546. Keir Starmer Resigns: What Happens Next?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics

Episode 546: "Keir Starmer Resigns: What Happens Next?"

Date: June 22, 2026
Hosts: Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart
Theme: In this special live episode, Campbell and Stewart analyze the sudden resignation of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the brutal nature of recent British politics, the expected rise of Andy Burnham, and the immense challenges ahead for both the Labour Party and the country.

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Main Theme Overview

The episode focuses on the shock resignation of Keir Starmer, Prime Minister and Labour leader, less than two years into his landslide government. The hosts dissect the reasons for his departure, the political and personal consequences, and speculate on Andy Burnham’s likely succession. This wide-ranging discussion reflects on the instability of modern UK politics, the lessons from recent Prime Ministers, and the daunting road ahead for Labour, both in policy and party management.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nature and Impact of Starmer’s Resignation

• Shock, not surprise: Despite predictions, Starmer’s actual resignation feels brutal and abrupt, emblematic of the current volatility in UK politics.
• Personal dimension: Campbell, close to Starmer and his family, expresses sadness and empathy for the personal toll.
• Brutality in modern politics: Both hosts note the relentless and unforgiving pace at which UK cycles through leaders (“a country that's spitting through prime ministers” — Stewart, 03:22).

2. Why Did Starmer Go?

• Loss of faith: Labour MPs lost confidence that Starmer could deliver victory in the next election—a “realpolitik” moment that overrode his previous achievement (Campbell, 04:29).
• Bringing up the Brexit decade: Starmer’s departure coincides with the 10th anniversary of Brexit, which Campbell believes has rendered British politics nearly “unmanageable” (Campbell, 05:16).

3. Evaluating Starmer’s Record

• Achievements: Settling the doctors' strike, nationalizing rail franchises, renters' rights, increased NHS and school funding, support for Ukraine, and attempts to restore Britain’s global reputation.
• Limits: Stewart points out that although these measures look strong on paper, they lack a cohesive public narrative and haven’t translated into persuasive political capital (13:13).
  • Quote: “They don't actually add up to something that really convinces the public that you're a great prime minister.” — Stewart, 13:13

4. The Trap of Temporary Majorities

• Misleading landslide: Labour’s huge majority was built on a low percentage of the popular vote, enabled by a fragmented five-party system (11:23).
• Stewart notes that Starmer may have “set himself up unfairly” by overstating the magnitude of his mandate.

5. The Immediate Challenge for Andy Burnham

• Transfer of scrutiny: “All the same challenges… are going to transfer almost immediately to him” — Campbell, 05:48.
• Need for boldness and clarity: Burnham must define a decisive economic strategy, confront internal Labour divides, and resist falling into the same traps as his predecessors (20:15).

6. The Problem of Narrative and Strategy

• Lack of a big story: Achievements aren’t enough; the government needs a simple, powerful narrative (“the big how”) to unify policy, party, and public (20:26).
• Quote: “It’s the means by which you turn your aspiration… into an ongoing story… where people can relate [actions] to the bigger narrative.” — Campbell, 20:26

7. Risks of Succession: Early Election or Continuity?

• Calls for a snap election: Some, including Farage, are calling for Burnham to seek his own mandate; this carries both political promise and danger (17:08).
  • Quote: "Theresa May is the other salutary lesson in this... she went for an election, didn't do very well, and was badly weakened." — Campbell, 18:07
• Party management and legitimacy: How Burnham handles backbenchers, appointments, and whether there’s a coronation or contest is key.

8. Mayoral Skills Versus the Premiership

• From city to country: Success as Manchester mayor may not translate well to Number 10. Stewart recounts Boris Johnson’s transition and how mayoral latitude evaporates at national level (23:37).
• Communication and public leadership: Burnham’s strengths may be tested by the relentless demands of PMQs and the media spotlight.

9. Fostering Party Unity and Managing MPs

• Lessons from Blair and Brown: Knowing MPs, rewarding contributors, and keeping a wide circle of advisors is fundamental for PM longevity (34:53).
• Quote: “You’ve got to sit down with them individually, you’ve got to know their names, you've got to make them feel you care.” — Stewart, 34:53

10. Handling the Opposition (Farage, Reform, and Tory Fragmentation)

• Rise of new right: Burnham must navigate a shifting opposition that includes a diminished but radicalized Tory Party and insurgent Reform (28:55, 43:00).
• Stewart ponders whether moderate Tories can be pulled into a broad Labour tent.

11. Big Policy Questions for Burnham

• Economic vision: Does he opt for more spending/equality (old Labour) or prioritize growth and market reform? Can he reform pensions (triple lock) and welfare sensitively? (43:00)
• Foreign policy: Navigating the US-UK relationship under Trump, responding to Russian and Chinese threats, and perhaps opening the door to closer EU ties (47:29, 50:27).
• Artificial Intelligence: Stewart warns that AI could “in three years change almost everything” and poses one of the sharpest strategic dilemmas for the new PM (53:42).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Prime Ministerial Turnover:

  • “Britain is becoming a country that’s spitting through prime ministers, like Belgium or the old Italian system.”—Stewart, 03:22

• On Starmer’s Dignity:

  • “He will get a lot of kudos for the fact that he said, yet again, I make this judgment based on the interests of the country.”—Campbell, 08:03

• On the Challenge Ahead:

  • “Andy Burnham...is really going to have to seize a sense of boldness, doing big things, including things that aren’t necessarily expected.”—Campbell, 05:55
  • “There has got to be absolute clarity of strategy. It’s got to be really, really clear from day one.”—Campbell, 20:15

• On Labour’s Majority:

  • “It was a… majority with only a third of the voting public, and much less of the total public voting for you.”—Stewart, 11:23

• On Communication as Mayor vs PM:

  • “You can disappear from view from time to time, whereas you can’t do that as Prime Minister.”—Campbell, 26:03

• On Party Relationships:

  • “You’ve got to sit down with [MPs] individually, know their names… make them feel you care… praise them for the stuff they’re doing”—Stewart, 34:53

• On Foreign Policy Dependencies:

  • “The only way that Britain can do this is with Europe… an entire institution designed to coordinate between nation states… for strategic autonomy.”—Stewart, 49:55

• On Burnham’s Transition:

  • “He’s going to come in here and think we’re all going to bow down... We don’t know him, we don’t know this guy.”—Campbell (quoting a new MP), 36:48

• On Political Courage:

  • “Is he going to take real political risk, show real courage… in the hope that, in the end, we say three years later… this is really working?”—Stewart, 62:16

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:22] – UK’s “prime minister churn" and public fatigue
• [04:29] – The brutality and finality of Starmer’s ouster
• [11:23] – “Landslide” majorities: the reality of Labour’s 2024 win
• [13:13] – Starmer’s achievements: substance vs. story
• [20:26] – What is a strategy? The “big how” and narrative
• [23:37] – The mayor-to-PM challenge (Boris Johnson’s example)
• [28:55] – The test of PMQs and handling a confrontational parliament
• [34:53] – Party management: the importance of MPs and advisors
• [43:00] – Potential for Labour to attract moderate Tories amid Conservative collapse
• [47:29] – Security: Russia, China, and US relationships
• [53:42] – AI as a “game-changer” and policy dilemma
• [62:16] – The call for radicalism and political risk

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Conclusion:

The episode gives an unsparing, deeply informed account of why Keir Starmer has gone—and what makes the job of British Prime Minister so perilous in the modern era. Campbell and Stewart highlight that Andy Burnham will need strategic vision, party management finesse, and the courage to break with conventional political comfort zones if he is to last longer than his recent predecessors. Both hosts agree: the next moves—on the economy, party unity, global threats, and perhaps even a snap general election—will define his fate, and perhaps the country’s, for years to come.

