacher.
I say I think because you never wholly know until they get into the position of ultimate power, president, prime minister. But I think he is one of those who is conscious all the time. He needs to be in a never-ending dialogue with voters. His social media videos are brilliant. It's going to be quite challenging. So devolution, his big theme is a quite dry topic. So he has to make it exciting. So the big test of his teaching capacity is to come, but the great election winners and those who remain in power for a long time are political teachers. So it's interesting that you think he is that. And obviously he's had a significant experience in
Greater Manchester for nearly a decade. He's grown in that job, no doubt, but it's worth reminding everyone that he ran for the Labour leadership twice before and lost. And you, when you interviewed him a couple of years ago now, you did put this criticism to him that he has been seen as a bit of a shape shifter, loyal to Tony Blair, loyal to Gordon Brown, not necessarily willing to go up against Jeremy Corbyn. He had an answer for you. Yeah. I mean, it was quite interesting. He said I was always to the left of New Labour. This means essentially to the left of Tony Blair.
Yeah. So this is his own definition of who he is and always was. And I have some sympathy with him about this. As you know, there's a joke during the rounds about someone going into the pub who's a Blairite, a Brownite, a Corbynista, hello Andy Burnham. But looking back to that period, there were lots of people who came into parliament during the Tony Blair period who were ambitious and wanted to get into Tony Blair's government. And they hadn't always been where Tony Blair was, and they moved with the times and then they moved again. Lots of people do that. So I think probably his self-description of being to the left economically, but small 'c' conservative on issues like crime and immigration is
probably an accurate place to start in trying to understand him. So let's dig into what he's done in Manchester, his record and the idea that Manchesterism is the new political philosophy that he will bring to the government of the UK, a version of what he's achieved in Manchester. Can you explain it with reference to the buses? What did he do? The terminology is significant. Yeah. The terminology is really significant. And I made a mistake in that interview I did. I said, "So you've become much more enthusiastic about public ownership." He uses the term public control. So what happened in Greater Manchester?
And it had already begun before he got there. And he's been criticized for that as well. But I think that's unfair because it's not his fault that good things were happening. It's how did he adapt to it when he got there. And so the buses were privatized, which meant only the routes that were profitable were run with any kind of regularity. There's trams in Manchester, they were completely disconnected from other transport services. So they connected the whole thing and they regulated. Fares were kept to a minimum. You could have a ticket where you could go from one form of transport, a bus to another, the trams. And I remember the day it all was interconnected.
He did one of his very clever pieces to camera on social media and it felt exciting. Now that's not the same as re-nationalization because the private sector is still involved. They get a franchise to operate a service. They get a franchise, but it's regulated and coordinated. And they're forced to go to places which they might not have chosen to go to route-wise because it wasn't profitable. Exactly. But I think passenger numbers have risen. Revenue therefore goes up and it generates growth because people can move around more efficiently. And the key thing, and this is where it works I think, is these mayors are accountable for this.
So if it had gone wrong, Burnham would've been a disaster area. The fact that it worked meant he was incredibly popular in Greater Manchester. And so it is about how you work with the private sector in different ways. Now the big test is whether you can extend it across a whole country with different sized connobations and all of that. And that's a huge question. And not just in transport, in lots of other areas. Exactly. There's this pamphlet that was released in this critical period a few weeks ago as Labour was mulling a new leader called the Productive State, which I think is known to be an influence.
It comes from a group of MPs and Andy Burnham's endorsed this position. The Productive State: A Framework for Manchesterism, which says that what's been done with buses could be done for water and energy. I mean, the idea is not just to make services better, but also to bring down the cost of living. Again, something that everyone wants to do everywhere in the world. I think what's interesting about this paper and which I hadn't really thought about in this way until it spelled it out, is that it says that the high cost of essentials in the UK is not just about individual household budgets.
