Can Burnham learn from Starmer's mistakes?

Summary

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The Story – Can Burnham Learn from Starmer's Mistakes?

Podcast: The Story
Host: The Times (Luke Jones & Manveen Rana)
Date: July 24, 2026
Featured Guests: Josh Glancy (Associate Editor, Sunday Times), Andy Burnham (clips), Keir Starmer (clips), Rachel Reeves (clips)
Theme: Comparing Andy Burnham’s early premiership to Keir Starmer’s – what lessons have been learned, and can Burnham succeed where Starmer faltered?

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the early days of Andy Burnham’s new government, sharply contrasting his optimistic, social-media-savvy approach with Keir Starmer’s more somber and cautious start in 2024. With Josh Glancy’s insight, the hosts examine the lessons Burnham appears to have taken from Starmer’s mistakes, the risks of his rapid policy blitz, the impact of “hope” as political messaging, cabinet shakeups, international relations (particularly with Donald Trump), and Labour’s prospects amid a volatile political landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Starmer’s Gloomy Start vs. Burnham’s Optimism

• Starmer’s Initial Tone (2024):

  • Came in after a landslide with promises to “restore service and respect” and “end the era of noisy performance.” ([00:22])
  • Emphasized the enormity of the challenges and the need for patience.
  • Messaging was “tough, sensible, but a bit grim” ([04:23] Josh Glancy).
  • Cost of living concerns were underestimated; biggest blunder was the attempt to means-test winter fuel payments—unpopular even after being watered down ([05:21] Rachel Reeves).
  • “They really wanted to emphasize it is a really difficult inheritance... They took this tone: we're in a really tight spot... It's going to be hard work and you’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to be calm.”
    • – Josh Glancy, [03:23]

• Burnham’s Contrasting Opening:

  • Immediately focused on cost of living and optimism.
  • Policy blitz and “the politics of hope.”
  • “Gloom is out. Cost of living. Help is front and center. The different path he is trying to beat is clearly all about optimism.”
    • – Luke Jones, [01:28]
  • “Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again. The moment we bring back hope.”
    • – Andy Burnham, [01:44]

2. Learning from Starmer’s Messaging Mistakes

• Admitting Past Errors:

  • Starmer’s team now concedes they struck the wrong note and failed to offer enough optimism at the outset ([03:23]).
  • Cost-of-living issues should have been the focus.

• The Winter Fuel Payment Catastrophe:

  • Rachel Reeves defended means testing, but the policy’s legacy haunted Labour’s public image ([05:21]).

    “It was amazing to me how you would go out reporting 18 months later and people who hadn’t even been affected...were still angry about a policy that had never happened.”
    – Josh Glancy, [05:35]

3. Burnham’s Media-Savvy Approach

• Burnham embraces “noisy performance”:

  • Actively engages on social media, collaborates with influencers (e.g., “bus auntie”), uses content formats appealing to younger audiences ([06:10–07:10]).
  • “Burnham has come in and there’s been a lot of noisy performance. They are proudly shouting about these new policies…he’s on trends, as the kids would say.”
    – Josh Glancy, [06:33], [07:10]

• Starmer’s aversion to this style is interpreted as a misreading of the role of politicians today.

  “Noisy performance is part of the job because you’ve got to get heard amid the din on social media, in the attention economy.”
  – Josh Glancy, [06:10]

4. Substance Behind the Optimism?

• Many of Burnham’s first policies (e.g., £2 bus fare cap, energy VAT cut, business rates changes) aren’t fully costed; funding is unclear ([09:55] Josh Glancy).
• The unveiling is “almost a sort of shopping list at the moment.” Budget this autumn will make or break the honeymoon.

5. Cabinet Overhaul and Readiness

• Significant “purge of the Starmerrites”; few close to Starmer remain in Burnham’s cabinet ([15:21]).

• Many new ministers had no time to prepare for their portfolios (e.g., John Healey found out he’d be Chancellor while walking to Downing Street).

  “You’re building the plane as you take off on the runway…It’s pretty aspirational to think you can switch horses mid-race and suddenly come up with these big crunchy policy shifts at the same time.”
  – Josh Glancy, [13:44], [16:03]

• The “cost of living blitz and all these attempts at good vibes” is meant, at least in part, to buy time as the new team finds its feet ([16:03]).