Transcript

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, it may not have been a surprise, given that we all expected it to happen and indeed predicted it on Friday's episode, but it somehow still came as something of a shock that Keir Starmer, who led the Labour Party to a landslide victory less than two years ago, is now heading for the exit door. One decade since the Brexit referendum, 10th anniversary tomorrow. His successor, almost certainly Andy Burnham, will be our seventh prime minister. In that time, the brutal nature of politics was never clearer. As he stood outside number 10, listed some of the many changes he's made to Britain, but accepted that his MPs no longer wanted him. And so, fighting to hold back tears as he thanked his wife and their two teenage children, he said he would be gone by September and that he would go with good grace this afternoon by election victor Andy Burnham will take his seat in Parliament. So what then? What are the challenges he has to meet to ensure he lasts longer than the growing list of recent predecessors? All that and more in today's special live episode of the Rest Is Politics. This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

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[Alistair Campbell]

So, Rory, your first reaction to, as I say, something that was both surprising and somehow shocking.

[Rory Stewart]

It was, of course, as I, I'm sure everybody will say in massive cliches, awful to see yet another prime minister emerge on the steps of Downing street to resign. I mean, I, you know, I was there when David Cameron did it, when Theresa May did it, and then, of course, Boris Johnson did it, then Liz Truss did it after, you know, what if it was 47, 48 days and Rishi Sunak did it? So there's that this sort of odd sense that Britain is becoming a country that's spitting through prime ministers that are Belgium or what used to be an Italian race, although the Italians now hang on. Second thing, I think many of us will feel a sense of gratitude towards Kiyo Sama, a gratitude for the ways he conducted himself, gratitude for his dignity and things he did well. But I also think gratitude above all for the fact that he saw the writing on the wall and didn't try to Joe Biden it and hang on to the last moment. But what did you feel? I mean, this must be very deep for you as somebody who's right in the heart of this whole story.

[Alistair Campbell]

I feel a mix of things. And of course, I know Keir very well, Fiona, and I know Vic, his wife and their kids. And I did feel that sense of sort of brutality. And I think, you know, it's hard not to feel there is something a little bit unfair that. I mean, you know, for example, if you look at a lot of the stuff on social media yesterday, it was basically saying, can't wait to see the back of him. Worst prime minister we've ever had. I think that's a very, very hard claim to make when you look at some of the ones that you just mentioned, Liz Truss, probably, and Boris Johnson most of all. But the other thing that was happening yesterday is people were pumping out on social media long, long lists, including one that includes stuff that I'd forgotten about of the things that the government has done. But the reason why it's particularly brutal, I think, is that ultimately there's something about Keir Starmer that the MPs have concluded the public are never going to like now what they can't work out and I think Andy Burnham is almost certainly going to be the next Prime Minister. I think he's got a lot of qualities, I think he's got a lot of strengths, but he's going to meet all the same challenges and indeed they're all going to transfer almost immediately to him. You can already see it in the media, the way that they're starting to turn on him a bit. The social media stuff is starting. And so. And by the way, the other thing I felt, particularly as Steve Bray, the kind of the blue hatted anti Brexit campaigner, the first half of Keir Starmer's speech was drowned out almost by ode to joy wafting up from Whitehall. And thankfully it calmed down. So that the sort of the most important part of the speech, in a way, was given with a bit of dignity. But I don't think it's a coincidence that we're coming to the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum, because I do think that is the point at which I think our politics became virtually unmanageable. And what we've had in the last decade is a succession of prime Ministers trying to make sense of a politics that isn't really making sense. And I think Andy Burnham, if he does come in, he's really got to seize a sense of boldness, doing big things, including things that aren't necessarily expected. I think the devolution agenda he's made for that, we're going to have much, much more of that. He's going to have to confront the Labour Party with the choices that Keir Starmer failed to persuade them to back, not least in relation to welfare spending at a time that we need so much more for, for national security. But I felt a mixture of sadness for him, sadness for his wife and their closest friends, but also a sense of realpolitik. Once the Labour Party decides and then moves, as it did on the back of that election result on Friday, where everybody you spoke to was saying, it's gotta be Andy, it's gotta be Andy. Keir's gotta go, Keir's gotta go. Once that happens, the real politik does take over. But, you know, I find it hard, as you say, I've been there when prime ministers have come and prime ministers have gone. And it's always a very, very sad thing. But ultimately, I think he will get a lot of kudos for the fact that he said, yet again, I make this judgment based on the interests of the country. And, you know, you recognize that that's in a way what he's done. He's basically said, once you lose with the majority, that he's got 170, whatever it is, 411 Labour MPs. If you've lost, you can't carry on.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's right. And I think the Labour mps were also right that once they had concluded that he wasn't going to be able to lead them into the next election, everything just followed from that. There's no point keeping him along till the last moment. If everything suggests that he couldn't win the next election, you might as well take the risk, bring in someone else. I think presumably he will now become, quite quickly go from being a sort of national figure of ridicule to becoming a national treasure. You can see this quite quickly with Gordon Brown, John Major, Theresa May, to some extent, Rishi Sunak. I mean, there'll be A long, long 20, 30 years where everybody says, he was really decent, great guy, and what a pity he stepped down.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, it kind of depends what happens next, doesn't it? I mean, he. I thought he got the tone right today and that's important. But then, you know, there's still an awful lot of stuff flying around. I don't think the relations between the two of them are good enough. And I think Keir's probably too proud. But this idea that actually Andy Burnham might say, look, your big strength seems to be foreign policy, foreign affairs. I don't have much experience in that. Would you think about staying as Foreign Secretary? I suspect that won't happen. So it then depends on whether he decides to stay in Parliament, whether he decides to go back to the law, whatever it might be. So I think there's. But this is the thing about prime ministers. If you've been a significant Prime Minister, and bear in mind he's one of a very, very small number of people who've won elections as Labour leader. You're talking Attlee, Wilson, Blair, and I'm missing one. You're talking a very. I might not be missing one. You're talking a very, very small number of people.

[Rory Stewart]

Did Callaghan win an election as Labor?

