533. Andy Burnham's Big Gamble: Can He Beat Reform?

What is Alastair’s plea to Labour politicians, after this week’s turmoil? After Wes Streeting’s resignation from the cabinet, will he still run against the ‘King of the North’, Andy Burnham, and how bruising would a leadership contest be for the government? How risky is this for Burnham, and can he beat Reform in Greater Manchester? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this emergency episode. __________ Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Vasco Andrade Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Emily Kent Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 2:34Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the rest of this politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:37Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And we're talking about developments in the leadership of the Labour Party. We had the dreadful local election results recently, since when there's been massive speculation about whether anybody might challenge Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister in the Labour Party. Step forward this morning, Wes Streeting, Health Secretary, resigning from the Cabinet, saying in his letter of resignation that he no longer has the confidence in the Prime Minister and he wants a broad leadership debate to see who should follow him. And then this evening, step forward, Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester, lots of talk about which seat he might step into,

• 3:19Alastair Campbell?

  and step forward on his behalf, a young MP by the name of Jos Simons, who has stepped down from a seat in the Manchester area. And Andy Burnham says he wants to ask the National Executive to let him be a candidate.

• 3:34Rory Stewart?

  Let me try for foreign listeners just quickly, or any British listeners who, like me, have been doing other work today and haven't been following the ins and outs. Essentially, under the Labour Party rules, if an MP, sitting MP, gets enough MPs to back him, just over 80 MPs, they can trigger a leadership challenge to the sitting leader, who in this case is Keir Starmer. And then the rules are that it Goes to an alternative voting system where the electorate voting are Labour Party members and affiliated members, which I guess means members of trade unions or certain

• 4:15Rory Stewart?

  types of members of trade unions. And if nobody clears 50% of the first round, the candidate's votes are redistributed until somebody emerges as the winner. And the system, I guess, was set up in order to try to balance two things. One is to make sure that the candidate was not such an outsider that no MPs were prepared to get behind them. So maybe that was sort of blocking the return of a Jeremy Corbyn, who maybe they thought wouldn't have got the requisite 80-plus votes. And the second thing is, of course, giving a voice to the party. But that means that different MPs now challenging Starmer have advantages and disadvantages. Starmer has one big advantage if he wants to hang on, which is he can try

• 4:58Rory Stewart?

  to hold the MPs and stop them putting their names behind an alternative, and we can talk about that. If he fails to do that, then I guess there will be insiders who may be better at mobilising the critical number of MPs. And then there may be somebody, and this is what I wanted to get to you with, what if there's somebody like Angela Rayner, who might be more appealing to the party and the country? And for someone like me from an outside, it seems to me she'd almost be a shoo-in if it was just the Labour Party members voting. So that's where we are. And final thing I wanted to say before I came back to you is the timing on this is odd. We're doing an emergency podcast now because it's incredibly big news, because it feels like the Prime Minister is about to be challenged

• 5:39Rory Stewart?

  directly. But Andy Burnham's route in would be through a by-election, and a by-election would take four to six weeks to happen before he'd even get into Parliament, and he'd need to be in Parliament before he could run against Keir Starmer, I think. Over to you.

• 5:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, what I'd say, Rory, is that your your knowledge of the workings of the Labour Party has vastly improved in recent years, as due to your constantly listening to me banging on about it. Look, I think this is, from Andy Burnham's perspective, very high risk. He's the mayor of Manchester, he's a very popular mayor of Manchester. But there is not much love for politicians who make way for other politicians who want to do something different. I think it was Bruce Milan who became a Labour Commissioner. And they thought, well, he's going off to Europe, people are going to be so proud of him. Uh, no, not really.

• 6:35Alastair Campbell?

  So Josh Simons, a young MP, was a minister, resigned from the government because he got caught up in a scandal about the organisation he used to be part of, Labour Together, which was allegedly spying on Sunday Times journalists. And this is the seat that Andy Burnham is going to go for. The last MRP poll, they predicted for the next general election, whenever it happens, a 7,000 majority for Reform. A graphic which Celine, our social media person, has put around today, the chances of winning this seat, Reform 82%, Labour 17%, Conservatives 0%. So this is not a safe route in.

• 7:18Alastair Campbell?

