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Andy Burnham Appoints His New Cabinet
00:33:09
Andy Burnham makes John Healey his chancellor as he assembles his cabinet.
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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to your second helping of newscast. On Monday 20th July, we're going to be looking at Andy Burnham's Cabinet picks. But first of all, we're going to look at your entries for the Great Office Sweepstake where you try to predict the picks. We had lots of them. Here is a little sample. James says, hello. My predictions for Andy Burnham's Cabinet are Chancellor Shabana Mahmood, Home Secretary Wes Treating Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. Michael says, I'm going to cheat on this one and send two versions. If that disqualifies me, so be it. But based on Argentina this week, playing dirty, play hard. My head says Chancellor Mahmoud Home Healey, Foreign Cooper, but my marrow says Chancellor Cooper Home. Sticking with Mahmood and foreign David Lord Middleband. And thank you to Aisling, who played the game in the pub with their friends. And their final picks were Chancellor Shabana Mahmood, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband. Home Secretary Lisa Nandi Aisling says, we did attempt the rest of the Cabinet and we'll be marking our own homework, but won't bore you with all of our guesses. Thank you to everyone who sent in an entry for the Great Office Sweepstake. They were fascinating to read and a great little time capsule of where all the speculation was in the last few days. But a grand total of 0 people predicted the correct lineup of the top officers of State. Shabana Mahmood did indeed stay at the Home Office. Ed Miliband became the Foreign Secretary, following in the footsteps of his brother David a few years ago. And the big surprise of the day was that the Chancellor is John Healy, former Defense Secretary. Loads and loads from me and Chris to unpick as we record this late night episode of Newscast. On Monday night. Newscast, Newscast from the BBC, humanity's next great voyage begins. You know, I like my buses. I'll come on to them. I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town. Ooh la la.
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B
Thinking about it like a panto helped. Do we play music now or what do we do? And what will you do? Stare at a wall?
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A
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio
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B
and it is Chris at Westminster and
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A
we're recording this second helping him newscast at 12 minutes to 11 on Monday evening. Which means, Chris, you're entering your, what, 17th hour?
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B
Yeah, something like that. The thing is, yeah, it's, it's not a wildly longer day than normal, really.
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A
In fact, it's just been one long hour.
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B
There's just been quite a lot going on within it. So, yeah, it's been. It's been a lively. It's been a lively day or two.
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A
And if you would like to hear some of the liveliness from lunchtime, when Chris and I were in the street, as it's known, in Westminster with Laura and Faisal, just after Andy Burnham had done his inaugural address. I don't mean inaugural. That sounds like he's an American president, doesn't it? I just mean his first address to the nation as Prime Minister. That episode of newscast is in the feeds right now. Okay, Chris, let's pick up where we left off. So there was a bit of a lull for a couple of hours where the PM was doing his sort of security briefing stuff. He called Donald Trump.
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B
He did. So he called Donald Trump or Donald Trump called him. Was it that way?
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A
They spoke. They spoke.
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B
Yeah, they spoke. There we go. I'm gonna try and find. This is one of those days where for me to find the little note that we were sent about that I'm gonna have to scroll several.
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A
I know that they had a bit of banter about England's performance at the World Cup.
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B
Yes, they did. Did they agree that England.
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A
They agreed that England had done well.
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B
Right.
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A
I wonder if they start with the easy stuff.
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B
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. I'm now seeing I can find this note about Donald Trump and I've got to a spectacular start on this episode.
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C
Yeah.
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D
And then didn't.
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E
He also.
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A
Hasn' pm also invited Donald Trump or said he hopes to show him Manchester as soon as possible.
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B
I just found it. So here we go. Here we go. Like a cold spring. The Prime Minister began by congratulating the President on a successful World cup and agreed that England had an excellent tournament. Ah, so he's agreeing with the President about. Yeah, about England having an excellent tournament. And yes, the Prime Minister also hoped that he would be able to show the President what Manchester had to offer during a visit in the future. You'll recall that when President Trump was asked about Andy Burnham a couple of weeks back, he described him having. As having been mayor of a town, which is not how you would accurately describe Manchester, let alone the wider kind of Manchester Greater Manchester region. Coming up in the next few years, the UK is actually hosting a couple of international summits. So I just wonder if it may be that one of those turns out to be in Manchester.