[Alistair Campbell]

No, no, no, he didn't. So you're talking a very, very small number of people who won elections. The majority that he won was the third biggest ever Labour majority after Tony Blair's wins in 97 and 2001. So in a way, it's just an incredible story about taking the Labour Party, leading the Labour Party at a time when, as he said in his speech, people said the Labour Party was finished. Leading it in fairly short order to a massive landslide victory. And then within literally less than two years, he's announcing his departure. So I guess there is a deeper question about whether this is. This says something about the way that our politics has changed. You mentioned Italy. I was looking at this yesterday. Do you remember these names? Rory Amentori, Fanfani, Giovanni Gurini, Ciriaco Demita. They were all Italian prime ministers between Silvio Berlusconi and Giorgia Meloni. Giorgia Meloni has now been in power longer than all of the leaders of the UK since David Cameron. So what is going on? Is it to do with a change of what MPs expect of their leaders? Is it just to do with public opinion? Is it just that the media landscape now is virtually impossible? Possible? I don't know.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, and I think the Labour landslide, of course, as I think we pointed out in the night, was always a little bit misleading. I mean, actually it was a pretty low percentage of the vote. Historically. It was a percentage of the vote down in the low 30s, which wouldn't have won a majority and was driven by the fact that we were already beginning to collapse into the beginnings of this five party system that we now have, which allows you to win what feels like a very big majority with only a third of the voting public and much less of the total public voting for you. So in a way he was set up in a slightly unfair way, or maybe set himself up in a slightly unfair way by saying, I've won this immense majority. It wasn't the kind of majority that previous Prime Ministers had in percentage terms when they came in effect, obviously got less, I think, of the vote than even Jeremy Corbyn, as Jeremy Corbyn loves to point out. I guess the question now, I think we can pay lots of tributes to Kier, but the question now is, what's really the challenge for Andy Burnham? Assuming it's Andy Burnham might slightly be worse treating, but let's assume it's Andy Burnham. And there, I guess if you go through those things that you saw on Twitter, a lot of which is people laying out all the great achievements of Keir Starmer and, you know, isn't it unfair that he's leaving, given he did all this stuff? And I don't know whether you have those achievements there, but they may be worth at least sort of summarizing the kind of things people are saying and thinking about why, although they look great on a post on X, they don't actually add up to something that really Convinces the public that you're a great prime minister.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. Or maybe, maybe more that they don't tell a story. I mean I won't go through them all because there's one here and it just says not bad for a quotes failed PM and it's got a hundred. Let me just go through some. Ended the doctor strikes through a pay deal. Settled railway worker pay disputes established Great British Energy brought rail operators into public ownership. Re nationalized rail franchises. Employment rights bill moved to ban exploitative zero hours practice. Increased national living wage renters rights Bill strengthened tenants rights. Created a national landlord database. Set a target of 1.5 million homes. I think we all know that one's not going to be met. Lifted restrictions on onshore wind development. Increased NHS funding, school funding, local government funding. Extended support for Ukraine. Re established Britain's strength in the world. Then it's got a whole list on migration, bringing those numbers down. Then on health service, bring down the waiting list, etc. So it's, it's, you know, there's a lot there, as I say I won't go, but there's a lot there. You can point the question is whether they add up to a story.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. And do they add up to a story? And also if you were going to be, if I play my devil's advocate part, if you were somebody who was concerned about growth and you were more on the kind of, I don't know, neoliberal conventional side of business and low taxes, what you might say is that most of those things are about either bringing in new regulations or they're about increasing spending. And what got lost in this story was what Starmer was elected on, which is it was all about growth. It's all going to be about growth. And all these stories were going to fix and growth. And what actually you've got there is the story that your friend Pat McFadden was complaining about, which is that it's really a story about doing a lot of things which are very popular of course with the Labour Party because they're anti austerity, they're more spending, more workers rights. But what's happened is he's kept the triple lock pension in place, very generous, of course, lifted the 2 child benefit cap. He's put a lot more money into welfare. They haven't really fixed in any way the problem of the number of people who aren't working. And so a lot of those things boil down to things which are very, very popular with the left. Protecting workers rights and increasing spending on welfare. But there's not a lot on the other side, which is how are you generating the growth to do that without borrowing more and taxing more?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I think what we've said since the election both of the way that Geir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have conducted their management of the economy, that the big message was growth. But I think we always struggled to kind of get our heads around what the key components of the growth strategy were. And I think that is the most important thing that Keir Starmer's successor has to grapple with. And obviously who he appoints as Chancellor is going to be a very important part of that. I do think he starts from a good base in being so closely recognized as somebody who believes in and has been a, if you like, for Manchester, a beneficiary of devolution and of a more, a less kind of Whitehall centric approach to economic management. But he's going to have to do. You mentioned the triple lock there. I think the triple lock is one of those things that at some point, everybody knows at some point a leader is going to have to confront that. Well, why not be the one that comes in on the back of this rather strange by election where you've answered the exempt question who can stop reform? You've got wind in your sails. By the way, Roy, I should just tell you, Nigel Farage has put out a statement saying I'm fed up waiting for all these washed up has beens to be shoved into place by the Uni party. If Labour thinks he's got another chance at the election, let's have it now. There will be the pressure for that. But I think that's.

[Rory Stewart]

Can I interrupt? That's a big, big question because I got somebody who's quite a canny political operator saying that he thought that the chances of election had gone up. And remember, this is what Boris Johnson did. Boris Johnson won and he took over a party that didn't need to have an election for another three years. Very, very similar. Theresa may have been in two years. He comes in in 2019 and he pretty much promised, like almost all of us, that there wasn't going to be an election because we were doing very badly in the polls. And he gambled through an election in 2019, turned it around. So there will be some people saying, andy, things are just going to get worse. You're as popular as you're ever going to be. You've got this wonderful bounce out of beating reform. Trigger an immediate election and see if you can lead through to a more substantial majority for five years and a bit of a mandate for yourself and get going. Which is presumably the Boris calculation. Right?

[Alistair Campbell]

Look, I think that there will be that, and that is definitely a calculation you'll have to make. And if you go back through the history of those calculations, Gordon Brown, when he took over from Tony Blair, looked like he was going to and then didn't. And I think in some ways didn't recover from that because that was. Never underestimate how the people in these positions of leadership will get judged on the really big calls that get remembered. And that got remembered and people thought, oh, you were going to do that, but then you didn't, and now you're pretending you never were, you were never going to. Johnston, as you say, Theresa May is the other salutary lesson in this, though. She decided, I need my own mandate, went for an election, didn't do very well, and was thereby very, very badly weakened. I can see the case, I can see the case. But one thing I think is very hard to imagine, Rory, is that, you know, I'm not sure that a combination of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela could top a three, the sort of three figure majority they got at the last election, as you say, on quite a low turnout, where if you take out the people who didn't vote, only 1 in 5 people voted Labour. So maybe he could. That's certainly something that's going to be. That you'll be thinking about. I think what Keir Starmer's done today is genuinely a benefit to Andy Burnham because he does need a bit. You do need a bit of time to think and to prepare. Will there be a contest? If there is a contest, what is your pitch going to be if there isn't a contest? How do you get around the question of democratic legitimacy on the back of a by election, you know, with a population of 60,000? And then I was scribbling, you know, one of the problems with this has happened ever since we started this podcast, Roy, that stuff just seemed to happen. The stuff that you say one day suddenly is out of date. So this morning I've been busy rewriting my column for the New World, and I was actually thinking, if we actually think of the things that Keir Starmer did less well, okay, what are they and how do they translate to what Andy Burnham might do? And the first thing, I think the most important thing to me is there has got to be absolute clarity of strategy. It's got to be really, really clear from day one. This is my strategy, this is my plan, this is what I intend to do. Alistair.