6. Foreign Policy and the Trump Question

• Starmer’s major achievement: managing relations with Trump, whose unpredictability destabilized global politics in 2025 ([16:26–19:22]).

  • “Trump is somewhat back in the tram lines now, and the US–UK relationship has stabilized somewhat.”
    – Josh Glancy, [18:05]

• Burnham inherits a more settled international situation but will still need to invest significant time in world affairs, perhaps contrary to his domestic priorities ([19:22]).

  “These issues of security and defence and geopolitics just come wave after wave nowadays. All of them require the Prime Minister’s attention.”
  – Josh Glancy, [19:41]

7. Snap Election Speculation

• Early polling “Burnham bounce” might tempt a snap election but risks abound; most Labour MPs are on slim majorities ([22:49]).

• Burnham likely to wait until after budget and/or next summer, unless the poll leads are irresistible.

  “If he wants to be radical and his popularity endures, then it will be quite tempting [to hold an election], and you’ll start to hear more and more about it.”
  – Josh Glancy, [21:00]

8. Political Landscape: Labour’s Opportunity and Perils

• Reform (Farage) and Green Party both weakened by internal issues; Tories in recovery but not yet strong.
• Burnham’s window is narrow and contingent on actual delivery—especially in the autumn budget ([23:32]–[24:22]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Andy Burnham’s campaign for optimism:
  “Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again. The moment we bring back hope.”
  – Andy Burnham, [01:44]

• Josh Glancy on Starmer’s messaging:
  “The overall tone and messaging was tough, sensible, but a bit grim…they misread the public mood quite considerably.”
  – Josh Glancy, [04:23]

• On the need for hope:
  “He uses this word hope constantly…the politics of hope, ‘hope in every heart, hope in every postcode’...You cannot live by hope alone, there is a lot of substance that needs to be added, but clearly there is a feeling that people need to feel a lift and they need to feel it fast.”
  – Josh Glancy, [07:36]

• The challenges ahead:
  “You’re building the plane as you take off on the runway.”
  – Josh Glancy, [13:44]

• Political luck:
  “He does initially have the slight feeling of a lucky general… The political picture is quite favourable. There is a path for Burnham here, but it is narrow.”
  – Josh Glancy, [23:33]

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Timestamps for Key Topics

• [00:01–01:53] Starmer’s exit & Burnham’s arrival: contrasting leadership styles
• [02:15–05:35] Starmer’s first weeks; messaging and the cost of living mistake
• [06:10–08:23] Burnham’s “noisy performance,” influencer tactics, social media strategies
• [09:39–12:23] Early Burnham policies, funding questions, symbolic “direction of travel”
• [12:23–16:26] Cabinet overhaul, readiness, and risks of rapid transition
• [16:26–20:34] Burnham’s foreign policy inheritance; relationship with Trump
• [20:34–22:28] Snap election speculation—risks and incentives
• [22:28–24:22] Political landscape: Labour’s path, opposition weakness, looming budget test

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Takeaway

Andy Burnham’s early days as PM are all about correcting the perceived deficits in optimism and dynamism that marred Starmer’s government. He’s set a new tone and taken to social media, but tough policy questions and the shadow of a still-volatile world (and the first big budget) loom close. The Burnham “bounce” offers opportunity, but his political window is limited—much depends on whether he can deliver real change before the mood (and the polls) shift again.

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Transcript

[Luke Jones]

From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Luke Jones. Zakir Starmer has left the building.

[Keir Starmer]

You have given us a clear mandate and we will use it to deliver change.

[Luke Jones]

Two years ago, he was carried into Downing street on the crest of an enormous, enormous electoral landslide to restore service

[Keir Starmer]

and respect to politics, end the era of noisy performance, tread more lightly on your lives and unite our country.

[Luke Jones]

But on Monday afternoon, out of work, jacket off and shirt sleeves rolled up, he was papped, enjoying a pint outside a pub. Rachel Reeves had her sunglasses on, glass of white wine on the go. Their two and a bit years was done. Andy Burnham, meanwhile, new pencil case ready, was getting to work.

[Andy Burnham]

I can do something to give people some breathing space now, some help with the cost of living.