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A
Oh, we've just had an email from number 10 with the latest batch of appointments. Because this process of appointing all the ministers. Where's Streeting Is the Secretary of State for Defense?
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B
Yes, that was the appointment I was expecting, given how everything else had had emerged. He'd been in Downing street for a long time. It was like a kind of nocturnal reshuffle going on. Thing is, because the Prime Minister is making a load of these international courts, so he's also spoken to the Chancellor of Germany, the President of France and the Secretary General of NATO. And I guess he's doing these whilst he's got all of these ministerial wannabes kind of in the waiting room, loitering in the House. Yeah. So who else is on this list? Miata Fan Buller is going to be the Secretary of State for Energy, Security and Net zero. That's the job that Ed Miliband used to do. Angela Eagle is the new Environment Secretary, so she'll replace Emma Reynolds. Alex Norris, who was a Home Office Minister, is becoming the Justice Secretary and the Lord Chancellor and then, as you say, Wes Streeting as Defense Secretary. So I think in Cabinet posts, we're not quite there because we haven't yet had the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland post. There are still quite a few people, as we record at 10 to 11 at night in the building still. So Douglas Alexander, for instance, he was the Scottish Secretary, is still in the building as we record, but they're getting there with the Cabinet level appointments. Loads more at a more due junior ministerial level still to come.
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A
And because that email landed in my inbox and I wanted a little bit of the breaking news pie that you've been chewing on all day, I've now made us jump from 2pm to 10.52pm so let's rewind back then. And actually, should we just focus in on the big surprise appointment, which was John Healey as Chancellor? And we sort of had an inkling of that because he was the first big name to go into Downing street when the appointments were happening.
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B
He was. And it's a reminder, and I think we were circumspect in our reporting of some of the stories that were doing the rounds in the last 72 hours or so. A bit longer than that, actually, dating back to last week, when there were some headlines you may have picked up that were rather definitive or pretty close to being definitive about the likelihood of Shabana Mahmood being the Chancellor, that there were a lot of plates spinning and yes, there were, by the way, last week, some suggesting that there was a sort of head of steam building behind Shabana Mahmood moving to be Chancellor. She was always pretty keen, I understand, to carry on as Home Secretary and she does carry on as Home Secretary. The other name that was mentioned as a potential future Chancellor was Ed Miliband. There was quite a lot of briefing, negative briefing about the prospect of that from within the Labour Party and the trades unions and business and plenty of places. Yeah. So it is John Healey. John Healey, he was Defence Secretary until he resigned and you'll recall that he resigned with a real old potshot at. Yes, you guessed it, the treasury for in his view, not respecting the value of defence in terms of it being a growth sector for the economy. He criticised what he described as treasury orthodoxy and suggested that they didn't really understand how important it was to properly fund are armed forces. And now he's the guy who's going to run the treasury and try and work out if he can find the money that he was previously accusing the department he now leads of not providing to him in his previous job.
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A
Yeah, I think three things with John Healey being appointed as Chancellor, alongside the fact that it was a bit of a surprise. Number one, it just puts a cap on that whole factional stuff that could have happened if Shabana Mahmood had been appointed Chancellor, which might have annoyed the left and if Ed Miliband had been appointed Chancellor, which might have annoyed the right and the unions, then I also just think, is he going to find all that money for Defense as Defense Secretary he wanted, or does he bottle it as Chancellor when he's got to look at the books? And third of all, he's got a lot of. He's got to catch. Catch up a bit because he's. He's not been at the treasury for a long time because he was last administer there under Gordon Brown.
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B
Yeah, all of that. And he.
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A
Did you get the theme there?
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B
No, I didn't. What was the theme?
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A
Cap on ketchup. And what was the other one? I've even forgotten my own gags I bottled.
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B
There we go.
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A
It's a reference to the fact he takes HP Sauce with them everywhere.
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D
Well, look, it is true. I've always done it, I guess, you know, as the politician's answer would be, I'm an mp, so I carry HP sauce. But actually the hard truth of is I love HP Sauce. Yeah. And these days you too often get a brown sauce substitute.
