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Does Andy Burnham want to win power only to give power away? On Monday, the man who will soon be Britain's Prime Minister set out his political and economic vision with devolution central to both, including a number 10 north and a warning Dwight hall not to block him. There was a lot of passion. There were big promises across a range of policy areas, including quite a lot that Rory and I have been calling for, which Andy Burnham summed up with the phrase good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart. As visions go, I have to say I found it pretty compelling. Let's see if Rory does too.
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so good, so good, so good.
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B
Welcome to the Rest is Politics with
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me, Rory Stewart, and me, Alistair Campbell. And we're going to talk about Andy Burnham's big speech on Monday and what it says about the pending Burnham Premiersh. And then in the second half, we're going to be talking about a series of very interesting elections across Latin America. So, Rory, Andy Burnham.
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B
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, is now almost certain to be our next Prime Minister. In fact, I would say certain to be our next Prime Minister. Barring something really weird happening, Keir Starmer will step down. Andy Byrne will take over. What's the rough timetable on that, just to sort of bring people back to the basics.
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A
Well, he'll be in there before the end of July, sort of third week of July, he'll be Prime Minister, because had there been a challenge, there would have been a leadership contest within the Labour Party and then it would have probably dragged on to just before Labour Party conference in September. So, yeah, he's going to be Prime Minister by the end of the month.
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B
And yesterday I had lunch with the Palestinian ambassador, Hussein Zimlot, who we interviewed, and he pointed out, I think, that he's been in Britain seven years and has so far known six Prime Ministers. We're going to try again and I suppose that's probably the starting point, isn't it? Every one of these people will have gone through something pretty similar, I guess. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer. All of them came into a country where a lot of people were pretty cross and all of them will have tried to get their advisors together and said, what are we going to do to sort out Britain? And I think there are probably two things you're thinking about. One of them is how genuinely to make Britain better. And the second thing which is necessary, which is how do you win an election? And most of them probably, probably arrived at a very, very similar understanding of what was wrong with Britain. Cost of living, housing too expensive, people frustrated and angry about immigration and a real sense that public services were creaking and things weren't really working. So what do you do about it now, if you're Boris Johnson, the answer was levelling up. So pumping quite a lot of money into the north of England. And we can talk about that a little bit because actually some figures have come out and actually, rather surprisingly, for those who were skeptical of it, a lot of money went in and if you go to places like Hartlepool, a lot was done. You had Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, who I guess were more on a pro free market, business growth, low tax side. You had Keir Starmer, who I think thought his job was to bring a bit of seriousness back into government. And now we have Andy Burnham. So give us a bit of a glimpse of your sense of what Andy Burnham's recipe and vision might be for sorting out the country.
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A
Yeah, I think on Monday his speech did give a pretty clear picture of what he means. I mean, a couple of things to say. First of all, he's shown a ruthlessness which, when he was a young MP and a young minister, I never thought he had. But he has shown a ruthlessness. He has basically decided that the Labour Party was on the wrong track. The country's on the wrong track. And if we carried on in the track that we were on. With Keir Starmer leading Labour into the next election election, Farage was virtually home and dry. That is kind of what's been at the back of his mind and I think at the front of mind of quite a lot of MPs, particularly after the local elections. So what did he have to do? He had to find a seat, which he did. He had to win it. And he won it so big that the parliamentary Labour Party moved almost like a herd from Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham. And therefore he's achieved what I knew he was trying to do, which was to become Labour leader and Prime Minister without contest.
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B
The first point you make is a kind of brilliant, brave political move, a very, very unusual move. Somebody who wasn't even in Parliament maneuvering himself to be Prime Minister against the Prime Minister with a stonking majority who you normally would have thought was safe for five years.
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A
Yeah. So that's big, bold, dangerous, difficult. Very unlike what Labour politicians have tended to do historically. Then comes in and realizes he can't just do the vibes. It can't just be about, you know, wearing T shirts, not shirts. It can't just be about saying, manchester's great all the time. There has to be something of a vision. And what was interesting to me about the speech was, first of all, I can't think ever of a newly elected backbencher speech which has ever had so much attention. It was covered, frankly, as though he was already the Prime Minister. And today we're recording on Tuesday, the tension's clear. You've got the current Prime Minister, the incumbent, Keir Starmer, setting out a defence investment plan. But the front pages are mainly about Andy Burnham. And Burnham knew that with the interest so high, Monday was a real opportunity to set out a vision. One which related, and this is absolutely key in all communications related both to his own story and to that of the country. So his own story, years as part of Westminster Whitehall politics, which he blames for a lot of our ills. Next chapter showing in Manchester that there can be a different way of doing it, more collaborative, more focused on what he kept calling place, not party, and now suggesting that's the way forward for the whole country. So it is a vision, it is an idea, it is a different way of thinking about politics and about government.