[Rory Stewart]

I'm interrupting here, but listeners will want to know, again, what is your definition of strategy? How do you think about a strategy? How do you define what a good strategy is?

[Alistair Campbell]

It's what I call the big how. It's the means by which you turn your aspiration, change, in the case of Keir Starmer, into an ongoing story, an ongoing narrative, where all the different bits, all those hundred things that I. That I pointed to, that people can relate them to the bigger narrative. And it's also something that gives you, the leader, in the case of the Prime Minister, but also the team, an understanding of where you fit inside a bigger, broader message. And I've never been clear, to be honest, what that has been in the last two years. It's been a bit of a story.

[Rory Stewart]

The idea is that whatever you thought of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair, it was very clear to people. I mean, I remember talking to many people who'd been in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet and even the junior ministers. There was a real sense that everybody in the department knew what Maggie wanted and that made it very, very easy, as the junior Minister, to make decisions, take control, and the civil servants would follow through. If you don't get that, it's not just a problem with public communication, it's also a problem with internal management, which is that given there are so many process problems, legal blocks, so many reasons why civil servants are a bit skeptical about ministers who keep getting changed, driving ahead with things, you really need that sense that if the Permanent Secretary were to pick up the phone to number 10, they would know what the answer would be. And that if Alastair Rory is saying, this is what we're doing, this is genuinely something that fits in with the strategy. And otherwise, what I found is I would try to do something radical. Let's say I wanted to say we're going to double spending on the environment in dfid, there would be a pause where people would think, well, is that what the Prime Minister really wants? It's all very well, the Secretary of State doing this, but if they're making this huge announcement, is this going to fit in with the general story?

[Alistair Campbell]

But that's why I think that if it is Andy Burnham, his strategy, in a way, help almost writes itself. His strategy is, if you think about what he's been saying, he's been saying that our politics is broken, that it's not working for working people in places like the north of England. And what he's shown in Manchester relates to this sense of devolution of power. So I think that is this, if I were advising him, that's where I'm starting in terms of devising an overall strategy. It's about unleashing the potential and the talent of people all over this country. And that, by the way, you mentioned Permanent Secretaries, that will mean, and it should mean quite a shake up in the way that Whitehall operates, the way that Westminster operates. But of course, where you go from being mayor of Manchester, big city region, very important part of the country where Andy has clearly been a success, you know, it's not all down to him, but he's been a big part of the leadership of that, that successful transformation of a city region. Still big challenges, but governing the country is going to be so much harder.

[Rory Stewart]

Let me come in on that for a second because I think this is what I experienced with Boris Johnson. So he as mayor was surprisingly popular, including with his deputy mayors. So some of these people we've interviewed, people like James cleverly, people we haven't interviewed, like Kip Malthouse, had worked with him very closely when he was mayor and they felt he was a good mayor. He was good at delegating, he was good at getting behind them and they, as Deputy mayors, could get on with their jobs and do them. As soon as he became Foreign Secretary and then Prime Minister, that all fell to pieces. So almost everybody who worked for him as Foreign Secretary found him a terrible manager. People like me and Alan Duncan never stopped, you know, making huge public statements saying he was the most useless Foreign Secretary we'd ever worked for. So there's a question, and it's a question, I think, that struck people like Cleveland Malthouse, who'd worked with him when he was the mayor, what was it that was stopping him transitioning to be Prime Minister? And the normal answer is that as a mayor you can become more of a non partisan mascot. You don't really need to take particular party political positions. Your power is a little bit uncertain. It's never quite clear whether buck stops with you or it's the fault of the center. You can deliver things which are very visible, Boris. Buses, bicycles, actually with Andy Burnham, two buses. Quite an important part of it. And suddenly now you're Prime Minister and you are hit from nowhere by Covid Ukraine and you're struggling with things like public finances, which are much, much, very, very different, I think, from a local mayor's budget. A local mayor will have responsibility maybe for transport, policing and housing. That's about it usually. And that's okay because you can Work with the local councils to try to sort out planning. You can spend some money on transport to get a bit of revenue in, but you're not responsible for the stuff that is actually drives the whole British budget. You're not responsible for hundreds of. Of billions of pounds going into welfare and the nhs. And the really big questions on if you do something, for example, what's it going to do to child poverty? One of the things that Kirsten's being praised for is that child poverty numbers went in the right direction, because the reason they went in the right direction was exactly because of this welfare spending that people are cautious about. And we're back over to you on this, mayor.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I think the other thing you can do if you're a mayor,

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you

[Alistair Campbell]

can disappear from view from time to time, whereas you can't do that as Prime Minister. And one of the things that I think Keir Starmer found difficult in the job, remember when David Cameron was Prime Minister, one of the things he did best was the public narration of what he was trying to do. I mean, he was on the news all the time and he looked in command and he looked confident. Keir Starmer always looked to me like somebody who. That was the part of the job he least enjoyed. He liked the part of the job where you sat down with lots of different reports to consider and lots of bits of data to look at and discussions to have, and then you make a decision.

[Rory Stewart]

One of the criticisms, Sorry, footnote. That's also true of Rishi Sunak. I mean, it's amazing talking now that he stepped down, how many of his ministers say to me how wonderful he was.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, he knew what he was on.

[Rory Stewart]

Details. Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. So that's the first thing you can disappear. Andy, I think, is a good communicator. But I'll give you another example. You talked there about, you don't have to be sort of so political, in a sense, is what you were saying. You call it being a mascot. And part of Andy's whole message is about politics, is about bringing people together. I was, last week, I was comparing an event for the Tessa Jowl Foundation. Tessa and his political career started as an advisor to Tessa Jowl. Now, Tessa was kind of, you know, she was walking empathy, she was walking. Politics is about bringing people together and Andy's got a lot of that about himself a lot harder. When you're standing at the Dispatch box with 50 Malcolm Marshall fast bowlers coming at you from all sorts of different direction, quite hard to hold onto that line that you won't do party political point scoring. So the communication, I think you'll be much better, but I think it's going to get tougher. I think the other thing to go back to what I think.