  Now, if you look at those local elections, there probably is no safe route in. I was talking to somebody earlier, he was saying, actually, probably the best thing to Andy would be to forget about Manchester and try and find a seat in London. That might be a little bit, and even in London, it's not sort of absolutely guaranteed. So he's got to get in, he's got to then get 80 nominations himself, and then he can join Wes Streeting. Your point about Angela Rayner, I think that if Andy Burnham gets in, Angela Rayner may feel that that is her sort of politics properly being represented. I think that Angela Rayner, even though today she's been celebrating the fact that HMR,

• 7:58Alastair Campbell?

  she's been involved with this big tax scandal, HMRC have said that she's done nothing wrong, she's not been fined, the tax affairs have been sorted out. But prior to that, I'd say her stock was falling somewhat. This may be putting it back in, but I think as things stand, if it was just Wes Streeting in there, I think Keir Starmer would definitely stand. If it's Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham, I think he'll work out whether he's got a realistic chance of winning. But the other issue that might get thrown into the mix here is that, I said this to you on the main episode, um, last time we recorded, don't rule out the pressure that there will be to have a woman.

• 8:37Alastair Campbell?

  Candidate on the shortlist. So and then meantime, I know you're a huge admirer of Al Khan's. He's pretty relatively junior MP in terms of how long he's been in there, but he's a minister. And he's been putting it around today or people on his behalf, that if there is an open contest, he sees himself as being part of it as well. So it's wide open. It's incredibly confusing and my sense at the moment of Keir Starmer is he's not going anywhere. So there's going to be a big bruising contest at a time for the country when I just think it's giving the worst possible image of the party to the country right now and the country to the world.

• 9:16Rory Stewart?

  Okay, well, let's let's just get into that for a second then. So let's just develop that. What's your basic emotional reaction to this as somebody who's a real, I mean, this has been your life for a very long time. What's the no holds barred Alastair reaction if you were talking to a friend or Fiona about what's going on? What have you been saying on the phone to people today?

• 9:35Alastair Campbell?

  I'll tell you what I've been saying to people I think have an influence over Keir Starmer. I think that it probably was, looking back, a mistake to block Andy Burnham, though I said at the time, it is a bit odd if you expect the leader to say, here's the door, come through the door. I know your goal is to knock me out. Come and try. Okay. Added to which, and I'm only speaking here second hand, I've not spoken to Shabana Mahmood, but Shabana Mahmood is a very, very key figure on the national executive. And I'm hearing that Shabana Mahmood is supporting the idea of Andy Burnham coming in. So I think that what maybe Keir Starmer could have done in the last 48 hours to have bought himself a bit of time, as I've been saying to you all week, let's just try and calm things down a bit.

• 10:18Alastair Campbell?

  This is not a sensible mood in which to discuss these catastrophic election results. But what I think he could have done is said, look, it's perfectly obvious. A lot of you don't like me. I think I've got a mandate for a term. I'm going to try and see that through, but I get that, you know, there's a lot of demand for change. It seems to me that if there is going to be change in this guy, Andy Burnham, that everybody seems that a lot of people seem to like, he should be part of that. And we can see how we can do that without damaging the Manchester mayoralty. Because don't forget, Andy Burnham vacating the mayor's seat in Manchester means there has to be a violation for that. So my emotional reaction is.

• 10:59Alastair Campbell?

  Even if it's the right thing to get Keir Starmer to step down ahead of the next election, I am far from convinced that this is the right time or the right way to go about it. And you said when we talked about this the other day, well, there's never a right time, there's never a right way. And there's something in that. But this feels, I think, it also underlines that there's been an awful lot of plotting going on. Well, there's always plotting in politics, you know that and I know that. But I think that you've just literally had the King's Speech yesterday. So that's a King's Speech, the Wes Streeting was part of designing. Health is a big part of it. And to have gone so quickly from what, yes, were terrible results, without any real analysis, other than, oh, well, let's change the leader.

• 11:43Alastair Campbell?

  And I think changing the leader is, is easier to say that you should do it and do it than necessarily to think through all the consequences, until you've worked out who's going to take over.

• 11:57Rory Stewart?

  I get you're really angry about this, and that you feel that this was the wrong decision, and it's going to make a real mess. I guess the brutal question is, firstly, is it actually possible for Keir Starmer to survive now that Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham are doing this? I mean, or are we just kind of, we are where we are? And however angry you are about it, Keir Starmer's very unlikely to be around in three, six months' time.

• 12:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And by the way, let me say, I'm not, you know, I've always tried to put the case for Keir Starmer, because I think he gets so much sort of stuff thrown at him. But I've never pretended that I think he's, you know, the bee's knees as leader of the Labour Party or as Prime Minister. And, you know, the Labour person in me genuinely wants this government to do well and would like to see Labour win the next election if possible, because I think most governments need at least two, at least two terms to kind of, you know, make big change. So what I say about that is, I think the, his chances of surviving long term are a lot slimmer than they were. There's no doubt about that. Because the message that's being put out, there is an awful lot of, let's imagine he survives, we now know

• 13:07Alastair Campbell?

  that there are literally dozens of MPs sitting there, day after day, after day, after day, thinking. I don't want in there. So even survival is a quite a tough place for Keir Starmer to be. So, you know, I think that his chances of surviving are pretty slim, to be honest.