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B
Seems to me that there are two big things. One of them is devolution, which is shifting political power out of London and down. He feels, and I think we would agree, you and I would agree anyway, that Manchester seems a pretty impressive example of what can be achieved if you give a mere significant power and tribute. A lot of this goes back to George Osborne, who lent in hard into the idea of setting up Greater Manchester as having power. And this was a devolution agenda that David Cameron embraced 15 years ago. But the results seem to be pretty good. After 10 years of Andy Burnham, it looks as though, and makes sense if you're driving an industrial strategy or vocational training in a local area, you're much more likely to get the kind of training and the kind of industry that suits that area. So that's good. And it also brings you closer to people. So we've talked about how in France, you know, local mayors are there for you to prod in the chest when you go into the supermarket. And that's definitely something. I felt a lot in Cumbria, that Cumbrian problems were very, very different from things that people thought about in London. And I would have liked much more pattern. The second thing is a claim about infrastructure and industrial strategy. So a lot of this seems to be about thinking about house building, thinking about how to take control of water utilities, more government control of energy. And this is a sort of second idea that the economic lever is government playing a bigger role, partly renationalization, partly government spending, driving stuff forward. Am I right? Are those the two main bits?
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Yeah, I think, look, he went through a lot of policy areas and some of them you mentioned, I think it was also interesting he had a very different take on education, apprenticeships, utility ownership, you say. I thought maybe the most notable to me was the promise of the biggest council housing program since the war. And it was interesting to me that he called it council housing, not social housing. And even though you're right, that the first wave of devolution, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland was essentially under us. And then George Osborne, as you say, came in Northern Powerhouse, which never really took off, but he did do the Manchester and other northern regional city mayors. But I think one of the interesting strong lower order themes in Andy Burnham's speech on Monday was a rejection of Thatcherism and a blaming of Thatcherism for a lot of our current problems. Now, the truth is, a lot of this, for it to work, is going to have to involve the rebuilding and restoration of local government. A shift in power, as you say, that's going to require also a shift in mindset and A shift in resources at a time when resources are pretty scarce. But just to illustrate your point, I know you've written about this in your Middleland book, is that he was very, very careful not to be anti London 2 or 3 times. Was trying to make that clear. But he was saying we have to have a more balanced economy. Now, London has roughly 15% of the national population, but it accounts for about a quarter of all growth and a third of our exports. You go to Germany and it's interesting you mentioned Germany at one point. In Germany, Berlin generates 5% of economic outp in Germany. Skilled jobs. You see them all over the place. Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, the Ruhr area. Then when you look at taxation, and I think this is where the treasury is going to really have to get with the program, otherwise this thing's not going to work. 6% of British tax revenues are collected by local government here in Fram. In France at the moment you mentioned mayors. In France it's 14%. In Spain it's 24% and in Germany it's 32%.
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B
Sorry, the figure for Britain against Germany, again, that sounds very extreme.
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A
6% of tax revenues in Britain are collected by local government. 14% in France, 24% in Spain, 32% in Germany.
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B
So 6% to 32%. I mean, it's unbelievable. I mean, 6% means 94% of the tax revenue in Britain is collected centrally, which means, I guess what you're getting onto, which is. And the reason this matters is that if you are a local mayor, you have to be accountable and responsible. And a lot of that is money. It's about not spending money that somebody else collects and occasionally lets you have as a favor, but spending money that you actually generate in your local economy. Taxing local people, spending locally.
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A
Now, of course, the big, big difference with Germany is that Germany is a federal structure. You have these 16 lender, which are more than just, you know, local authorities. They have real power, including for things like policing, but also economic regeneration. Now, I'm really, I'm very, very grateful to the conversation. You know, I like the conversation for alerting me to a new book which is called the Myth of Treasury Control. It's published by Oxford University Press, is written by four academics. And you can tell that this book is for academics, Rory, because it is currently priced at £125.
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B
You can also tell from the title because I wonder how many listeners really know what the myth of treasury control is. That sounds like you're really arguing against
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A
the subtitle is even better. Public spending in an incoherent state. Anyway, it's very, very interesting and they've based it on 150 interviews with senior civil servants, people who make policy, politicians, people who deliver public services, including one Andrew Burnham. So I think this book actually my advice talks for the university press is bring the price down. Promote the fact that you've got an interview with Andy Burnham in there. And I think it could actually become quite interesting.
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B
Let me come in with a plug. So the 13th of September, people who are feeling like getting their diaries out, I will be in the Dominion Theater sitting down, doing what you call Podoltry with Lewis Goodall.
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A
Oh, for God's sake.
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B
For God's sake. So Rory and Lewis Goodall are going to be talking about Manchesterism through the lens of my book Middleland. Talking a lot about, I think, what devolution could feel like in Britain, how local democracy could work in Britain and how it could be a model for the rest of the world. I think it's really relevant to Andy Burnon and Manchesterism and anybody who's interested, get tickets. Fain.co.uk Rory Stewart. Look forward to seeing people for discussion. 13th September.
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A
So, Rory, when you put it in the podcast WhatsApp group, does anybody have a phone number for Lewis Goodall? And I sent you a phone number for Lewis Goodall, it was so that you could commit this terrible act of adultery to plug a bloody book.