[Luke Jones]

It's been a policy blitz.

[Andy Burnham]

I will put the care of people at the heart of everything I do. I will give this my all and I ask you all to pull with me.

[Luke Jones]

Gloom is out. Cost of living. Help is front and center. The different path he is trying to beat is clearly all about optimism.

[Andy Burnham]

Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again. The moment we bring back hope.

[Luke Jones]

Will it work, though? Is it actually anything new? The story today, Starmer and Burnham, A Tale of Two PMs.

[Josh Glancy]

My name is Josh Glancy. I am associate editor at the Sunday Times.

[Luke Jones]

Have you felt a vibe shift, as the kids would say?

[Josh Glancy]

Yeah, it's definitely pretty different, isn't it? I think that the messaging is different, the energy is a bit different. There is a sense of. From Andy Burnham of can do, optimism, the politics of Cannes, hopey, changey. I'm not getting carried away, to be clear, but, yeah, that is a different tone that he struck and it's quite consciously distinct from Starmer and the Starmer government.

[Luke Jones]

I mean, we're barely a week into this new, premature. Isn't it interesting that we, you know, you always get those first hundred days pieces and here we are sort of slightly taking stock even before the weekend. But if we compare, maybe not exactly just the first week of Starmer, but as you say, that sort of early period with the beginnings of this early period. Take us back to the. Well, in the wake of the enormous landslide in summer 2024, there was a lot of gloom. There's a lot of it's gonna get worse before it gets better, as he actually said.

[Josh Glancy]

Yeah. I think that if you talk to Starmer or Rachel Reeves or people who were very core to that effort, they will now admit that they struck the wrong tone early. On and they didn't give people enough optimism. They came in and they really wanted to emphasize it is a really difficult inheritance. And it really was. And they were actually quite shocked at how bad some of these things were, particularly on things like how crowded the prisons were and how close to bursting point some elements of the system were. And so they took this tone. Well, look, we're in a really tight spot here. This is going to take a lot of fixing. It's going to be hard work and you've got to be patient, you've got to be calm.

[Luke Jones]

And that was a strategy. It's not like they forgot to say all the good bits that would come later on, all the milk and honey. I guess the strategy was we need to really make people realize how bad it is, get away with some stuff, you know, the difficult decisions through that, and then maybe next year start talking about their happy.

[Josh Glancy]

Yeah, I mean, if you go back there will be. They will make positive comments like, you know, we are going to put the country on a better footing, we are going to do this, we're going to do that. But the overall tone and messaging was tough, sensible, but a bit grim. I also think that by 2024, the public have become quite impatient. And we've talked about this before, but, you know, you'd had Brexit, you'd had the pandemic, you'd had all the inflationary effects of the Ukraine war, et cetera, and I just don't think people wanted to hear it. And I think that they misread the public mood quite considerably. And they didn't really have a clear focus on the cost of living early on, which I think, again, they underestimated as the thing that people were really, really fed up with. More than anything else. They also made what is now widely considered to be the biggest political error of the entire Starmer premiership, including Peter Mandelson's appointment, which was trying to cut winter fuel allowances, which they ended up watering down.

[Rachel Reeves]

Anyway, I made the choice to means test the winter fuel payment so that it's only targeted at those most in need. I know that not everyone in this hall or in the country will agree with every decision that I make, but I will not duck those decisions.

[Josh Glancy]

And it just stuck in the public mind. It was amazing to me how you would go out reporting 18 months later and people who, who hadn't even been affected because it had ultimately been watered down were still angry about a policy that had never happened. It was such a messaging catastrophe. And, you know, this Burnham government has come in and obviously it is in many ways a direct response to some of those missteps and compare and contrast.

[Luke Jones]

So if we just laid out the gloomy start to the Starmer Premiership, what has jumped out at you in the last few days in terms of the things that Burnham's done to not do that?

[Josh Glancy]

One obvious thing is there was a line Starmer used in his first week, which was, we're going to put an end to noisy performance. I think that was potentially a misreading of what being a politician is like in the 2020s. Noisy performance, I think is part of the job because you've got to get heard. Amid the din on social media, in the attention economy, who is it that

[Luke Jones]

politicians basically now need to be content creators?