[Rory Stewart]

Sorry, you're making so many interesting points, I want to interrupt you on that one. So one of the tests to that, presumably as Prime Minister's questions, where is the classic one where I remember certainly Theresa May saying, I remember Rishi Sunak saying, I remember Jeremy Corbyn saying, and I remember Keir Starmer saying, we want to get out of the Punch and Judy. We don't want this ridiculous here, here, you know, sort of stupid lines. And we're going to try to be more dignified and collegial. And of course what happened is they were massively punished for it. And in fact, in the case of Kemi Badenoch, she had to make herself much more into a. Something almost like a stand up comedian, have all these sharp lines ready to go and be much more brutal. So that's going to be the one test for him immediately, is, is he going to stand up at Prime Minister's questions, try to bring the sort of style he had as a magister mayor and find himself being mocked by the opposition and disappointing his own party, who quite like that here, stick it to them stuff.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, just to give you one instance on that. And by the way, Roy, on the back of Nigel Farrar's statement, we asked the people who are listening or watching now for a poll, should there be an early election? And it's running at no. 72. Yes, 28. But let's just take. How does he handle? I mean, it's quite strange, our Parliament at the moment, because you've got the government there with a massive majority and yet the leader is about to go. You have a new leader coming in, he's going to stand there with all these 400 and odd MPs behind him. And at the start they will, most of them will try to be behind him, but he's going to have all sorts of divisions that will start up, not least when he starts to reshape his team. And then you've got the official opposition who are kind of filling this bit, then you've got the Nats and the Liberals. But it was really interesting how often in recent months the debate has actually been directed over towards this very small group of MPs led by Nigel Farage. Now, Andy Burnham has won the by election, in part actually, by not tearing lumps off the Reform candidate, you know, who by the Way gave a lot of material that could have led anybody to say it, but decided not to. So how do you handle Farage if you trying to do this different style of politics. And what's clear from the word go from Farage's statement on the back of what Gere Starmer, there's no, you know, Starmer's good grace in there. This is the Yudi party at work and we've got to get rid of the bloody lot of them. So. And I think the other thing, just to go through a few other things that I think he's got to bear in mind, maybe more than Keir Starmer did, the first is the first big decisions really, really, really matter. So back in 97, our first really big decision was bank of England Independence. If you go back through the early days of the Starmer government, the first big thing that people remember was the winter fuel payment. Now, they'd done lots of things before then, but they weren't done with the kind of cut through and the boldness that said, that's what this government is about,

[Rory Stewart]

just to remind people, the winter fuel payment, they boldly said that they were going to cut the winter fuel payment because it costs billions of pounds a year and it's allowing people like you or my mother, who don't need the money to get a winter fuel payments. So certainly the treasury has been desperate to cut that for years and years and years, and people like me who trying to look at the logic of it, have always thought it's a bit daft and why did Gordon Brown introduce it? But he does it and then he U turns, doesn't he?

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, exactly. So he does it, gets what he thought was going to be political strength by showing we're prepared to take difficult decisions, then is shown not to be able to get it through even with this massive majority, which suggests lack of political authority. So therefore gets no credit at all for that U turn. And just on the other thing that I think maybe was underestimated is MPs, I'm speaking to you here. You know, this MPs matter. It is, I think the question that historians will really struggle with is this question of how you've gone from that majority to this so quickly. And I think if you were to ask a lot of the MPs, particularly the new ones, actually, I think a lot of the new MPs say, I was talking to one of them recently and she said, do you know, I don't feel I know Keir Starmer any better now than I did. At the start. And I think the other thing, advisors matter. Advisors are incredibly important. I think it's helpful to. Andy Burnley's now got a bit of time to put together because again, the advisors, you might have to help you be the mayor of Manchester. You're talking about a completely different level of operation. You've got to get the right people around you. And Keir Starmer, he relied too much on one source of advice. That was Morgan McSweeney.

[Rory Stewart]

It's really weird, this point about making friends with MPs and getting to know them. I mean, I agree it's a little bit like managing some sort of hysterical ballet company and there's a lot of egos and narcissism around, but it is amazing how consistently you hear this. When I was in Parliament, everybody grumbled that David Cameron didn't make enough effort. The story then was that he and George Osborne were too grand. They were this sort of Notting Hill set and they thought backbench MPs weren't posh enough and weren't interesting enough and there wasn't any point spending time with them. So they just kind of hung out with each other and with their special advisors and went to the Cotswolds with Hugo Swire or whatever they did. Right then the story would have been fast forwarding very much the same, I'm afraid, with Rishi Sunak, which people would have said, he's not clubable enough, he's not spending enough time in the tea rooms, he's not spending enough time in the. And presumably, understandably, it's because these guys are very, very busy with a lot of things on. And the fact is, backbench MPs can be pretty boring and demanding and take a huge amount of your time. And many of them oddly quote Tony Blair. Which is where I want to come back to you, which is that when I challenged the Cameron administration about why they were behaving like this, they would say, well, this is what. Well, I don't remember what they called Tony, but I was at the Master.

[Alistair Campbell]

Anyway, this was their idea.

[Rory Stewart]

Their idea that this is how he did it. And, you know, it was all about what was happening in number 10. You didn't really need to have to worry about that. But presumably you're saying that you think that actually you made a better job of dealing with MPs than Starmer's managed to do. And in which case, goodness gracious, Burnham's got to do it. And he's got to acknowledge from the beginning it's going to Be painful, tough, time consuming. It's not enough to do a few drinks in number 10, which is what the whips will always do, you know, every time the party's discontented. Why don't we invite the MPs and their wives and three series for a summer drink in number 10? You've actually got to do the horrible thing, which is really feel that you're sitting down with them, almost 400 of them, but you got to sit down with them individually, you've got to know their names, you got to make them feel you care, you've got to praise them for the stuff they're doing in the constituency and you've got to make them feel that you mean it over to you.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I think I've told you before, George Bush telling me that he became President by writing a lot of letters. And I think you do. You need. Look, you can't expect the leader of the Labour Party or the Prime Minister to spend the whole time. But I'll give you an example. You know, Gordon Brown was actually quite good at this. He had people who would be going through Hansard to see who made good speeches and then just drop them a little postcard saying it didn't even have to be from Gordon. You know, Gordon said, what a great speech you made in the such and such debate and what have you. So that kind of thing. But I think, look, I think if Tony Blair was being absolutely honest, he'd say often it was a complete pain in the ass to have to do it. But he had Bruce Crowcott, his PPS and later on, David Hanson and others who were saying to him, we've got to keep the PLP on side. Sally Morgan, part of her job, Pat McFadden, part of his job was keeping the MPs and the whips, of course, the two way thing. But most Prime Minister's questions, at the end of most Prime Minister's questions, as you say, Tony Blair, unbelievably busy, hundreds of foreign leaders to talk to, visits to make that we would always build into the diary some time for MPs, even if it was just signing bottles of Scotch that then go to them for their next constituency raffle, whatever it might be. And that is, as you say, a balls aching part of the job. But the reason why it's so important for Andy Burnham. See, I think one of the things that Keir Starmer thought is I have helped transform the Labour Party post Corbyn and I have led it to this amazing victory. Now, I'm not saying this is what he said, but I think part of his thinking. So all you lot who keep moaning at me, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me, right? So don't expect me to spend all my time when I've got a country to run and all this and that, but Andy Burnham doesn't even have that, because Andy Burnham's coming in. And a lot of these new MPs, I was talking to a group of new MPs two or three weeks ago. This was before it was so obvious what was going to happen. And one or two of them were very down on Andy Burnham. They thought that the sort of combination of West Streeting doing what he'd done and then Andy Burnham making the by election so much about him, they were getting a bit sort of iffy about it. And one of them said, look, he's going to come in here and think we're all going to bow down. He said, we don't know him, we don't know this guy. So he's going to have to. And listen, Andy's very good at this stuff, don't get me wrong, he's very good at relations, he's very good at being warm and charming and once you tell him your kid's name, he'll remember it and all that stuff, which is part of politics, whether we like it or not. So I'm not saying he can't do it, but I think if we're going through the things that Keir didn't maybe do as much as he should have done, and I think the point about advisors is so important, you know, I copped it in a way that Dominic Cummings did. Morgan McSweeney, you get some advisors who sort of become, in a way, too high profile. But that being said, I think that I will always say the difference, say, between me and Cummings in relation to Johnson is I didn't have my own agenda. And second, the difference in relation to Morgan McSweeney. I was not the only advisor whose mindset the MPs and the ministers thought mattered to Tony Blair. He had a whole group of people and you need that. You can't just rely on one track of advice.