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B
Absolutely. I also thought I was being kind to you because you don't actually want to come out on a Sunday evening and sit on a stage with me. So I thought I'd give you an evening off.
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A
Okay, that's very kind. That's very good. Well, if I can go back to the 125 book. But what they've done, they've looked actually in real detail at three areas that we have talked about and that we're both very, very interested in. One is prisons, one is special educational needs and one is homelessness. This book, what it tries to do is to work out how the systems and in particular the way the treasury operates. And there's a lot of talk about silos, there's a lot of talk about short termism. And essentially when you get to Andy Burnham's interview in the book, that is what he's talking about. He's basically saying, I want to break that apart. Now a lot of focus will be, I think eventually he didn't really talk about this, but I'm assuming that eventually we're going to have to get to Greater tax raising powers to local government. That is a total anathema to the Treasury. This then leads us to a question that's getting a lot of attention already. Who will Andy Burnham appoint as Chancellor? Because this has to be Prime Minister and Chancellor absolutely in lockstep, saying, this is our vision, this is what we want to do. I think this will be Ed Miliband and I think it probably should be Ed Miliband, because I think if you're talking about the need to change the mindset in the treasury, then I think you need somebody who shows that they've got the capacity to do that. Now, Ed Miliband knows the treasury, having worked for Gordon Brown, having been alongside Gordon and Ed Balls when they were winning quite a few big battles within the Treasury. He's also shown, I think, on the climate agenda, and by God, is this week a reminder of how we need to sort of really face up to the realities of climate change. He's shown that he can take difficult positions and fight for them. I don't know anymore. And Andy Burnham was right to point out yesterday, any speculation you see about this appointment, that appointment, just wait until I, you know, make those appointments and. But I think it will be Ed Miliband and I. I don't know what you think, Rory, but I think Ed Miliband would be the right choice, even though I know it'll be controversial. In fact, maybe even partly because it will be controversial.
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B
It depends on what your growth strategy is. And I think I'm more comfortable with the idea that devolution down to Manchester or down to Cumbria is really good at accountability, good at getting people closer to voters, good at producing policies that are more relevant, good at supporting good local sectors. But if he really wants growth, let's take his biggest thing, which is council house building. He doesn't have the money levers on that. I think the fundamental problem that Andy Burnham faces is that he's just signed up to the same handcuffs which Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeve set themselves when they said they weren't going to increase income tax, national insurance corporation tax or vat. In other words, he's basically destroyed the revenue that he could get to invest in the kind of grand industrial schemes that he might want to do, from housing through to energy, because he can't borrow much more money because of the fiscal rules and he can't raise much more through taxation. And I think it's heartbreaking because this is the opportunity, if you actually want to go for a more Swedish or French style, capable state of increasing the income tax, and particularly the income tax, I'm afraid, on medium income earners.
- [17:40]
A
I guess his thinking will be that on something as central to the Labour Party manifesto, that if it was to go against that, he would probably have to have a general election. And as things stand, I'm not sure he wants that. But it was interesting to me how yet again he was determined to emphasize his sticking to Rachel Reeves fiscal rules, which of course is partly about keeping the bond markets settled, which they appear to have been. The reaction yesterday was, I suspect, exactly what they were planning for.
- [18:09]
B
That means the only thing he can really do to get his council houses built is radical reform of the planning system, radical deregulation, and that's why it's worth looking at these. Sam Friedman's written a really interesting piece, which we can put in the newsletter, in which he points out that Singapore, which is seen as a great kind of free market economy, has 80% public housing. So all sounds great until you look at the details. You know Singapore very well and of course, the way in which it's done in Singapore is the Singaporean government owns an enormous amount of land, has a very strong compulsory system of funding from taking it from average taxpayers, and it has incredible powers to drive through the building of this public housing against public opposition. So if he really wants to do this, what we're not hearing about is how's he going to make it easier to build? So what's he going to do about the green belt? What's he going to do about environmental regulation? And how is he going to deal with all the stuff that you talk about every year when you go up to Leeds and you sit down with house builders, which is skills, building supplies, materials, construction costs and all this stuff. And again, the reason I'm raising this is the biggest council house building project since the 50s, weirdly, is the kind of stuff that we were talking about even 15 years ago in government. We were obsessed the fact Macmillan had built an enormous amount of council houses and as I keep saying, a lot of the most talented Tory ministers were made into housing ministers in an attempt to drive through and they failed. And Labour also is going to fail massively on these incredibly ambitious targets, which were set by Keir Sama at the beginning of his thing. So that all comes back to my question around Ed Miliband. Look, I think he's a great treasury fighter. I think he'll be able to drive change through. I think he'll probably be able to change taxation structures, give more power to local Government. I think what he's not likely to do is really deliver on the deregulation, making it easier for business, dropping energy prices, freeing up planning regulations, which is what I think we need for growth.