[Josh Glancy]

I don't know, but they're right. Someone you, possibly Luke Jones, who knows. But Burnham has come in and there's been a lot of noisy performance. You know, they are proudly shouting about these new policies. But also, if you go on Burnham's Instagram page now, you know he's doing riffs with influencers. You know he does the career ladder thing, where you basically stand on a ladder and someone asks you about your career history.

[Donald Trump]

I have the biggest careers channel on the planet with 20 million followers. I usually guess people's jobs, but I know your job, unfortunately. Can I guess your first job you

[Josh Glancy]

won't be able to do you have two minutes now. Kind of busy, but my ladder is. People like these sorts of things.

[Luke Jones]

It's not for me, but he's on trends.

[Josh Glancy]

He's on trends, as the kids would say. They announced the £2 bus cap, the bus fare cap, but he did it with bus auntie, who was again, not someone I knew, but is some sort of online bus influencer, really.

[Luke Jones]

The woman who does the selfies as all the buses arrive. Oh, she's an icon. You've never seen her before.

[Josh Glancy]

It's not my world, Luke.

[Rachel Reeves]

Oh, Prime Minister, you're stealing my job.

[Andy Burnham]

Chief of bus fares endorsed by bus anti herself.

[Rachel Reeves]

It's a fantastic idea. Thank you so much, Prime Minister.

[Josh Glancy]

You're getting masses more engagement than if Keir Starmer had done it. So that is one really big distinction. The other is that there is just this hopey, changey tone. He uses this word hope constantly. The politics of hope. Hope in every heart, hope in every postcode, whatever. The point is, you hear him use hope all the time and it's filtering down to the other ministers as they go out on the media too. You cannot live by hope alone. There is a lot of substance that needs to be added to that, but clearly there is a feeling that people need to feel a lift and they need to feel it fast. And there's a sense of urgency in this rollout, a sense of like, we're not going to help you in five years time, we're going to start helping you now. And I do think that will play quite well with the public. And we are seeing a bit of a poll bounce.

[Luke Jones]

And just in terms of how all that's being presented, do you think that is canny strategy, having seen what's gone before, or do you think that is just natural personality?

[Josh Glancy]

I think much more the former. I mean, look, politicians know their own strengths. Starmer knew he was bad at this stuff and he didn't like it, partly because he was bad at it, but also because he felt it was unserious and undignified and didn't fit his idea of what a Prime Minister should be. A statesman, a. A grand figure, a serious person. I think Burnham likes the idea that, you know, he's quite charismatic, he likes a joke, he's quite quick witted and he can kind of rub along with anyone. And so he's playing to his strengths. But clearly there is a quite careful analysis that's gone on which suggests that you cannot flourish in the attention economy as a politician unless you do this stuff. You've got to go where people's attention is. It's on their screens, it's on their social media accounts, it's on their phones. If you're not popping up there in vaguely positive ways, even in negative ways, frankly, then you're not in the conversation. And I think the Starmer people just got so frustrated, they just felt they couldn't get hurt. They didn't have the tools, they didn't have the material in Keir Starmer to get a hearing in where people's attention is.

[Luke Jones]

And so if that is currently working for Andy Burner at the moment, I wonder how long that can last, particularly on a policy front, because obviously he's new to office. These announcements are relatively simple. There's still some questions about them. There's definitely questions about the money. How long can this go on, do you think? Is it budget in October?

[Andy Burnham]

Yeah.

[Josh Glancy]

All three of the rollouts this week were not fully costed, so you had a reduction in bus fares, which is going to be done through some sort of switcheroo on environmental grants that become loans. You had the cut on VAT for energy, which is going to be funded by scrapping the digital ID scheme, although we learned from Darren Jones, who was the man behind that scheme, that it wasn't actually funded. So not clear where that money's coming from. And you had a cut in business rates for retail outlets, which is going to be funded partly by changing tax lances for places like vape shops, but again, not exactly clear where that money's coming from. So things like that will have to be. They will have to be filtered through the treasury and they will have to actually come up with answers. And that probably will all be done in the budget. So, in a way, it's almost a sort of shopping list at the moment. And these are only the small things, the bigger things, well, there isn't going to be money for them unless there's significant tax rises or significant cuts likely

[Luke Jones]

to welfare, particularly like on the bus fares. Andy Burnham said, you know, this is not necessarily gonna all of a sudden solve someone's concerns about the cost of living. But he says it shows the direction of travel that we're on. That's sort of the point of that as well.