• 13:24Rory Stewart?

  What should he do then? Should he accept that and say, well, that probably does mean that he needs to set a timetable for his resignation, which is the what Theresa May did in 2019? Or does he take the John Major view, which I guess was 1995, which is, I'll fight this out. And yes, there's a lot of people who don't like me, but I can win this and I can take them into the next election.

• 13:48Alastair Campbell?

  I think that latter position is where he is in his mind right now. But I think a lot of that is driven just by sheer anger, feeling that, you know, why is this all being thrown at me? Now, the answer to that is that's what happens in modern politics. You know, as you know, I'm in Germany. There was literally an article in one of the broadsheet papers yesterday suggesting that Mayors might have to call another general election after a year. Now, I don't think that's where they're going to go. But I think that in modern times, with politics as brutal as it is, populism as viral as it is, social media as violent as it is, the sheer hatred that there is at high profile public figures in the public

• 14:30Alastair Campbell?

  is very, very hard. I think he still thinks that he is better than any of the options that are being put forward. Certainly thinks that on foreign policy. And I know you and I've talked about this. I mean, it is a worry if somebody emerges who's literally had no experience of foreign policy, probably not given it that much thought, given how much on a prime minister's plate is foreign policy right now. He's probably thinking that. He's probably feeling very personally betrayed and hurt. He's probably feeling that, you know, Wes Streeting is a snake, Josh Simon's is a snake, Andy Burn's, he's probably thinking all of that. But what he has to do as well as the rest of them, when I say, everyone needs to calm down, everyone needs to step back a bit, that includes him, really work it out.

• 15:17Rory Stewart?

  Let's assume then that probably the writing is on the wall for Starmer. Maybe very unfair, and I'm actually speaking as somebody who comes from the Tory party. There's a lot of my former colleagues and people in the centre of politics who are saying, be careful what you wish for, we could have done a lot worse than Keir Starmer. He might be a bit boring, but actually he and Rachel Reeves pretty steady. The economy's growing, the bond market's being a bit unfair, but actually, there are things they failed to do, but they've not been dangerous, damaging politicians, and it could get a lot worse. Certainly if you're from the Tory party, you would worry that Angela Rayner would be much more left wing,

• 16:00Rory Stewart?

  that the kind of things that people are talking about in terms of cutting welfare spending. Well, let's look at Wes Streeting's little manifesto, or what seems to be his manifesto. He seems to say, vote for me, I'm going to cut welfare spending, I'm going to strengthen defence, I'm going to radically reform the NHS, I'm going to make life easier for businesses, I'm going to deregulate. So it very much sounds like a sort of more business friendly, free market version of Keir Starmer. And then Angela Rayner on the other side, sounded in that large thing that she put out a few days ago, to be staking out a much more left wing position. Is that right, roughly?

• 16:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and it'd be interesting to see, for example, whether if the leadership contest does go ahead and Wes Streeting does have the numbers, whether he will feel that he has to somehow inoculate himself against the charges that are already being put out there. You've given the version on policy, but the, you know, I saw one of the first things that happened yesterday when he left that 17 minute meeting with Keir Starmer, was a graph that was put out from somebody on the left, basically, these are all the people that bought Wes Streeting. I mean, he's going to get a lot of attack from the left. He will be seen as the candidate of the right. There will be a candidate of the left, be that Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband has made clear that if there isn't one, then he would be prepared to stand. And then Keir Starmer, I guess, would, if he stood in those circumstances,

• 17:28Alastair Campbell?

  would project himself as the candidate of the centre.

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• 18:55Rory Stewart?

  One small thing there, you just said Ed Miliband might stand. And that again, for most listeners, I think will be absolutely staggeringly astonishing. I mean, this is the guy who managed to maneuver his way into being Labour leader in 2010. From the point of view of you and me and many others, David Miliband's brother would have been a better choice, took Labour to defeat in 2015, seemed, we thought, not really, whatever his merits are as a man, not quite to have the full capacity to be Labour leader. I mean, can Labour seriously be thinking of... Sort of jumping back 16 years and trying to try and Ed Miliband again?