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A
Yeah. So you gotta take the real deal,
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D
you gotta take your own.
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A
I see as confirmed on newscast. You've had a long day and you're not listening out for the subtlety.
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B
That subtlety.
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A
I've been working on that. I've been working on that since 10 past 5.
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B
That was that. It was much appreciated, but perhaps not as sufficiently appreciated by me as it ought to have been.
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A
That's fine, thank you.
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B
But it was a work of genius.
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A
Yeah, and so. Yeah, but. And then, as you were saying, so Shaban Mehmid stays at the Home Secretary. And you can see she was obviously very, very happy about that because the pictures of her getting out of her ministerial car and hugging the Sen Civil Star event at the Home Office. When she went back to the office, she looked very, very, very pleased.
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B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So she is back. It was quite notable, I thought, that both she and Ed Miliband arrived in Downing street together, given the volume of briefing that there's been in recent days about the two of them being rivals for a job that in the end neither of them got. And probably, broadly speaking, Shabana Mahmood being relieved about that and Ed Miliband disappointed. But nonetheless, Ed Miliband becomes Foreign Secretary and so ends up doing the job that his brother used to do and that some were suggesting his brother might end up doing again. David Miliband, who you'll recall left Parliament after being beaten by his brother to the Labour leadership back in 2010, went out to New York to lead the International Rescue Committee. And there was talk of whether or not he might be brought back into a seat in the House of Lords and then become a Cabinet minister that way. But that hasn't happened. And his brother is now Foreign Secretary.
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A
And you had a little chat with them in Downing street on behalf of all the broadcasters.
- [10:48]
B
I did, yes, Adam. And these moments are. They're sort of wonderfully fluid on days like this, because sometimes, you know, you try and get an interview with a Secretary of State or whatever, and you ring up their team and to use the jargon of our trade, you put a bid in, an interview requested, and sometimes it comes back, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it comes back three months later or whatever, Even three hours later. There I was in the street and somebody just tapped me on the shoulder and said, is that microphone usable? I said, yes. And. Yeah. And Jack, your camera operator. Yeah, yeah. Jack had been talking to them already. Just walk up to the fence, someone's gonna walk out and they'll walk towards you. I said, who? They said, it'll be obvious. And then the door opens and Ed Miliband walks towards me. Mercifully, I knew at that point the job that he got. Cause you don't really wanna ask them what job you've got. So he came out, talked about his pride in Getting the job. Talked about, reflected on his parents. He lost his mum recently, did Ed Miliband, talking about them arriving in the uk. To be honest, he gave me one of those answers that where it wouldn't have. I don't mean this to be rude to him. He's a very personable chap, but he's
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A
a somewhat prepared statement.
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B
Yes. He would have given me the answer I gave him if I'd asked him, you know, how much a tub of lard was my Foreign Secretary. Congratulations. You take on a difficult task with this tricky, to put it mildly, tricky international backdrop.
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C
It's the honour of my life to have been asked by the Prime Minister to be the Foreign Secretary of our country. My parents came here as Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis, and for them, Britain provided sanctuary and a beacon of hope in the fight against fascism at a time when values of democracy, the rule of law and freedom are under threat as never before. I will carry that spirit, their spirit, into my work as Foreign Secretary.
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A
And now I'm going to go and
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C
get on with the task.
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A
Thank you so much.
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B
So I got, you know, I got the answer that I asked him a question about foreign policy, but I got the answer I got anyway. So, yeah, I mean, that's a big job for him. It's gonna be interesting to see what Andy Burnham does around. What was his policy brief now taken on by Miette Van Buller. Around the North Sea, because we expect there to be a more liberal, not wildly more liberal within the confines of the Labour manifesto, but a more liberal attitude about drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. Yeah.
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A
And when people say, oh, Ed Miliband, what does he know about foreign affairs? I just think all the climate jobs he's done, that's a lot of foreign affairs. I mean, remember he was there with Gordon Brown at that disastrous cop in Denmark in the New Labour years, which is sort of gone down in the annals of history as, like a terrible diplomatic event. So he knows what it's like to go to a big summit and have, like, America and China arguing with each other.
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B
Yeah. The nature of his previous brief, not entirely, but was significantly an international one, wasn't it?