[Josh Glancy]

Yeah, it is. It's about setting a new tone. And there is a clear sense from Burnham that they only get one chance of making a first impression. There is, I think, a willingness to give Labour a second hearing in this country. You know, Kiss Dun was very personally unpopular, as was Rachel Reeves. So if you take them out, there is a willingness for some people to give them another go, but it won't last that long, so it's a short window. I don't think they've got a long leash from the public and they need to really, really hammer the point that we're different and here's how we're different and we're different quickly. And so I think in that sense, even though not all these things are properly costed, and even though the longer term questions over tax and spend and revenue remain as potent as ever, I do think if they can't set that new tone early on, then they've got no chance. That doesn't mean that they're going to fly away and be a great success. But the first thing they had to do this week was show that they're different and that there is an optimism in the air and a new broom, a new wind is sweeping through the nation, or whatever metaphor you want.

[Luke Jones]

So Andy Burnham has had his clear out of storm rights in the Cabinet. Some newish faces, or at least some different ones, are now surrounding him. Will that do the trick? We will have more from Josh coming up. Josh talking about the new Prime Minister and obviously how he compares to the one who's just left. Time is very much of the essence. We're in the middle of a parliament. If you're Andy Burnham, you want to get moving quickly, particularly on some of those big issues which many of us would like to hear answers to. And he's got this new team, this new cabinet around him who are going to help him do that. What do you make of how that has been formulated? Obviously, under Starmer, you had people who had a period of time in opposition to think through some of these big questions, and then even when they came to office, there was some criticism of some of them about, you know, like, why haven't you got a plan for social care? What have you here? We have people like John Healy, who our colleague Steve Swinford was reporting the other day, did not know as he was walking to Downing street, what job he was going to be offered and left as Chancellor of the Exchequer. CC as well, Ed Miliband, not known for being a great foreign policy mover and shaker, could we say. So what do you think when you look at them?

[Josh Glancy]

Well, I think what I think about this whole Burnham project, which is it's a bit of a punt. And the gamble is that Keir Starmer wasn't working and that was never going to get a second hearing from the public, and therefore was dooming Labour to electoral destruction. And therefore, even if Burnham's not really ready, you know, they're building the plane as they take off on the Runway, however you use that phrase, it's still going to give them a better shot than they had under Starmer, which many of them felt with some justification, given the public mood was irrecoverable. You know, a lot of these people are pretty experienced. Someone like Ed Miliband, yes. He's not a foreign policy wonk per se, but he's had a lot of international experience. He's an extremely capable person and will be fine in there. John Healey. Okay. Yeah. He didn't know he was going to be chancellor until about 20 minutes before he became chancellor, but he spent five years working in the Treasury. He's been a respected Defence Secretary. These aren't kind of mad out the box appointments. Similarly, someone like Wes street and going to Defence, well, he doesn't have a great history of defence, but he's a reformer, he's a modernizer, he's a big beast in the Cabinet. It should be fine. So I don't think it's a mad Cabinet. I mean, the two. My two thoughts on the Cabinet are one, the purge of the storm rights, which has been well reported. Now, pretty much anyone, apart from, with a couple of exceptions, who was seen as close to Keir Starmer, has been whacked. Even if they're pretty highly competent, someone like Darren Jones, pretty respected, quite an impressive operator, was Chief Secretary. The Prime Minister was Chief Secretary. The Prime Minister most people felt deserved a job but didn't get one. And I think that has obviously rubbed

[Luke Jones]

people or rubbed him up the wrong way.

[Josh Glancy]

It certainly rubbed him up the wrong way because he was posting about the government policy on Twitter the next day. I suppose your point, your original point does stand, that there are people who just are coming into briefs that they just haven't had time to prepare for. You know, Yvette Cooper has been Home Secretary, she's been Foreign Secretary, now she is Health Secretary. There's no expectation that she can come into this having formulated a clear, deeply felt sense of like, where she wants to take health in this country. These epoch changing policies while also dealing with the day to day business of government. It's quite aspirational that. To put it mildly.