- [20:23]
A
Of course, Andy Burnham having made this sense of place before party and I guess localism, such a big thing, such a big part of this vision that will be taken by people who then want to sit in opposition to big building programs in their own area as a sort of, you know, an anti localist point. So this is going to require a lot of change. In this book, the Myth of Treasury Control. I'd completely forgotten this, but back in the dying days of the new Labour government, after Tony had gone and Gordon came in and Andy Burnham was then Chief Secretary to the Treasury. So he knows the treasury knows how the treasury works and he knows it from that side of the table, as it were. But there was, there was a program, I'd completely forgotten about this, but it was called Total Place and it was, this was in 2009 and it was a, it was backed by the treasury at the time. And I'm wondering whether Andy Burnham was pushing this. And essentially the point behind this was that you map all your public spending in an area and you then build the services around what they call place based outcomes. And of course what happened 2010? David Cameron came in austerity post the crash and this just got, you know, basically kicked aside. So it'd be interesting to see whether that approach comes in.
- [21:35]
B
There's an amazing report which has been put together by Damayanti Chatterjee, who's the director of Public first. And what he's been looking at is all these attempts to put money into less affluent areas. So £19 billion of national funds, £19 billion national funds have been allocated by Tory and Labor governments. This is what me talking about. What happened from Boris Johnson Leveling up onwards. This is lots of different names. Shared Prosperity Fund, Leveling Up Fund, Towns Fund, Pride in Place Fund. And they've followed what's happened and a lot of this money's been spent. So Hartlepool, for example, got £25 million town fund, which focused on the economy, so not just cosmetic improvements. Hartlepool's received 974 pounds per head since 2016, compared to 1 to 3 pounds per head for councils in London. So huge difference. And there's been a massive transformation, not just if you go up to Hartlepool and how it looks, but also setting up vocational training colleges, getting behind businesses. However, the punchline that they've discovered is that these areas which have received the most money, Hartlepool, Great Yarmouth, Ashfield, Boston, have all got Reform MPs or in the case of Great Yarmouth, a Restore MP. And putting a lot of money into those areas, huge amounts like £19 billion hasn't changed remotely people's willingness to vote for these far right populist parties. In fact, weirdly, it's the opposite. There is a correlation. They found the more money these areas get, the more likely they are to vote for restorer reform. If you equal across poverty, diversity and all other indicators, all other things being equal, the more money you get in leveling up funds, the more likely you are to vote for reform or restore.
- [23:26]
A
That's very interesting. I mean, I guess that what Andy Burnham, I think is trying to say is that if we just carry on with this politics of people at the Centre in Westminster and Whitehall decide what you in Hartlepool and Great Yarmouth need and we give you a few bob here and there and we say, why don't you build this with it and build that with it. What he's trying to do, and I think this number 10 north, we should talk about this number 10 north and what that means. And he says it's going to be the nerve center of a rewired Britain. And he was very careful to say, even though he wants it to be based in Manchester, because he's got to be based somewhere, that it's also. And I've got these, I've got a friend in Scotland, Stephen Monroe, who every time you and I talk about the north, literally every time he will send me a message saying the north is Fort William, the North is, you know, so Andy Burton, now, every time he talks about number 10 north, he's got to watch the Scottish reaction to that. But I think what he's saying is that this isn't just about giving money, this is about empowering local communities. And it was interesting the way he talked about what he's done in Manchester is involved. He kept going on about collaboration, working with the parties, working with the trade unions, working with faith groups, working with businesses, etc. Now, how will that approach survive the reality of parliamentary politics and parliamentary combat? And if you saw the reactions both in parts of the press and also from the Tories and from reform yesterday to Andy Burnham's speech, it's going to be very, very hard. I hope he does it, by the way, but it's going to be very, very hard to stick to this, you know, not point scoring, not doing party politics all the Time, not just sort of saying, you got everything wrong. And to hold to this sense of a more collaborative approach. I hope he achieves it, but I think that is where, you know, he's going to get very, very tested once he's in. Once he's actually in Parliament, because the. The nature of parliamentary politics is such that it's just a very hard thing to do. I hope he does it, but it's going to be tough.
- [25:32]
B
Presumably, one hope would be, but maybe this is unrealistic, is that he can try to reach over the head of Parliament directly to people. I mean, I guess he would feel that his style in Manchester has not really been very party political. The lovely thing about a lot of these mayors, and we saw it when Andy Burnham and Andy street were interviewed on Leading. Together with us, we did this tale of Two Andes. What's great about them is that they're really able to say, I'm speaking for everybody in my city, regardless of whether you voted for me or not. And I'm not getting drawn into silly party political point scoring. So I guess the gamble is that he's charismatic enough, he's appealing enough to be able to reach directly to people through social media, through television. And it doesn't matter too much that the House of Commons is still up to its old games, which, frankly, one of the things I have in common with him, one of the reasons I really like talking to him, is that, like me, he was totally disgusted and horrified by his experience ultimately, in Westminster, and felt that, actually, the most fulfilling bit of being a politician is when you're down at a local area where you can actually see concrete problems, get things fixed, talk to people on the street, rather than being stuck in this kind of airless chamber of mad exchanges.