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A
Although I do think that thing he said about his parents suggests Britain will not be in the forefront of reforming the Refugee Convention.
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B
Given the emphasis that he placed upon that and his desire to come out and talk to us. I did think that was interesting because obviously in these moments, have to come and talk to her. Shabana Mahmoud didn't. She just smiled and walked Straight past us. He chose to come out and clearly knew what he wanted to say, which these things are an indicator. Absolutely.
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A
And Shabana Mahmood's retention at the Home Office means that presumably Andy Burnham is pressing ahead with the changes to the immigration system and the asylum system that she's already introducing.
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B
It would seem so, wouldn't it? Because that's underway. There was a splash of skepticism towards some of it when he was. I mean, it seems a long time ago now, but when he was on the by election campaign trail in the Makerfield constituency. But clearly, I mean, I remember asking him this when he launched his campaign about the net migration numbers and whether they could come lower from their current number. And he said yes. So I think he recognizes that in places like Makerfield and elsewhere, there is a real desire for labor to be seen to be pretty robust, frankly, around a lot of this and that Shabana Mahmood has made something of that politically, certainly robust within the context of what a Labour government might be up for doing. I guess their critics might suggest they could be considerably more so. So, yeah, I mean, ultimately it is a endorsement of that, certainly in the big picture, isn't it?
- [15:20]
A
And then Yvette Cooper is going to health. A few raised eyebrows about that. But then actually health was one of the areas that the PM mentioned in his speech in Downing street when he talked about building a preventative state. So he's clearly added that. So the idea of the health service being there to stop you getting ill in the first place and give you a healthy life rather than treating you when you aren't healthy, is a sort of one of a new plank that he added into his platform, I think.
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B
Yeah. And another plank, if you like, on the cv, the extraordinary CV of Yvette Cooper in politics. So she's been Home Secretary, she's been Foreign Secretary, she's now Health Secretary. She had government jobs way back when Labour was last in government, ending in 2019. And there she goes, taking a really big job. It might not be one of the big jobs, if you like, in the context of how Westminster looks at things, when they talk about the great offices of State, two of which she occupied in the last two years. But in terms of Labour's domestic ambitions and particularly getting down waiting lists, the whole question of social care that Andy Burnham has talked about repeatedly in the last few days, you know, it is the Department of Health and Social Care in England, then that's going to be absolutely central. You know, Andy Burnham making it clear today in the little huddle that he did, that I was talking about briefly on our earlier episode, that he would regard it as a failure if at the point that he leaves Downing street, quite something that he was talking about the day would leave. He was leave. He would leave on the day that he started. But anyway, that if by the time he left Downing street, he hadn't sorted it. Now, different people will argue that sourcing it, quote unquote, it might mean different things to different people, but that's a massive domestic promise that he is making and it is going to be Yvette Cooper who is going to be at least at a ministerial level, leading on that.
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A
Then we've got the return of Angela Rayner. So she left government in September last year over her stamp duty and now she's back, and not just back, but back in her old job.
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B
Yeah, there's a bit of back to the future going on with a couple of appointments because there's Angela Rayner going back to Housing and Local Government and there is Jonathan Reynolds going back to the Business Department. He had a stint in between his last time as Business Secretary, as the Chief Whip. I think he was pretty keen to get back to a. If you like, a front of house role. Being Chief Whip can be quite a thankless task and also quite an anonymous one. Now, that's well suited to some people. But I think Jonathan Reynolds really relished running a department that say, if you like a perk of being in government, you can be a Chief Whip for any of the parties. Whether you're in government or not is probably more important when you're in government in terms of getting government business through. But I think was clearly quite hard work with the rumblings and discontent that there was towards the tail end of Keir Starmer's premiership. So, yeah, he'll be back out and about and I suspect we'll really relish getting back to that job.
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A
And I think the Business Department's been beefed up because some of the Science and Technology Department, I think it's being dismembered and being put back into his department.
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B
Yes. Did I read somewhere that the new acronym is De bist?
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A
Is that right?
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B
De Bist.