• 19:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I I I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm simply saying that I know that he is of a mindset that if they continue to block Andy Burnham, and if none of the others manage to rise up to get sufficient support to take on Wes Streeting, then he would do it. In other words, the point I'm making is that he's been operating as if you like, a guardian of the soft left, seeing Wes Streeting as as not being of the soft left. So that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying he's going to be in this, but um but that underlines to me how much if we're not careful. Because my the other thing, you talk about me being angry. I'm not angry about this. I'm just sort of frustrated, really. But because one of the things I think that I've been shocked at,

• 20:21Alastair Campbell?

  we've seen this with some of the scandals, most notably the Peter Mandelson scandal, but also some of the so-called smaller scandals, is I've just been watching the way that Labour is being portrayed as being no better than the the last lot. That's lethal, and that plays completely into Farage's hands. And, you know, when you think about what people say about the last lot, well, inflation, stagflation, the economy not growing, public services not rapidly improving the way that they wanted, you've got a sense that the Labour Party is now doing what people hated about the Tory Party,

• 21:02Alastair Campbell?

  fighting all about themselves, all about the next leader, who's up, who's down, the stuff that, you know, I think most of the public hate. Now, if you're Andy Burnham, you're Wes Streeting, you think here's Tom's got to go. It's part of politics, but once the public starts to think this is what you're in politics for. As opposed to you're trying to make my life better, it's lethal. And I really worry for the Labour Party that this, you know, no party has a divine right to exist.

• 21:32Rory Stewart?

  So there's that, there's a huge existential threat, which is it could end up like the Socialist Party in France, or I'm very worried about the direction of Conservative parties going. It's possible our two big parties could be in real trouble. We might be entering a five party system where they shrink and vanish. There's another thing I didn't quite get. How is it possible for anyone on the right, like Wes Streeting, to win with Labour Party members? I mean, isn't that the same problem that I had running against Boris Johnson, which is broadly speaking in 2019 when I was running? The Tory party wanted somebody on the right of Tory politics and it was all very well. You know, people used to make a joke that I was the Tory party leader that everybody wanted except for the Tory party members. I mean, isn't that the problem with Wes Streeting?

• 22:17Rory Stewart?

  It's all very well that people like me love him, but how's he going to get the votes for Labour Party members if he's running against Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband or Andy Burnham?

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  He'll be thinking a similar version of what you thought, you thought. And, you know, if you think about it, go back to your time in that challenge, you were coming from almost from a, not a standing start, but you were in a way the least known of the main names going into that. And yet you did manage to break through. I think he'll be hoping that he can project himself in a way that people say, say what you like about him, that guy's a winner. That's what I think he will be trying to do. And maybe portray the others as being all about the politics, as it were. But, you know, the fact is, he's been in politics all his life. He was, you know, nationally talked to on leading not long ago. In fact, I think I'm right in saying that all of the people who are being mentioned,

• 23:09Alastair Campbell?

  including Angela Rayner, who we've got on the podcast this week in our Gen Z series, all of the ones that are being talked about, we have interviewed on leading. But when we interviewed Wes Streeting, did you have a sense then of where he was politically? Did you feel that the way that he's projected himself now is what you imagined him to be?

• 23:29Rory Stewart?

  What I got on that was somebody who was a good talker, was surprisingly relaxed, was interesting about his Christian faith and his background, was very funny about his family background, was convincing, I thought, on the NHS and the kind of reforms he wanted to bring through in the NHS.

• 23:49Rory Stewart?

  But it's so difficult for an outsider to answer the question. I just had a Labour MP ring me and she just said Angela is just much more popular with the party members. And then I had another MP who had both Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner up to their constituency. And they were like, well, Wes Streeting did a great job. He speaks very well. But Angela, they just loved. She's just of them. There's just a kind of emotional resonance that Wes doesn't get. If that's true, it slightly sounds as though he's lacking some kind of secret sauce.

• 24:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and he may do. I mean, I guess the last, you know, I mean, when Tony Blair stood

• 24:27Alastair Campbell?

  for the Labour leadership, he was seen as the guy on the right, but he managed to keep quite a large section of the centre and the left with him. And he managed to kind of hold that together. And I think the worst part of what's gone on, it's interesting in Wes Streeting's letter, he said, this has to be about ideas, not petty factionalism. I thought there was, there were elements to the tone of that letter that were quite petty, I thought. I mean, even the start, the results are in. And we thought he was going to talk about the local election results. He was all about, haven't I done a great job on the National Health Service? And he's like, my team and my special advisers. And I thought, hmm, you might have mentioned the Prime Minister, the Chancellor in that. They're the ones who are deciding how much money you get, kind of thing. So I think,