It puts pressure on public spending because the welfare state has to cushion the blow of that. But the money it spends on housing benefit goes to landlords or the money it might spend on energy bills goes to the energy companies. The state ameliorates without ever being permitted to cure directly.This is the fiscal escalator we are trapped on. And there's clearly a problem there, but it feels like an immense one to solve. It really does. I think this is what he means by this phrase, the outsourced state. Because how do you, to use another very popular phrase in British politics, take back control or a degree of control? And you're right to suggest or imply that with transport,
to some extent, it's easy because the sums involved aren't huge. I mean, buses are relatively cheap to run. The challenge with something like water is massive because the truth is there has been underinvestment in water since the privatisation and before they were privatized. Where do you think those sums that will be necessary will come from? Because the choice could largely be taxation or it could be borrowing. He has said he will stick to the current government's rules, which limit borrowing for day-to-day spending. So what are you expecting?
More taxation or more borrowing or a mix? There's going to have to be more taxation. I mean, if you look at what he has been saying, and I think at this point we do have to follow what he has been saying and assume he means it. So one of the things he has said is that he's going to initiate the biggest council house building programme for decades. We know he wants to speed up plans for a national social care system. When he was health secretary, he had devised one and was going to fund it through various means which got labelled as the death tax because it was about inheritance tax.
Tax on people's estates. Exactly. Yeah. So then we look at the demands for defence spending, which seemed to go up and up on a kind of near daily basis. And we haven't even got to water. So these are huge things. We also know that he's publicly said he will stick to the fiscal rules, although he's indicated in the past that they need to be looked at again. But I don't think he has the space to look at them again at the beginning. There is a fear in Britain of every incoming prime minister of having a Liz Truss experience. Liz Truss, prime minister for a month.
The markets went bonkers and she was out. And so therefore I think he will have to and will, I think, put up taxes. And how he does that will be very interesting, who he targets, because these midterm prime ministers are constrained. They haven't won an election. So he's working on a parliament elected on Labour's manifesto at the last general election, which ruled out quite a lot of tax rises. Well, or he's in the position where he doesn't have to have an election for another three years and he could do with that time and try and show a record that enables people to elect him at that point.
Yeah. That is probably what he will do. It's quite hard if you're a prime minister to give up a House of Commons where you have a majority of way over 100, which is huge in British politics. Most prime ministers would die for this kind of majority. However, this will be a running theme. It always is with incoming prime ministers. And the one advantage it would give Andy Burnham if he were to hold and win a general election is he would then be freer to pursue his own agenda on all these issues, giving away power from the center to the local. Tax, he would have more flexibility. Mind you, going into an election,
saying you're going to change that is a risk as well. As ever with leadership, he faces thousands of dilemmas. It's interesting that you don't think he'll go for more borrowing because you could make the argument for borrowing and say it's not for day-to-day spending, it's for investing in the future. And in this Productive State pamphlet, that's essentially the argument they put, that it's not going to be the same kind of borrowing as in the past and therefore it is something that the bond markets could buy into in their view.
It's quite interesting because Rachel Reeves, the current chancellor who will lose her job when Andy Burnham comes in, he'll appoint a new chancellor, did change her very rigid fiscal rules on capital spending, investment in infrastructure. So they have a bit of flexibility there already. And you are right that some of those who are very influential on him, people who were in the cabinet under Keir Starmer, who sometimes got sacked from his cabinet, have been arguing that the markets will be okay if you can show you are borrowing to invest in a way that actually will raise revenue and be part of this so-called productive state. So they might try and go a bit further,
but they already have a bit more room than many realized because Rachel Reeves did revise this. She's cross she hasn't got credit for it, but there it is. They've got more room to borrow if they want to. And I know you're in favor of Ed Milliband as the next chancellor. I think if you're going to be a change maker prime minister, you might as well bring in a change-making chancellor. You put him and his brother David, who's been a guest on the show, and actually when he was on the show in January, did say it was wrong to block Andy Burnham from returning to parliament at that stage. I mean, Ed Milliband is someone,
you describe him when he was Labour leader the night of the 2015 election, absolutely convinced he was going to win and "collapsing in tears, the shock of defeat, profoundly disturbing for him. Hours earlier, he'd assumed he would be driving to No, 10 via Buckingham Palace." What is his character and his politics? I mean, we know it, but he's probably, I would imagine to the left of Andy Burnham, do you think? I mean, he's certainly "Red Ed" to parts of the press in this country. Yeah. He is really interesting and in a way more interesting I think than is widely recognized because I'd forgotten about that, but you are right.