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A
Dbist. Then somebody who got Debist out of her job as Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, although she will still go to the Cabinet as Women Inequalities Minister. So she's kept sort of half the job that she had. Lisa Nandy is staying at dcms, although, interestingly, it took three hours for that to be announced because you can see the video of her being appointed in the Cabinet Room and it says 7:30 on the clock on the mantelpiece. And it wasn't actually announced till about 20 past 10, then. Yeah. Lucy Powell is taking over for Education from Bridget Phillipson, Pat McFadden, staying at the Department of Work and Pensions. And then tell me a bit more about Anneliese Midgley, who's the new Chief Whip.
- [19:18]
B
Yeah. So Anneliese Midgley was absolutely in the thick of, alongside Louise Haig, who is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the First Secretary of State. Annelise Midgley and Louise Haig were absolutely pivotal to Andy Burnham's by election campaign. Did he call them the Northern Queens or did somebody else?
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A
Yeah, that phrase, Northern Queens, was quoted in an Alva Ray piece in the New Statesman and she said it was from a Labor insider who called them that.
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B
So, anyway, that was a kind of moniker, if you like, was attached to them and they were absolutely central to that by election campaign. Louise Hague, an MP in South Yorkshire in Sheffield, and Annalise Midgley on Merseyside, she is going to become Anneliese Midgley, the Chief Whip. So it'll be her job to steer the Burnham programme through Parliament. And, you know, as we've reflected, I think, on a previous edition, or at least I was at some point, at some stage in my broadcasting today, if Andy Burnham and Annalise Midgley can properly leverage the kind of scale of majority that Labour have, in other words, keep Labour MPs on side, then it's a massive majority and they can do quite a lot with that and they can do quite a lot quite quickly, because they can win lots of votes if they keep people on side. Now, it isn't if at the moment, they've got a lot of goodwill. Keir Starmer signed off with a lot of goodwill and we know where that ended. So, you know, it's not guaranteed by any means, but Anneliese Midgley is clearly someone that the Prime Minister trusts and will have a lot of dealings with in that role. And, yeah, it'd be fascinating to see how she gets on, not least because it'll be a sort of a measure of the mood of the Parliamentary Labour Party, having gone through this difficult process for them, of a leadership change. Perhaps didn't turn out to be as turbulent as it could have been, because there was no challenge from Keir Starmer, nor any challenge to Andy Burnham. But nonetheless, these things are really difficult. So how does, particularly once we get to the autumn, you know, how does the Parliamentary Labour Party. You know, what's its demeanour, its collective demeanour, if that's possible for 400 people. But, you know, where is that and where does that leave Andy Burnham's capacity to crack on with stuff?
- [21:38]
A
And we should say First Secretary of State is that slightly weird job that has meant different things under different Prime Ministers. For Theresa May, for example, it was sort of like her Deputy Prime Minister. But for other people, it's just a way of giving a senior Cabinet minister a bit more seniority in the pecking order. So it remains to be seen what. What Louise Haig's version of First Secretary of State is going to be. For example, does she deputise Verandi Burnham at Prime Minister's Questions if he's away summit in the UN or something like that. Right, another email is landing. Stephen Kinnick is Secretary of State for Wales. Chris Bryant is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Ellie Reeves, Rachel Reeves's sister, is the Attorney General who will attend Cabinet. Emma Reynolds will be Chief Secretary to the Treasury. So she's going back to the treasury where she was. Kanishka Narayan is going to be Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, jointly in the Cabinet Cabinet Office and the Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sports, and he will go to the Cabinet. And Hamish Faulkner is going to be Minister of State in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office because he's going to be doing European relations and intergovernmental relations. Heidi Alexander stays as a Secretary of State for Transport. Douglas Alexander stays as the Scotland Secretary. Alan Campbell. Sir Alan Campbell remains as Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons. Baroness Smith stays as Leader of the House of Lords. And Matthew Penny as the Housing Minister in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which means that Hilary Benn, Lord Harmer and Joe Stevens have left the Government.