- [26:49]
A
This week's episode of Leading With Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian Prime Minister, which I think people will enjoy, and he sent a message yesterday, he and his wife, he said, we're watching Burnham's speech in Manchester live now. Now, how many backbench Labour MPs speeches get covered live on Australian TV? And he says this, he will do well. I think he's a much better speaker, I think he means, than Keir Starmer, but he's offering a politics of disruption which will appeal to a lot of the angry voters who are supporting reform. And I think he's getting that balance between basically saying, I am a disruptor, but the way I'm disrupting it is actually by taking on. He's not saying this is all down to populism, a Lot of it is. But he's also saying this is a lot down to the way that we did politics when I was a politician in London. Now, along the way, you've got to be delivering the big changes. But I think I felt very hopeful from watching as a Labor person because I feel that what's been missing has been this sense of, you know, what's the big kind of what's the big vision here? What are we saying? And Peter Hyman, I know you're a big fan of Peter Hyman's substat. He's written a very good piece analyzing the speech today and he says this. Where Farage offers victimhood, Burnham is offering agency. Where Farage offers scapegoats, Burnham is offering common purpose. Where Farage offers a return to the past, Burnham is offering hope for a better future. And he says his narrative launched into the mayhem of the attention economy has the potential to be a long running box set rather than the 30 second TikTok clip. There's a side issue to that yesterday, Roy, I don't know if you followed this, but a lot of the journalists were really angry that he didn't take questions at the end of his speech. Ah, I got a load of grief from lots of people because I'd been trying to tell Keir Starmer for two years, please stop doing that thing of taking questions at the end of a speech. Because all you do is give the broadcast journalists in particular the chance to say, well, he didn't answer my question properly about this. Or, you know, let's say yesterday one of the journalists would have stood up saying, will Ed Miliband be your chancellor? And Andy Burnham said, well, I'm not going to announce the Cabinet. They'll be very presumptuous. Da, da, da. Andy Burnham has not ruled out Ed Miliband as Chancellor. And away they go. What happened on Monday was that even the hostile media, not all of them, the Daily Mail did some ridiculous thing about, you know, he's planning to punish the south, but most of them actually gave proper, pretty sensible, serious coverage to what he said. Now, that is an important part of strategic communication. So I hope he sticks to that. He's got to do lots of interviews. He's going to be held to account in Parliament. He shouldn't definitely not ever seem to be running away from the media. But the idea of that, as soon as you make a speech, the first thing you say is, I'd like to call. And I'd like to call Chris Mason, Beth Rigby, the guy from GB News, Robert Peston, et cetera. No, let them read, digest, discuss a proper speech.
- [29:51]
B
Well, this is. I can hear my friends who worked in number 10 under Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak screaming at the podcast at this moment and remembering the tweets that you sent attacking Boris and Rishi for refusing to take questions from the press when they were running. Exactly this logic.
- [30:08]
A
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. No, no, no. What I used to attack them for, particularly Boris Johnson, was at those ridiculous Covid press conferences where he just talked a load of crap and he sort of. He took questions and they're part of showbiz. No, no, no. You're going to be very. Find those, Rory. Okay, I'll set you Go on, you go and find them. You go and find them.
- [30:31]
B
I'll float some, maybe in the newsletter to see what readers think. But I don't want to get into Gotcha. Let me finish with a sort of sensible point before we go onto the thing. The one thing that I regret him not doing, and where I was hoping he was going to go, because I think he agreed with me when he was in Westminster, is that so much of what is wrong with the country is just the lack of seriousness. It's true in Parliament, he's very, very good at identifying how MPs are frequently not serious and we're just less than the sum of our parts. But if I think about my jobs in government, what was really wrong with prisons? Well, a lot of that was down to what's happening on the landings, how governors are trained, managed prison officers work. What's really wrong with the Foreign Office. It's down to the right kind of diplomats and the right jobs with the right language skills, what really was going wrong. This is what Middleland's partly about in rural policy, is having civil servants who really understand and care about rural issues, know how to talk to farmers, are sensible about taking on things, and what really matters in schools. I mean, this is something that Fiona, I think, would resonate with, really comes down to the quality of the teachers and the head teachers. And the really big challenge for fixing broken Britain is the much tougher business of how do we, over 10 or 20 years, produce much, much higher quality operations, kind of execution, delivery, rather than an idea that somehow there's some big model out there in Scandinavia or the States that we can import and then everything will be fine.
- [32:10]
A
Yeah. My final point before we go to the break, I guess if there were three things in the speech that maybe were Missing. He didn't mention AI. Now, he mentioned tech and he mentioned innovation, all that. But I think that it will be interesting to hear what he thinks about AI and what a government strategy under Andy Burnham would be.