He so thought he would be prime minister that he and his chief advisor spent the evening forming the government, who would get which job. And then the Conservatives won with a small overall majority and he was distraught and has taken a long time to recover from it. It is traumatic to be rejected in this way for any leader anywhere in the world. However, what is really interesting about him is he stuck with politics. He didn't leave the House of Commons and has been this radical energy secretary in the Keir Starmer government. Arguably on issues relating to climate change.
The most radical energy secretary in the Western world, and he is a figure of the left. He's to the left of David, his brother. Ed Milliband will be unquestionably a radical chancellor. However, he spent years working with the Labour Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who was in the treasury for 10 years, a long time, and he too has an expedient streak. He was the one who told Andy Burnham during the by-election, which Burnham won, to say he will stick with the fiscal rules. So he is not just a kind of a left equivalent of Liz truss. He can be quite cautious too and pragmatic. And although he has been this really radical climate change secretary, very adamant that Britain is heading for net zero faster than most other economies,
he has had to accept a whole range of compromises in that area. So I think it will be quite a moment, this decision as to who Andy Burnham chooses. The markets could dive. I mean, that could be one of the early crises even that a Burnham government might have to deal with. That is what would terrify Andy Burnham, a market crisis. But the alternative is risky too, riskier than it seems. So he could apoint a very cautious small 'c' conservative chancellor. The markets would be fine at first. The media would say, "Oh yeah, this is a sign of a grownup government." But the lesson of
the past is that these Labour chancellors who have sought to reassure it all tends to implode in quite dramatic ways, Rachel Reeves being an example. So the totemic policy for Rachel Reeves was cutting the winter fuel allowance for pensioners in Britain. And actually she did it to appear strong, an iron chancellor and it's gone terribly wrong for her. So there are risks of caution as well. There's a broader thought in your work, which is not just about Labour chancellors, it's about Labour prime ministers and how you think that they have the wind against them when they come to office and therefore they have something to prove
and it leads them to make poor decisions. And I think you have even written that having something to prove was part of Tony Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq. Yeah. Tony Blair was brought up in the 1980s politically when Labour lost elections, when they were seen as anti-American, soft on defence. He wasn't actually an expert on the Middle East or certainly Iraq, but he was a world expert on Labour and why they lost elections in the 1980s. And I think he was absolutely determined to show he was a
different sort of Labour prime minister who would not break with the United States on issues to do with defence and war. And when he knew that President Bush was going to go into Iraq, he knew he would be with him. He just had to find a way of explaining why and how he was going to do it. And with the irony that by the end of his leadership, he was seen by many as a liar, untrustworthy, when he was doing it to show how trustworthy he could be as a Labour prime minister. And it's always happened with Labour governments and chancellors. Going back to the late 1920s when Labour got in, they had a chancellor who ached to show that he could be trusted with the economy. So he followed very strict economic,
rigid rules and the whole government imploded in two years. Is the lesson of all of this to a Labour leader is be bold. Yeah. With these added necessary qualifications, you have to show why you are doing it. You have to work out a message that gets through to a wider electorate and convince them. But I think it's safer to be bold than to seek to reassure and not do things because it all goes wrong. So there's one philosophical point which I'm struggling with in the Burnham philosophy as we seem to understand it. Is he has this instinct to move power away from the center, to devolve, to give more power to local areas in whatever configuration they take.