[Luke Jones]

Yeah. And to get them doing it sharpish.

[Josh Glancy]

Yeah. I suppose the hope is that all this cost of living blitz and all these attempts at good vibes buys them a bit of time to bet in some of these longer term policies. But yeah, it's pretty aspirational to think that you can switch horses mid race and suddenly come up with these big crunchy policy shifts at the same time.

[Luke Jones]

Can we talk about Donald Trump?

[Josh Glancy]

Love to.

[Rachel Reeves]

Obviously.

[Luke Jones]

Keir Starmer was known for being very active on the world stage. Lots, we would say, very successful on the world stage in terms of, you know, his support for Zelensky, how he managed to charm Trump to a certain extent until Trump sort of took against him, called him, you know, not really a Churchill, whatever.

[Donald Trump]

He said, you see that man right there? You know who that is? The late, great Winston Churchill. And, you know, unfortunately Kiera is not winched in Churchill.

[Luke Jones]

How do you feel about Andy Burnham slotting into that situation? Seemed to have had a good call with Trump.

[Andy Burnham]

Yeah.

[Josh Glancy]

I think Burnham has a couple of things working in his favour here. One is that Trump instinctively does want to get on with the British Prime Minister. He does see that as part of his job. He is, in his own particular way, quite Anglophilic and, you know, he likes banter, he likes knockabout stuff. He quite likes surprising people with who he gets on with. He won't necessarily want to take against Burnham, at least not initially. But obviously they're not politically aligned. But I think the other thing that Burnham has going in his favor is that Starmer did a lot of the hard yards with Trump. And what I mean by that is Trump came in at the beginning of 2025 and the world was aghast because some of you know, there was this just tsunami of change on the world stage. Is he going to pull out of NATO? Is he going to invade Greenland? Is he going to pull the plug on Ukraine? What's he gonna do? I mean, if you were in government, then this started taking up all of your time, because there were cliff edges all over the place. Yeah, right. And so the decision that Starmer and Cope made then was, we gotta get close. Yeah. We're Britain, we're so dependent on America militarily in terms of security, economically, we've got to stay close.

[Luke Jones]

And all those people saying, call him out, tell him no on this, sort of like, let's. We just need to plow through it.

[Josh Glancy]

There's too much at stake, particularly for the uk So I think worked okay. It worked okay. You know, on things like Ukraine and Greenland, we, you know, the worst outcomes didn't happen. I think Starmer deserves quite a lot of credit for that. He did have to swallow his pride quite a lot with Trump. They did actually get on quite well. He stood his ground on Iran, Starmer, which I think was the right thing to do. And then they had a bit of a falling out, although they ended up in a sort of more middling place. But my point is, Trump is somewhat sort of back in the tram lines now, and the US UK relationship has stabilized somewhat. Okay. You've got the war in Iran. You know, there is still the potential for Trump to do things that massively affect the uk But I think Starmer has done a lot of that difficult first year of Trump. And I think we're now in a place where Burnham can come in and have what I would call a more European relationship with Trump. By which I mean, if you look at Macron or if you look at Meloni or even Mark Carney, you can have these kind of relationships with Trump where you are critical. He'll have a go at you now and then that's actually quite helpful in terms of your domestic politics, but you don't fall out. And it's a functioning relationship with a bit of tension and friction and so forth.

[Luke Jones]

But is that just as time consuming? Because actually, Keir Starmer said in his interview with the BBC after he announced that he was going to be resigning, that he was saying to Andy Burnham, basically, that you are going to have to spend a lot of time on international affairs. And if Andy Burnham is saying we are going to be a cost of living government, but all of a sudden he's not gonna be here as much as he'd like to be, that's a challenge.

[Josh Glancy]

So it was really interesting. That was the one piece of public advice that Starmer has given Burnham, because Starmer hated the idea that he was never here. Kieran. Just messing about on the world stage, actually. He was like, no, these are incredibly important things for the national interest. They have huge domestic implications on things like cost of living. And I'm trying to go and get a good deal for Britain out in the world and only I, the Prime Minister, can actually do that. So his point to Burnham was, you are going to have to go and do that too. Burnham won't want to do as much of it, that's quite clear. He does have quite a heavyweight Foreign Secretary in terms of Miliband, although might struggle with the Trump administration. Miliband. But I think Starmer will be somewhat vindicated that these issues of security and defence and geopolitics just come wave after wave nowadays, all of them require the Prime Minister's attention.