- [23:11]
B
Now, what is intriguing about that is that. Well, firstly, now I'm just unpicking this as I scroll down. So those who are being kept in office is interesting because that's that, you know, there's obviously the alternative for an incoming Prime Minister to shake things up and move people on. It's interesting that Matthew Pennicuk is not only keeping that job, but will now attend Cabinet, which I assume is why he was called in tonight, rather than potentially retaining his job and us discovering that, maybe him discovering that tomorrow, when lots of other ministers at below Cabinet rank will discover their fate. The Hamish Faulkner job is interesting because that's the job that was being done by Nick Thomas Simmons. That is the job in the thick of conversations with the European Union. And there is a UK EU summit that's due to happen at some point that got pushed back because of the. With the collapse of Keir Starmer's government. And then you've got. Well, you've got what? Stephen Kinnick rising to the Cabinet for the first time. He was previously a Health Minister. Sir Chris Bryant taking on the Northern Ireland job, replacing Hillary Benn, one of the Reeves sisters, remains attending Cabinet as Attorney General Ellie Ree. Rachel Reeves was offered a Cabinet job by the Prime Minister and turned it down. And as you say, Emma Reynolds still attending cabinets, no longer Environment Secretary, but now Chief Secretary of the Treasury. And then we do have a AI minister attending Cabinet, but it's not quite the same as a Cabinet Minister for AI, which I think is how in one or two places that was briefed. But, yeah, things taking shape. Still loads of appointments for him to make in the next 24 hours or so, though, because, you know, there's an awful lot of ministers in the government and most of them are not in the Cabinet. And how you make all of that work and who you bring in and who you get rid of, bluntly, not necessarily straightforward.
- [25:17]
A
And in terms of what's happening on Tuesday, that's the next rung of the ministerial ladder being appointed. And that's, as you said, loads and loads of jobs.
- [25:26]
B
Yeah.
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A
And Andy Burnham, as we were discussing at lunchtime, has promised his first big announcement, or it's actually his second big announcement, because his first big announcement today was about ending rough sleeping. But his second big announcement is about, he says, creating some breathing space for people on the cost of living and how that will be funded.
- [25:43]
B
Yeah. So we will get that announcement first thing on Tuesday morning. So, as newscasters, many newscasters are listening to this conversation, we may have some more details as far as that is concerned. We've also got the first Cabinet meeting taking place at lunchtime. I suspect the cameras will be invited in for the opening words and pictures because there'll be a certain novelty to seeing Andy Burnham leading a Cabinet meeting and no doubt reflecting on the announcement that we expect first thing on Tuesday morning. And then I think there'll be a. We'll see plenty more of him and various senior ministers in the. The rest of the week with the number 10 north idea and no doubt traveling around the UK, etc. Etc. I think for the criticism that they received from some quarters about their sort of submarine tendencies in the last couple of weeks, the Andy Burnham's appearances, both public and indeed, in front of journalists, were pretty tightly limited. I think they are going to try and if you like, counteract that critique by having him and his senior ministers out and about a fair old amount in the next week or two.
- [26:55]
A
And if any newscasters were out drinking in Kentish Town in North London, either this afternoon or this evening, did you see Keir Starmer, the former Prime Minister, because he was out having some leaving drinks with Rachel Reeves and their team. And actually, that could have been a really big leaving drinks because loads and loads and loads of his allies got the boot today, thinking people like Steve Reed, Rachel Reeves, I mentioned she was there. Some of the. Some of the uber loyalists.
- [27:22]
B
David Lammy.
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A
Yeah, gone.
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B
Steve Reed, you mentioned. Actually, when I was in the street this morning and Keir Starmer came out to do his valedictory thing, and there was a kind of horseshoe of supporters around him with a little gap for it, so he could fit through the door and make his way to the lectern. For he had a lectern, unlike Andy Burnham. I. I was curious to see which ministers would be there to sort of see him off. And from what I could work out, I might have missed some because there was quite a lot of folk there, but from what I could work out, every single minister who was there was sacked, apart from Rachel Reeves, who was going to be moved on as Chancellor, but was offered another Cabinet job and turned it down. So, oh, Darren Jones is another one. He put a picture on social media with a bottle of beer saying, see you in September. So I think many of them, you know, and it's difficult, of course, for so many of them, leaving jobs, you know, around the Cabinet table. Around the British Cabinet table. What an achievement to have to have done that, perhaps anticipating. These jobs are always vulnerable to the whims of a Prime Minister or indeed the fall of a Prime Minister. But, you know, plenty of them might have anticipated doing those jobs for longer than it turned out. And so many of them, fair play, indulging in the good old British tradition when things don't go quite so well at work or whatever, which is you go for a drink.