But you then also don't you have less control on the ultimate result. If you really want to transform the state into this productive state, doesn't that require a command and control. It's a big complex idea. You're essentially sort of outsourcing it to local politicians. You've brilliantly captured the risk, talk about risks and the dilemma. And this is why devolution is much talked about and rarely happens. That you as a new prime minister want to show that you are making a difference. If you give away that control to local areas, genuinely giving it away, handing out money from the center and say, over to you, you decide how to spend it.
You are giving in modern Britain power to some councils run by Reform, Nigel Farage's party. In some cases, councils that are badly run by Labour or the Conservatives, they're not all well run. And you stand there in the House of Commons and have to say, I know it's gone wrong. Say, I don't know, in the northeast of England, nothing to do with me. We've given away the power. And yet you want to say as a prime minister, look at the difference I've made since I got into power. And that is a conundrum. There's a really interesting phrase Tony Blair once used before he got into power as prime minister where he went to a local government, huge conference somewhere. And he said, "We are going to give you more power as long as you use that
power responsibly." Now the huge question implicit in that is who decides what is responsible? Now Andy Burnham seems to be suggesting they can decide locally. How does he then show he personally is being transformative? What levers do he and his people use? Now he would argue now giving away power is the transformation. Let's see whether he still believes that when he is asked on various media outlets, "What are you doing about X, Y, and Z?".
Nigel Farage has definitely been an actor in this Labour drama, hasn't he? In that it's the prospect of him on course to be the next prime minister that has driven many Labour MPs to be as against Starmer as they turned out. What do you think Andy Burnham's strategy is for beating Farage? Is it to portray him as being beyond the pale? Is it more of a wooing back the Reform voter in which he possibly risks alienating those who've gone to the Greens? In the by-election that he won, Reform was the main opponent. And his strategy there was hardly to reference them,
certainly not to make attacks on Nigel Farage at all. And at the moment there is plenty of ammunition to attack Nigel Farage, but he didn't do it. He just focused on trying to attract a coalition of support around him. And I think he will begin with that as prime minister. Inevitably, certainly if Reform is the main opposition by the time of a general election, that can't work. He will have to-. Go on the attack. But go on the attack in what way? What would you advise? Is it to try and portray Farage as racist or because there's also another party now, Restore, which is to the right of Reform. What would you suggest is the tact to take?
I think what he will try and do is become the figure where all those who want to stop Farage becoming prime minister feel okay about coalescing around. One of the problems Keir Starmer had was that he had alienated quite a few on the left who went to the Greens and quite a few who have gone to Reform. And Burnham will hope he's an attractive enough public figure that they all feel okay about him. Now, whether this will work will partly depend on how successful he is, of course. And if he's not, who knows what will then follow? But you are right to say, I think, one of the many driving forces behind this astonishing rise
from not being in the House of Commons to being prime minister is this, have we found a figure who can stop Nigel Farage, the other good communicator in British politics. Not brilliant, but good. And before Burnham came, the best amongst the party leaders. And it was very interesting in the by-election. Nigel Farage was there quite a lot. And I've always thought what a great communicator he is. He has the knack of appearing to have a conversation, though I think he was a bit rude to you, famously I think, when you interviewed him. But in that by-election, a bit like actually when he was with you,
I thought if he looked ill at ease somehow in his slightly old-fashioned double-breasted suit, he couldn't hide the fact that he was uneasy about their choice of candidate. And I thought, is he such a brilliant communicator? Nigel Farage, he's got this continuing relationship with Donald Trump. And of course, one area in which Andy Burnham is completely untested is foreign policy. How do you think he'll fare? Well how will you deal with Donald Trump. Let's just get to that. Because Trump's already been quite dismissive of Burnham.