- [32:29]
B
Can I interrupt on that? I had a very worrying thing because I was talking to one of his staff about this. And look, if you are looking for a magic trick, AI is about as close as you're going to find. That is the big industrial revolution of the next decade. If you're really looking for really big strategic shortcuts in your economy, it's got to be about AI. And I was talking to one of his staff who said, andy's not interested in AI. It was completely devastating. In other words, they were suggesting this is a guy who's less interested in it than Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer. And that's really bad.
- [33:05]
A
Okay. Okay. Well, we'll have to press on that. Maybe I should talk to other members of his staff and find out. Okay. The second thing was he mentioned Brexit en passant. But the truth is, this was a speech about Britain's future economy that has to involve a clear sign about where we're heading in terms of our relations with the European Union. And the third thing, given that we are in the middle of this hideous European heat wave, I think that there is an economic impact of climate, which I also maybe feel he could have addressed. My final, final point, a couple of appointments that I think are welcome. The first really good news, I think Jonathan Powell is going to stay on as National Security Advisor. I think that's really good. And James Pinnell as Chief of Staff. I think that's a good move. James Pinnell is somebody who was an mp. He was a special advisor in Downing Street. He was actually. He actually worked with Tony Blair when Tony Blair was a young MP and he was at university. But he was a minister, junior minister, a Cabinet minister. He's had lots of experience in the private sector outside also with the BBC. So I think that's a very, very, very good appointment. And it shows that he's serious. And I also like the fact that it happened without any media speculation whatsoever. I think that. And I thought he was right to say, just ignore anything you read about Cabinet appointments until I make a Cabinet. And I know the press got pissed off yesterday, but your point about seriousness? Serious government is not about making sure the press are fed every single day. That is somebody's job, but it is not the Prime Minister's job. And so I was quite pleased by that. And then I thought the other. My final file. Sorry to keep giving you final points, Roy. When Donald Trump. Donald Trump, of course, you know, did that disgusting sort of post about Keir Starmer announcing his resignation before he'd resigned. He then felt, it took it upon himself to say what he thought about Andy Burnham. And he said, I've never heard of him, but I hear he's extremely liberal. Liberal, and he ought to drill in the North Sea. Now, if I'd have been Andy Burnham, because Andy Burnham is quite good at these little sort of responses. He did a good one to Kemi Badenot when she said, all he is is a pair of eyebrows and a black T shirt. And he did a very short clip saying, it's dark blue. Actually, I think he should have said to Donald Trump, look, you may not have heard of me, but you must have heard of Manchester. So we've got 32 players from our two clubs at the World cup, and we've done this, this, this, this. I think. I think Ben. We interviewed Ben Rose this week, Barack Obama's speechwriter, and that'll be coming out soon, and I thought it was interesting. Well, his view is that Burnham should probably pick a few fights with Trump. We'll see whether that's what he does or what he doesn't do. But I certainly think the Maloney Carney approach is probably reaping a few dividends right now.
- [35:58]
B
Very good. Okay. Well, who thought the day would come when you would finally endorse the love actually approach to politics? And that's rude. I didn't want to give you a chance to come back. You're going to come back. I shouldn't have said that before the break. Let's take a break and then we'll come back afterwards. Okay. Welcome back to the Rest of this
- [36:21]
A
Politics with me, Rory Stewart, and with me, Alastair Campbell. And we're going to talk about Latin America for the second half. First of all, I think we should acknowledge this awful, awful, awful earthquakes in Venezuela, as if the country hasn't had enough to get through in recent years. But this is pretty horrific. And also to tell you that in our newsletter this week, we're going to explore the thing that you and I are going to discuss now, which is the nature of Trump's intervention in South America right now. Because if you look at the. If you look at the political big picture in Latin America, it is possible to see something of a shift to the right from what was called the pink tide of the early 2000s, when left parties seemed to be in the ascendant. And given how close some of these elections have been, I think it is quite reasonable to speculate that Donald Trump at least has been a contributor to that shift.
- [37:15]
B
Let's have a look at this. So it's an amazing story. So as you said, there was this famous first pink tide, which happened in the late 2000s, which happened at a time when Latin America was kind of booming on commodities and China. And that was Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, and then there was the second pink tide. And the second pink tide actually coincides with the rest is politics. So listeners who've been with us for since the beginning will remember. So it was Boric, who was this amazing student leader taking over in Chile, Gustavo Petro, who was connected to this terrorist group, the M19 terrorist group taking over in Colombia, and perhaps most dramatically of all, Pedro Castillo, a basically unknown rural schoolteacher, taking over in Peru. And also you had Lula winning famously in Brazil, and Sheinbaum remaining in Mexico. So there was a pretty strong story that Latin America a couple of years ago felt leftist. And now Chile, Colombia and Peru have all gone back to the right, and they've gone back to the right in two cases by tiny, tiny margins, as you keep pointing out. So Borich went and the left turned out to be much less radical than people expected, partly because these guys weren't able to get through their constitutional changes or in the case of castillaries year, they were toppled pretty quickly. So Jose Antonio Cast was elected in Chile. My friend Michael Reed, who's the Economist Latin American correspondent, says he reminds him of a sort of headmaster in a kind of second rate school. He's somebody who is extremely Catholic, extremely authoritarian, wants everyone in his cabinet to wear ties and is really against vandalism, but is generally failing to inspire anybody very much. Then you've got Keiko Fujimori, who we've talked about, so the daughter of the great sort of controversial imprisoned leader of Peru who won on this tiny, tiny margin and beat someone modelled on Pedro Castillo. So somebody from the communist left. And then most disturbingly all is Colombia, where of course I was last year. And we talked about a little bit, which is Esprilla. And Espria is a proper Trump ally who's one. This is a guy who was a mafia lawyer. I mean, as a lawyer he represented organized crime groups, people who were associated with drug trafficking, with disappearances. And he has very, very clearly come out in support of Nayib Bukele's policy in El Salvador, which is around these brutal prisons. Okay, back over to you.