- [28:44]
A
Well, I also wonder, and this is a scurrilous thing to say, and I'm just using it as a metaphor, I mean, Keir Starmer, when he was doing his departure speech, was talking as if he'd already had a half. Like he was so chilled and sort of ready to sail off into the sunset, wasn't he? In a way that seemed much more relieved than you might expect. For somebody who'd been turfed out.
- [29:02]
B
Yeah. In such a brighter way. Look, there's plenty of people in the outgoing government who feel really hurt by what has happened. We got a sense of that, actually in Steve Reed's resignation post on social media, expressing a pride in his own loyalty to Keir Starmer and suggesting others had really not been so. Yeah, you know. You know what? I've actually forgotten what you asked me now.
- [29:30]
A
Having said that, why start? I was reflecting on how sort of chopper Starmer scene as he said, people are hurt. I suppose this was like his fifth version of goodbye, wasn't it?
- [29:39]
B
Completely. People are hurt, he's hurt. Equally. I do think you've seen a more unbuttoned, perhaps more authentic Keir Starmer away from the microphones, in front of the microphones in more recent days because. Because the jeopardy had gone. He was no longer making the argument that he's been making in recent months or indeed the last few years. He was, as you say, doing a variation on a number of kind of valedictory addresses, of which what this last one was the. Was, you know, the last and final hurrah, I suppose.
- [30:10]
A
Right, let's have our last hurrah. I was updating newscasters at the start of the episode about how many people won the great office sweepstake to name all the four great offices of state, including Prime Minister. Do you know how many people did it correctly?
- [30:26]
B
One.
- [30:27]
A
Zero.
- [30:27]
B
Oh, zero.
- [30:28]
A
Nobody got John Healey, although quite a few people did get some of them right. Nobody got all of them right. But we've actually crunched the number to do some stats on people's guesses. Oh, yeah, and here's where we've got to. 71% of newscasters who emailed in thought Shabana Mahmood would be Chancellor. Okay, she was a popular prediction. 35% of newscasters thought Wes Streeting would be home secretary and 71 thought that Yvette Cooper would stay as Foreign Secretary.
- [31:00]
B
This is the thing, you see. It is the ultimate reminder, which I am reminded of frequently when I'm invited to be more definitive than my notebook and conversations suggest. It would be wise to that this is a mugs game.
- [31:14]
A
Yes.
- [31:15]
B
Not because there's so many moving parts and it's so difficult for a Prime Minister and you can hear things that were right at the time but then get overtaken by events etc, etc, etc.
- [31:24]
A
But congratulations to Mark and to Aisling, who correctly predicted that Ed Miliband would be the new Foreign Secretary. And to Frank, Glenn, Paul and Trevor who correctly predicted that Shabana Mahmood would stay put at the Home Office.
- [31:38]
B
Top work, guys.
- [31:38]
A
So we've had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 sort of winners, but no overall winner. Another successful newscast gimmick.
- [31:46]
B
It really is. I look forward to the next mechanic. This is going to be quite the thing.
- [31:51]
A
Right, Chris, I know you've got a couple more hours work that we're squeezing out of you, so good luck, Tar.
- [31:55]
B
I will crack on.
- [31:56]
A
See you soon.
- [31:57]
B
Talk to you soon. Cheers.
- [31:58]
A
And that's it for the second helping of newscast for Monday 20th July, which was Andy Burnham's first day in Downing street and leads us seamlessly onto Tuesday 21 July, which in journalistic parlance will be his first full day as Prime Minister, with a big announcement coming to help with the cost of living. At least that's what he said it would be. Right, thanks for being with us multiple times today. We'll be back with another newscast very soon.
- [32:23]
C
Bye bye.
- [32:24]
B
Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
- [32:26]
E
From one newscaster to another, thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode. You clearly do, in the words of Chris Mason, ooze stamina. Can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Signs? Tell everyone you know and don't forget, you can email us anytime@newscastbc.co.uk or if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp on +4403301239480. Be assured, I promise we listen to everyone.