He's a mayor of a town. Yeah. Yeah very dismissive about who he sees as a rather pathetic figure. It's not at all unusual for a British prime minister new to the job to have no feel for foreign affairs whatsoever. That applied to Margaret Thatcher, who formed a very close relationship with Reagan. It applied to Tony Blair. We've talked about how foreign Affairs sucked him up. America: Clinton, Bush, Iraq, Europe. None of them came in with any feel whatsoever for foreign affairs. And foreign afairs absolutely sucked up their energy and attention. And this will happen to Andy Burnham.
So he will have to adapt quickly. I think we will have to wait and see. What would you advise him though? Be bold as your advice is in other areas? If you look back at how Starmer really went out of his way to woo Trump, he got another state visit, and he hasn't got much out to put it at best. But I think what Burnham will try and do is I think there will be a renewed focus on Britain's relationship with Europe, which to give Starmer credit for, there was this what they call a reset. Relations are much better now with Britain and other European leaders. I think Burnham will want to intensify that. We know that he is passionately pro-European and he has said he wants Britain to go back into the European Union in his lifetime. I mean,
he's quite young, so that's not a big specific commitment, but I think there will be quite a lot of focus on that. But yeah, he will try. He will be very nice to Trump. He can be charming, Burnham. He's learned how to be a rather charming public figure. And when they have one of their famous meetings on that White House sofa, I think he will manage that absolutely fine. Steve, finally, he clearly has the support of scores of MPs on his own side. We could see that the moment he walked into Westminster and they were all gathered there to receive him. But we also know that this is a pretty fickle group of MPs, isn't it?
A lot of them were elected two years ago. They turned on the man who led them to that victory pretty swiftly. Do you think that could be something he can't take for granted having his own MPs on side? You try to do something big. There's loads of people who come to you and say why you can't do it. Yeah. For viewers and listeners who don't know, he arrived in parliament the Monday after he won this by election and hundreds of Labour MPs gathered to be photographed with him. And I saw some of those Labour MPs and I though, I'm tempted to tell Andy Burnham what they were saying about him just months ago. They weren't all avid fans then. And you are right, this is a very hard parliamentary Labour Party to manage.
There are a lot of Labour MPs with seats with very tiny majorities. And if it goes wrong, they will turn. The way in British politics and in other countries too, in America. So the authority of a president, the authority of a prime minister is partly dependent on the opinion polls and whether they're doing well. Keir Starmer lost authority ultimately because Labour were being slaughtered in elections and in the opinion polls. So part of Burnham's authority is Labour MPs hope he's going to be popular. And if that isn't the case, I'm sure he'll get a honeymoon. A lot of them will turn and there are specific policy areas where he will have to engage with them. Welfare reform being one example,
but I think he'll be quite good at engaging with them. But yeah, you are right to point out that MPs increasingly are fickle in all parties. Reform people will turn on Farage. Conservatives on their leaders if they are unpopular. So the stakes for Burnham to stay, he's at the moment Labour's most popular politician. He needs to keep that position because that's from where a lot of his authority is derived. And he needs to make Nigel Farage less popular.
He needs those opinion polls to turn, the ones which put Farage on course to be the next prime minister. That is the context. Reform have been ahead in opinion polls in Britain for a long time now. And part of his task is to turn that round. And if he pulls it off, he will continue to have authority. But a lot of MPs won't get jobs in the Burnham administration, so they won't be thrilled and things. It's very hard to manage a parliamentary party in a modern era where loyalty to leadership is not a given.
Are you looking forward to this period? Do you feel as a commentator you've got more of a spring in your step? Well, politics is endlessly fascinating because it's human beings trying to do things that you would otherwise determine by war. But yeah, I think we are in an extraordinary period and because it's moving so fast, you can lose how astonishing it is. Labour have never dumped a leader, never. And here it is doing so in dramatic circumstances. So yeah, it's going to be absolutely compelling. Interesting times. Steve Richards, thank you so much. Thank you very much.