[Gary Lineker]

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[Rory Stewart]

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[Rory Stewart]

I also wonder where there isn't an opportunity for him as the Tory party fragments to bring over moderate Tories. This is. I mean I, I don't. Who knows, because it might all turn around. But if the Tory party is on course to being like the Liberal Party was after the First World War, the strange death of Liberal England. One of the moves that the Conservatives made at the time was to pull a lot of the leading lights of the Liberal Party over into their ranks. So I think there are a large chunk of people who are in play between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham, if it's Andy Burnham and who aren't going to go Lib Dem, much to the fury and frustration of the Lib Dems. They're people who are horrified by reform, horrified by the Greens, define themselves as centrists. And so one of the questions is will he really lean into this idea that he's about unifying? And that's again difficult culturally with the Labour Party because I remember these slightly comical conversations that we were having with Bridget Phillipson and Rachel Reeves before the election when I was trying to get them to guess how Tories felt or who Tories were and they really struggled to empathize, really understand Tory well view. I think Andy's much better at that, I think because he will have got used in Manchester to dealing with Tories. He was Very charming. For example, when we had him on with Andy street, he did Tale of Two Andes, which definitely worth listening to people. But that's another thing that would be interesting. Cameron did it to some extent, getting people like Andrew Adonis on board, getting former Labour ministers to run commissions, chair things, which was actually quite sort of interesting in the early days. I don't know if you remember this, but in sort of 2010, 2011, 2012, it was quite difficult for Labour MPs to attack commissions that he'd set up. He put David Lammy looking at racism and youth justice. I think that was the issue. He had other people looking at child poverty who were former Labour ministers. And suddenly the whole thing becomes a bit sort of unsettling for the opposition.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, it did. I mean, Michael Gove asked me to do a review of mental health in prisons and I remember at the time thinking, well, I think I'm being drawn into a trap here. But anyway, such. Such was the chaos that he got moved on to a different job very soon thereafter. So what are you. What you're basically saying, roy, is this a memo for you to take charge of British prisons?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. This is just. This is just my job application, yet again to another Labour Prime Minister. The last review of.

[Alistair Campbell]

Review of the BBC, review of Ofcom, you name it.

[Rory Stewart]

Anyway, standing by, public servant. Standing by. Listen, let's move on to the thing that I want to get you onto, though, which is we've talked a lot about theory, strategy, style, people skills, but I suppose the big question now is, what's in the national interest and what are the really big calls that a future Prime Minister needs to make? And how does Andy Burnham. Let's assume it's Andy Berman, but it could be worth reading. But let's assume it's Andy Burnham. How does he think about these things? And I've got some dilemmas in my mind, right. Does he return to the Rachel Reeves view, which, as far as we can understand it, is that they needed to cut things like wood fuel payments, concessions for farmers on inheritance payments for unemployment benefits, because that was an important part of generating growth. Question one, question two. Does he, like Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, believe that he really needs to stick to this, ruling out any rises in income tax, which forces you to do a lot of weird, quite damaging taxes and borrow more money because you can't put income tax up? And broadly speaking, all of that stuff, I think, sits in a question about competitiveness, winning back business and what kind of Labour Party this is. Is this a party that is about. And look, I agree Andy will resist this, but sometimes there are things which feel like a choice between our priority is more equality and our priority is more growth. And look, obviously there's a third way idea that you can do both. But we haven't had growth in this country really since 2008, and a lot of the problems in the country stem from that. And I just don't know how radical he's going to be on the triple lock pension. Let me finish on this one. Is it actually plausible that the guy's going to come in and really be prepared to kick pensioners in the teeth in order to achieve long term gain?

[Alistair Campbell]

The short answer is I don't know, I'm not sure. But that's the sort of thing that, I mean when I say that his first days and his first impressions and his first decisions are going to be so, so, so important. And I think it would be best for him and for the country if in a way he were prepared to confront the country with the reality of the, the situation that we're in. I think you can persuade the country, for example, that Russia is a bigger threat than we've maybe been prepared to acknowledge. I, as you know, remain obsessed with the fact that we've still not properly fully understood Russia's role in Brexit. There was a very, very interesting. Call me obsessed, Rory. And by the way, talking of Russia, I must direct people to our leading the interview this week, which is BBC. Steve Rosenberg, the Russia editor, is one of my favorite interviews, actually, and partly because I won't give away the ending, but mainly because of the ending. It's the best ending of a podcast we've ever done. That's all I'm going to say. But yesterday we had this extraordinary situation. One of the things that's kind of obsessing me and keeping me awake at night is that you now have the combined forces of MAGA in the United States and Donald Trump. I mean, how disgusting yesterday that he sort of pre announced Keir Starmer's announcement,

[Rory Stewart]

almost implying that he was on the Apprentice and had fired him. I mean, it was really weird.

[Alistair Campbell]

It was disgusting. And then with two lies saying that, you know, when you've got immigration actually coming down and crime coming down, he talked about soaring immigration and soaring crime. So you've got maga, you've got the hard right around Europe, including in our own country, at a time when the hard right is so radicalizing some people that you have, like that guy going around the streets of Edinburgh with a knife, just going around randomly stabbing Muslims. And I think it's shocking, by the way, that that has not had the same sort of outpouring as we had recently when somebody was stabbed in Golden Green. And I think there is a sort of double standard there and then. But then alongside that, you see you've got Maga, the hard right and you've got the Kremlin. So yesterday, Roy, I don't know if you saw this one of the Trump did his post saying Keir Starmer's going to go nice guy, but I always knew he wasn't up to it kind of thing. You're fired. One of the first people to repost that with something like, we've got him or we've come together and got rid of him, or we've got our man kind of thing was Kirill Dmitriev, the Steve Witkoff of the Kremlin, Putin's right hand man. So that's the other thing that I think, and that problem is not going to go away just because you're a bit more charismatic. That problem is going to be there.