[Luke Jones]

Do you think we could or should have a snap election?

[Josh Glancy]

It's a great question because there has

[Luke Jones]

been a bit more chatter about it.

[Josh Glancy]

I don't think that chatter is going to go away. I think that we're seeing a very early pole bounce for Burnham, so let's wait and see where that goes. But if the pole bounce sustains, there is going to be a lot of chatter and particularly some of these bigger things that he wants to do. You know, whether it's a national care service, whether it's, you know, radical devolution are not really things that Labour's campaigned on. They're not necessarily contrary to specific promises in the manifesto, but they just feel like not quite what we voted for. And if he's going to do things that are going to be divisive, that are going to upset large constituencies, then the question where's your mandate? Will get louder. At the same time, you've got 400 odd Labour MPs, many of whom are on quite narrow majorities in their constituencies and some of many of whom are in the Cabinet. So, like, there's a lot of people who will not want to risk their jobs and livelihoods and positions on an early election. I'd Be surprised if Burnham went this year, but he could go, say, next summer. But then again, it really depends on if his popularity sustains. So, for example, I do think we're immediately now looking at the budget, right, which will be this autumn. If he has to put taxes up at the budget, if that all gets quite unpopular, if people quickly forget about these lovely cost of living handouts, and if the war in Iran kicks off again in a really bad way and inflation goes up, then suddenly you're like, actually, we'd be mad to call him in the election. Let's buckle in for the three years and see where we get to. So it is so contingent. But as I said, if he wants to be radical and his popularity endures, then it will be quite tempting and you will start to hear more and more about it.

[Luke Jones]

You as well, though, have the situation with Nigel Farage. In an arguably difficult situation because of reporting from the Sunday Times, Kemi Badnock seems to be enjoying a bit of an upward trend in terms of her personal popularity rating. What seemed a few months ago as well, if you call an election reform will obviously win, isn't a slam dunk anymore.

[Josh Glancy]

No, I mean, it is worth remembering that if you look at the polls, the burn and bounce, what it's achieved is putting labor within the margin of error of reform. So, you know, reform is still a very serious proposition in this country. But clearly, yeah, Farage's personal ratings are well down. These scandals aren't going away. There's going to be more reporting on them as reporters, including our own fine Insight team, get to the bottom of where this money came from. People like George Cottrell and why it was given to Farage and so forth. So they haven't shaken that scandal off. It's quite a favorable picture for Burnham he's got at the moment. And again, I really want to caveat this with that. It is week one. This could all go horribly wrong with him in a matter of not even week one.

[Luke Jones]

I mean, we're sort of barely at

[Josh Glancy]

the end of week one, but he does initially have the slight feeling of a lucky general in the sense that the Green Party's in a bit of a mess. Right. Zach Polanski had a slight failure to launch after a surge earlier in the year. The Reform Party's as weak as it's been for 18 months. Really, with all this scandal and its own poll ratings. Fine, yeah, the toys are doing a bit better, but it's quite gradual and they've got a lot of brand detoxification to do. So the political picture is quite favorable. There is a path for Burnham here, but it is narrow. And I do think some of these spending commitments could become a problem. And I do think that getting the budget right is going to be a massive ask for a lot of new ministers and a new top team coming in. And I think until they've done that, we won't know quite how seriously to take them as a government.

[Luke Jones]

We'll hold onto your hats. We'll see what happens.

[Josh Glancy]

Josh, pleasure to talk to you, as always. Pleasure to be here.

[Rachel Reeves]

Foreign.

[Luke Jones]

That was Josh Glancy, associate editor at the Sunday Times. You'll get more from him [e-mail] if you've got a subscription or in the paper this Sunday. If you've got any thoughts of this new government, where it's going, what it's doing, you can email us anytime. The story times.com is how to send any questions, comments or queries. That is it from us today. Today's producers were Elle Scott Shabner, McGruel and Jennifer Kennedy. The executive producer was Harry Stott, sound design was by Dave Creasy and theme composition was by Mao Lasseto. I'm Luke Jones. See you soon.