• 25:11Alastair Campbell?

  look, Wes Streeting, well, my take on Wes Streeting is he's a very bright guy. He's got a lot about him. He's clearly very ambitious and he's clearly very, he's pretty tough and ruthless as well. We can see that from the way he's operated in the last few days. But I've said to you many, many times before, I think it's almost impossible to work out whether somebody who's been very good at, say, being the Health Secretary or Mayor of Manchester, whatever it might be, and whether they can make that step up to a job where there are just so many more elements to it. And the truth is, they might be able to. I'm not saying they can't. And nor am I saying that I think Keir Starmer's been,

• 25:53Alastair Campbell?

  you know, as good as you and I wanted him to be, or even expected him to be. But I still think, you know, I was talking to somebody in, worse than the foreign policy side of things today, who was, you know, they were saying they're really quite worried. About not knowing in the next, you know, who in the next few weeks is going to be, whether Keir Starmer is going to be there or not. I think that's, you know, these are not, these are not issues to be trifled with.

• 26:19Rory Stewart?

  Well, let me finish then with my final optimistic sales pitch to cheer you up as you go into your fancy dinner in Germany. Okay. So presumably the optimistic story is this one, which is that Adi Burnham runs, he runs in Josh Simon's constituency in McGeever, he wins. By winning, he proves that he has the secret sauce to defeat Reform in what was supposed to be a pretty safe Reform seat. Suddenly you've got man from the north, successful mayor who's proven that he can beat Reform in an absolutely tough by-election, which they were throwing millions of pounds in. He comes in and it turns out

• 27:00Rory Stewart?

  that, and this is my optimistic story, that by being mayor, he's actually become a better politician than he was when he was in Westminster. He's learnt a new style of talking, he communicates better, he's got bigger ideas. He brings in Keir Starmer as his Foreign Secretary, because my goodness, Starmer's got all the foreign track record and the defence stuff. Rebuilds the government, goes into an election, wins. How about that for you?

• 27:23Alastair Campbell?

  It's good, a lot of that. I mean, the one thing I'd say about, I talked about Catherine West, who's suddenly decided she'd buy over Keir Starmer. I did think that the one, you know, genuinely interesting observation she made was, you know, everybody expects, accepts Keir Starmer's done a good job on the foreign policy front, make him Foreign Secretary. Now, would Keir be so proud as not to be able to countenance that? I don't know. You see in other governments, when you look at the Norwegian government at the moment, you've got, you've got my friend Jonas, who's the Prime Minister, and you've got Stoltenberg, who's, who's the Foreign Minister, who's a former Prime Minister. So it's not a guy, I think you've, I think you've-

• 28:00Rory Stewart?

  David Cameron, David Cameron, very recently. Alec Douglas Hume, Tory Prime Minister's been willing to do it.

• 28:06Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. So I think you've cheered me up quite a lot there. I've got to say, Roy, you took the Mickey out of my nice dinner. This, Fiona and I booked into this hotel and we discovered that on this site was the 2007 G8 summit.

• 28:22Alastair Campbell?

  So Putin was here and Tony was here and Sarkozy was here and Merkel was here. But the bloody wifi has been an absolute nightmare. So, you know, Germany, Forsprung durch Technik, they've gone backwards, I would say, because I can't believe Vladimir Putin put up with choppy wifi.

• 28:44Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you very much, Alistair. And we've just had confirmation as we're recording that Keir Starmer said he won't block Andy Burnham. So we can assume that Andy Burnham will now come forward and try to take the seat. So much more to cover. And I guess we'll be returning to this many, many times over the next few weeks because I fear we're likely to have a new Labour leader in place by the summer.

• 29:06Alastair Campbell?

  I think we're definitely going to have a contest and I think that's sensible that they, Keir Starmer said, we can't block him twice. Be very interesting to see the extent to which, I mean, does Keir Starmer go and campaign for Andy Burnham in a by-election?

• 29:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, if I was Andy Burnham, I'd be encouraging Keir Starmer to stay as far away from my by-election as possible.

• 29:25Alastair Campbell?

  Maybe, but my point is he will get asked about the thing the whole time. And I have to say, he's a great friend of mine and blah, blah, blah. I mean, my big plea to all of them is try very, very hard insofar as you possibly can not to just make this a gigantic soap opera and never, ever, ever forget the watching general public.

• 29:46Rory Stewart?

  Good. All right, Alistair. Have a great evening.

• 29:48Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 29:49Rory Stewart?

  Speak soon. Bye bye.

• 29:50Alastair Campbell?

  Thanks, Rory. Bye.

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