[Rory Stewart]

Let's develop that second problem. So if the first problem is domestic growth, the economy, the second problem is what are Andy Burnham's instincts about the shape of the world and how Britain sits in the world for the next five to 10 years? So is Russia a security threat to Britain by 2030 or by 2035 is a hell of a big judgment call he's got to make because all our defense procurement depends on that. Have we got 10 years to sort ourselves out or four years to sort ourselves out? Drives almost everything he's going to have to do in expenditure. What sort of threat is China to us? We forget about China. But actually, of course, the reality is that China is, is something that has wiped out a lot of European and American industry through a cheap currency, through subsidizing and through a lot of very impressive technology strategy. And then the third one is, what's his instinct on the us? And this is the really difficult thing. This is where one never really sensed where Keir Starmer ended up. The problem with sending Mandelson to Washington is Mandelson was still very much struck in the world that if you, you just had to be nice to Trump and there was no real alternative. If Burnham senses, as I think the whole world does now, that Trump is the canary in the coal mine, Trump shows us how dangerously dependent we are on the US for everything, how the US basically has us by the throat. And we did rather an interesting Interview which is coming out soon with Malcolm Turnbull. And he talked about capacity and intent. He said, look, I'm not saying that either China or the US has the intent to weaponize our dependencies, but you also have to think about capacity and you also have to ask yourself, look, if you have built a whole economy dependent on American cloud computing and AI and American defense agreement and the dollar and the payment systems, is it inconceivable that Trump or a future American president might weaponize those dependencies to get what he wants? And if it is conceivable, how do you build the strategic autonomy? I mean, not complete sovereignty, but how do you build a strategic autonomy? And that relates back to the bigger question, the big elephant in the room, which is, of course the only way that Britain can do this is with Europe. The real answer to how you stand up to Russia, China, the US do any of this middle power stuff is not just talking about what we do with Canada and Australia and New Zealand or Japan or South Korea, but accepting that right on our doorstep is an entire institution which was largely designed in order to try to coordinate between nation states and in order to have some strategic autonomy.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. And again, I mean, I know Andy well, but I have an instinct for what his answers might be on those, but I don't know. And of course, the one part of that you didn't really go into was Europe, because that's going to be a very important part of his messaging as well. So if you take those things one by one, I think it's very, very hard for any leader of the country right now to make the case that there isn't a genuine threat from Russia in all sorts of different ways. And I think we need to be much more open with the public about what they are. A very interesting interview I spotted the other day with Al Khans. He's obviously just left the Ministry of Defence. He was talking about the influence of Iranian and other misinformation campaigns on Scottish independence debate. I presume that is based on stuff he was briefed about when he was in the mod. But so I think all that kind of thing we need to be much more open with the public about. So I think I'm imagining he will want to be pretty hard over on defence. But we all know one of the reasons that that Keir Starmer was weakened in recent days is because he lost his Defense Secretary, John Healey, because his Defence Secretary, John Healey, was not happy with the decision making process around the defense investment plan and felt that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were taking too long and making the wrong decision. And he's got that problem on his plate straight away if he becomes Prime Minister, unless Keir Starmer gets that sorted before he goes on China again. I think it's one of those where you have to be very, very clear early on about a strategic position and so he needs a bit of time to think of those things. And then on Europe, I mean, I can remember Andy as a, you know, pretty. Not maybe as obsessed as I am, but not Brexit derangement syndrome in the way that I am. But at the same time, that's where his kind of core belief is that Britain's. Britain's place is in the heart of Europe. But of course, he's just been elected in a constituency that is very much not necessarily of that view, even though most people think that Brexit has been a bit of a disaster.

[Rory Stewart]

I mean, just to underscore for people a constituency that voted two thirds for Brexit, you know, 65% for Brexit. I mean, it's a very strong Leave constituency.

[Alistair Campbell]

I want. Rory, can I read you? Can I read you? Let's see, let's read. Between a few lines, Andy Byrne was posted as follows. Keir. Keir Starmer has given huge service to our country. I want to thank him for his leadership and dedication during such a challenging period. His decision marks the beginning of a transition. It's important that this process is conducted in an orderly, responsible way. I will put myself forward as part of this process. The country expects stability, seriousness and a continued focus on the issues that matter most. And that is what it will get. As we move forward. Our priority must be to work together to get the country back to where we all want it to be. People want to see progress on economic growth, cost of living, public services, housing, etc, etc, etc. Political change should never distract from the responsibility to improve people's lives. The Labour movement has always been at its strongest when it looks forward with confidence and purpose. That is what we'll do from here and we will make sure this transition is a positive process of renewal for our party in our country. So we don't really get much in terms of. That's very much sort of being nice to keep.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, let me give you my final one and this, I guess, is really my job pitch I'd be pitching myself if I was trying to help Andy to try to get people to think seriously about AI, because I think we're underestimating the fact that this could, in three years Change almost everything. It could have a radical impact on unemployment. A lot of people could lose their jobs. It could completely transform the balance of power in terms of how weapons systems work. It could completely transform productivity in public services. And the problem is that we built it all on an American stack. So what are we going to do about it? And somebody needs to sit down with Andy Burnham and get his choices. And again, it'll be his gut instincts, I guess, as well as his thing, you know, what's he going to think if you say, okay, we could gamble that the US in the end is going to be nice to us and they're going to want our markets and they're never going to do anything as brutal as cut off our access to these frontier models. So let's just keep cozying up to the US and integrate ourselves and maybe build some smart apps and the life sciences which they may want to use and that will grow our economy. Second choice, we're going to try to build off Chinese open source models and we're going to not develop our own frontier AI, but we're going to build off Chinese open source models and do some rather interesting things as backup choice number three. We're going to build a lot of data centers and we're going to buy a lot of chips and we're going to host American weights in Britain and Europe so that if an American president switched off access to the next generation of Mythos, at least we've still got the last generation and we put legal protections in. Final one, we go all out for a Manhattan Project trying to get Japan, South Korea, Canada, Europe, Middle east together to build our own frontier models on the grounds that this is everything, this is like electricity, this is like gas, it's like nuclear. We can't afford to be without it, so. And the cost of that would be phenomenal. And he's also going to be facing the politics of AI, which maybe we need to talk about more because Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, was booed off a stage trying to talk about AI at a commencement in America. Public opinion is moving against AI very fast. People are very worried about losing jobs, very worried about data centers, and that will become bigger and bigger in Britain. Who's going to take up the anti AI mantle in British party politics?