- [39:54]
A
He sort of models his facial hair on El Bukele. I mean, they both have this perfectly trimmed everyday facial hair. They look very, very similar. He, he's modelling himself on him. But I'd say not just he, but some of these other leaders. For example, one of the other elections in Costa Rica, which was already conservative and quite a safe country historically by Latin American standards, but the incumbent there, Laura Fernandez, she came in and she won without even a second runoff. She was so far ahead. Whereas you say some of these other elections have been incredibly close. Fujimori was announced yesterday, she won by fewer than 50,000 votes, 50.13 to 49.86. Likewise, he won by less than 1%. So it's not impossible that Trump's endorsement and the threat that he would not support them with military or he might put sanctions on them, whatever it might be. And then the other one was in Honduras back in November, another one, less than a percentage point, 40.3 to 39.5. And the winner, this guy Asvora. Trump basically said there will be hell to pay if he doesn't win. And alongside, he also pardoned the previous president, Hernandez, who'd been serving 45 years on drugs charges. So he is absolutely determined to get involved in all of these. And if you look at who came straight out, this just underlines how right wing it is now because you've only really got Brazil and Mexico, Uruguay and Guatemala that have got vaguely left of center governments.
- [41:36]
B
And of those, again, for people who don't follow Latin America all the time, the big story is Brazil and Mexico. I mean, those are the giant, giant economies. But of the other major economies, traditional major economies, Argentina has now gone far right. We've just talked about Peru, Chile and Colombia. Venezuela, which was this great oil center, is now in wrecks, and Brazil. And we'll really have to focus. This is about, of course, to go into an election, first round in October, where Lula is running against Bolsonaro, the far right populist's eldest son. So that's a real one to watch. Now, Sheinbaum in Mexico, who's from the left, will see Trump out. But Brazil is going to be the real anchor question around this. And this is relevant. I mean, the reason it's so interesting talking about this is insofar as there's any definition of a theory of foreign policy from Trump, it's what he's calling the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, which basically says what Trump cares about is not what happens in the Middle east or Asia or Europe. What he cares about is controlling the Americas and in particular controlling Latin America. That's why we have the kidnapping of the president in Venezuela. That's why we have these continual threats of intervention in Cuba. This is why we have all that stuff you're talking about, from sanctioning to rewarding people like Milei who are allies, threatening people. And so this will be seen if you are China or if you are from the left in Latin America, as a victory for the United States and in particular for Trump's version of the United States. And you can expect him to begin putting pressure on all these countries around investing in Chinese equipment when it comes to national security. And even if he's won by a very narrow majority, and even if these presidents, and this probably be true in Latin America, face a lot of opposition and they'll probably face huge street demonstrations in places like Colombia and Peru in particular, he's going to do his very best to come through on his idea that this is going to become a much more right wing, American dominated continent.
- [43:49]
A
There was a survey done in Brazil where, as you say, I think the first round is October 4th, Lula. And Lula of course is 80 now. And I don't want to be ageist, but I think there should be an age limit for presidents if they've got orange hair and, or they're 80. But he's going to say, but there was a survey and there was this. Would a Trump endorsement of a candidate increase or decrease your willingness to vote for them? And it was increase 17%. Decrease 15%, no difference. 65, not sure. 3. Now, I don't know what the influence is, but it was interesting, for example, in relation to Fui Mori, when the thing tilted away from her opponent was actually when the overseas vote came in. And the biggest overseas voting bloc is in the United States. Now, I don't know any of those people, but I wonder if any of them were actually directly influenced by Trump saying, if you're Peruvian, you better vote for free. Mori. So I think Brazil is going to be absolutely fascinating. And of course, the reason why Colombia is so important is because the three most populous countries are in order. I think Brazil, Mexico, Colombia. So as you say, two of the four that are holding on to kind of left of center governments are very, very big economies. And Mexico obviously, with the added complication of being on America's southern border. But Brazil will be absolutely fascinating. The fact that Bolsonaro, who's in jail this Goes back to the whole story about Trump. So Trump was convicted felon, but he won again. Bolsonaro is in jail. He obviously can't stand, so his son Flavio is standing. And it's all, all a way of saying, we're doing this very, very differently. But Trump will come out, I've got no doubt about this will come out for Bolsonaro, and we'll see whether that has an impact. It didn't help in Colombia. It is even though Dilez Perela won his opponent Geppetta, his ratings actually went up when Trump first attacked him. So, I don't know, pay your money, take your choice.