[Alistair Campbell]

I'm not sure that would be Andy, but at the same time, again, I don't really know what his views are on all those choices that you've just set out. I thought it was interesting in his campaigning in Makerfield and also in the speeches that he made since winning, he did say that part of the challenge facing the country was that we do not go down the dark and dangerous road that American politics has gone down, which said to me, he's going to be more in the kind of call Trump out than just sort of, you know, pull the envelope from the, from the pocket, as it were. But that's a big call as well. How you handle that relationship is again, very, very high up in his in tray when he takes over. By the way, Rory, your role is to apply for jobs. My role is to tell you what's happening inside the process now unfolding. I've given you Andy Burnham's reaction. We're treating as basically just put out a statement withdrawing any possibility of campaigning. He's basically saying he's going to get behind Andy Burnham. He thinks that's what everybody else should do. He supports what he's trying to do, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he does mention, by the way, that one of the big issues that he's been setting out, plan for Britain to grow again, grow together. Progressive capitalism focused on wealth creation as much as wealth distribution. Leading the world in the fourth industrial revolution and protecting people from its risks. Modernizing public services, giving Britain energy security. I am reading into that. He's bidding to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and he's bidding to be a

[Rory Stewart]

Chancellor of Exchequer who agrees with quite a lot, I think, of what your friend Tony Blair said in his essay. So can Andy Burnham do that? Can he bring in somebody who, I don't know what the polite word from somebody who's from the right of the Labour Party is. What do you call that? You call it the soft something. I notice left wing labor people are called soft left. What do you call people who on the right of the Labour Party?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, no, soft left is. So you've got hard left, which would be, I guess, you know. Yeah, but even Corbyn is, you know, hard left in the old days was kind of Derek Hatton Mulhern militant. But yeah, Corbyn would probably be seen as hard left and then soft left would be more Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham, etc. I don't think we like to make the comparison of the right. So soft right. I don't want to be soft right. I'm, I'm kind of, I'm left of center. I'm hard left of center. But yeah. So anyway, what it means is that if there's no challenges, I'm just trying to think how this works out. Are we now, in a Theresa May situation, where if there are no challenges, then Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister in

[Rory Stewart]

July or September, he's crowned and comes in in July. Absolutely. That's the way I understand may be that somebody else will jump up and challenge who isn't worth reaching. You know, you can imagine somebody saying, yeah, exactly, we need to have a competition. The reason, of course I favored it very much with Kamala Harris is I thought it does two things. One is it puts you through your paces and sees whether you really can hack it as a campaigner on a national scale. And secondly, if you win it, it gives you a degree of legitimacy and democracy that's actually brought you through. So, Alistair, look, just come back to this once more because I think it really would encourage. I mean, this is the death knell for poor old wares, isn't it? But I do think there are many, many people in the centre ground and in the business community who'd be very reassured if Wes treating became the Chancellor. But does that mean that he's not going to get the job because the Labour soft left will be horrified?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, the thing he's going to have to do, he can't govern according to one strand of opinion in the Labour Party. You just can't do that. It does have to be broad and merit based, it really does. And obviously politics is a part of it. And you know, has he even tacitly or even openly said to Lucy Powell, who's been very, very important in his campaign, you'll be back in the Cabinet. Said to Louise Haig, you'll be back in the Cabinet. Said to Andrew, you'll be back in the Cabinet. That's three Cabinet positions. The three other people then have to vacate. And then he thinks, oh, maybe that

[Rory Stewart]

John Healy absolutely does.

[Alistair Campbell]

John Healy, you know, both John Healy and Wes Streeting. If you're looking for a list of the people who have brought about or helped to engineer this situation, that looks like Keir Starmer is going to resign under pressure and you're going to take over without a contest, then it's part of politics that you look to reward the people who helped you get there. So that means that then, you know, is there a danger then that people who actually you and I would say were very effective think, well, sorry, there's no room for you. He will want to bring on, he probably will want to bring on some of the younger people to show the younger people that there is a, there is opportunity, onwards. So listen, it's the thing I've said Many, many times, having watched one Prime Minister in particular very, very close up. But also Gordon and the ones I covered as a journalist is. I don't think anything prepares you for it. I don't think anything prepares you for it. And yes, Andy's had a very, quite a long. He's been an mp, he's been a junior minister, he's been a cabinet minister, he's been a very successful mayor for nine years. But this is happening at a time when the challenges facing all of us are so immense. I was even thinking today, I mean, I've got my Brexit derangement syndrome saying something very symbolic about, you know, literally Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the referendum. We're still dealing with that today. We're talking about possibly having the highest temperature that's ever been recorded. Okay. We're living with climate change, and yet because of Trump and all that is going down. We're living with polarization. We're living with the muskification of the social media landscape. We're living with a media that just doesn't really want to cover politics as it is. It wants to turn it into a soap opera. None of that's changing. None of that's changing. Unless.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, and. And we've got. And I mean, final one for me, because I think we're coming toward the end, but the. The big question is, is he going to buy into the idea that Britain needs something very, very radical, that we can't just manage decline, it can't just be business as usual, that we're becoming increasingly irrelevant and marginalized, partly because our economy is just not performing. And therefore he's going to be prepared to take real political risk, show real courage, make some people very, very angry, including fighting with people in his own party and doing things that will horrify you and me in the hope that in the end we say three years later. Well, okay, I was really angry that he did X, Y and Z, but I've got to say, he's got growth going. This is really working. Britain's feeling much stronger and more significant than it before.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, well, it has to be the latter. So I think the route is either. I wouldn't put my money on this, but I think, don't rule out maybe you have an election, you call Farage's bluff, you actually, what you take out of the Baker Field by election is that deep down, the country does not want, even in a place like that, does not want Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. You call that bluff, you then get your own mandate. Big, big risk. But, you know, don't rule it out. Or he comes in, fights off the legitimacy claims, basically says, no, our constitution means I can be Prime Minister because I'm leading the party that's got a majority in Parliament. And then he has to show that it can be a lot better than what we've had so far. Either way, it's a tough road. It's a tough road. There's no point pretending this is going to be easy. It's not easy. Politics right now, I think, is as hard as it's ever been. And I obviously wish him luck. I desperately want Labour to be successful. I've wanted Keir Starmer to be successful. I feel deep sympathy for the fact that he's not been able to survive and he's not been able to survive for political reasons, and that's the life that he chose. So on we go. So there we are. We've June 22nd. It's a day of history, Rory, because you know, what else happened on June 22?

[Rory Stewart]

No, what else happens at Football Factor?

[Alistair Campbell]

40 years ago today, the hand of God rose in the sky. Your favorite man, there he is behind me.

[Rory Stewart]

It's the dodgiest thing ever. It's dodgiest thing ever.

[Alistair Campbell]

Listen, it's about winning, as Andy Burnham will tell you, it's about winning.

[Rory Stewart]

So for those of you who've been watching us live, thank you for all your comments and they've been great. You know, medieval Arpad Cook's goodness. Watch Rory fall for all the Conservative fallacies. Someone else, labor needs to institute capital gains tax equality for income tax. People talking about Mamdani, people saying fanalytics. The UK won't be able to build a deep tech stack by themselves. They'll need partnerships. So thank you for everyone who came in. Sorry we didn't bring you into that conversation, but those are exactly the arguments that Kiyo Sama is going to be having. His inner team. And thank you, Alistair, so much for taking us through so much of that.

[Alistair Campbell]

Thank you. And just to remind people that Question Time this week is going to be a special with the European Commissioner for Climate and Energy, Dan Jurgensen, former Danish government minister. Very, very smart guy, very interesting guy. So if you've got any questions you want Roy and me to put to Dan Jurgensen, then just go online and you can find that. And I think this will probably do as our main podcast of the week, unless anything even more dramatic happens tomorrow.

[Rory Stewart]

Very good. Thank you very much for listening, guys. Look forward to seeing Question Time Bye. Bye.