- [45:55]
B
Well, a lot of the drivers to this, though, are, of course, internal. And a lot of it is driven by a perception that organized crime is out of control. Some of that people connect to problems spilling over Venezuela's borders, some of it connected to drugs, incredible killings, disappearances. And so if the fight with the first and second pink tides was about how to create more equal societies, how to redistribute the income from commodities, the fight now really in these elections is between people talking about inequality on the left and people talking about law and order on the right. And here we've got another problem that we see a lot, which is an idea that you can import a solution from another country. So there's this horrifying model being pursued in El Salvador, and there's two problems with it. One is that it is genuinely horrifying. I just want to just do a little summary of what's actually happening in El Salvador. But the second problem is El Salvador is a pretty small, simple country compared to Colombia, which is enormous, diverse, complex, and very, very. I mean, it's like trying to turn Britain into Singapore. But let's just on so people understand what's happening in El Salvador. This is Richard Madeley writing about a documentary he's just done on the prisons he spent two days inside. They're packed like battery hens in enormous cells. No mattresses, no possessions of any kind allowed. Nothing to read, watch, write or draw. With bright lights burning 24, 7. No prison visits. Nearly 100 men to a cell constantly visible through the floor to ceiling bars to ceaselessly patrolling armed guards. All are gangsters who once held this tiny Central American country in a murderous grip. None will ever see daylight again. It's a living death and clearly a breach of human rights. I found it a harrowing experience, but it's restored near complete normality to El Salvador. And guess what? Most people who watch the documentary say to Me, people of all ages, classes and types, we could do with a place like that here.
- [48:09]
A
Well, and as I say, even in Costa Rica, part of the pitch from Laura Fernandez was that we're going to have these mega prisons. Remember when we interviewed Moises Naim and he talked about his three Cs, crime, corruption and cruelty. Crime is how you win. Corruption is what follows. And you have to express yourself in very cruel terms to show that you mean business. And of course, the other thing that these Latin American governments have done, they've done deals with Trump about taking some of the people that ICE are lining up to send up. So some of these people in, in the jails have, they've been put there simply for not having the right papers in the United States. But they're now in one of these hellish jails and we should, you know, they are, they are horrific. There are some terrible photographs that we should maybe put in the newsletter as well that show just what life is, is like in these prisons. So and the other thing though, Rory, just these right wing guys and they're not all doing that well. Milei, for example, is facing a lot of protests. Cast's ratings, although he won the election comfortably in Chile, his ratings have fallen substantially. Bolivia, another one that's got a right wing government, they declared a state of emergency last weekend because there were these blockades that were paralyzing the nation. And Ecuador, another one, murders up 30%. And I'll tell you the other thing that drives me nuts, Rory, the magocrats who obviously love all these right wing guys in Latin America, constantly saying that London and the UK and Europe, these kind of crime hellholes where we've actually got crime falling, murders down in these countries. You're talking about levels of murder that are unimaginable to a European audience. And yet for some reason Trump thinks these are great guys.
- [50:00]
B
Well, let's maybe finish on the, on your. You reached out to Europe because we talk a lot about whether it's possible to think about middle powers getting together. So it's not just us and China, but we've got this Mark Carney vision of a third prong, or maybe your friend, the president of Finland, a fourth anchor along with the global south. And there's something quite interesting there because the commission has basically begun to implement this MERCOSUR agreement, which is a European Union, Latin American Free Trade Agreement. It will do good things for trade and investment. I mean, it's not going to replace China, which is just exploding. But Europe is still the largest investor in places like Brazil and Argentina. And I think it provides another ally, another political ally for Latin America to balance itself when it's stuck between the US And China. So I'm really interested in this Mercosur thing, and I think it could be an interesting model for how the European Union and Britain thinks about arranging its relationship around the world with middle powers.
- [51:09]
A
Cool. Well, we'll come back to it, and we'll certainly come back to Latin America at the time of the Brazilian elections in October. And on the newsletter, we've got a very interesting piece in the next edition, which is about a journalist who's infiltrated the the far right. And to get access to that, you just have to sign up. And you can do that through the link in the episode description.
- [51:31]
B
And in Question time, we're going to come back to Zoram Mamdani, the new mayor of New York, and the lead up to the primaries. How on earth does the Democratic Party, which was cracked by Trump, rebuild itself? What kind of candidates does it run? What's its ideological vision going to be? And much more coming in Question time tomorrow.
- [51:53]
A
Okay, Rory, see you tomorrow.
- [51:55]
B
See you tomorrow.