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- [00:00]
Hannah Berner
This is Hannah Berner, the co host of Gigli Squad. We could all just stay in bed scrolling through other people's vacations forever. But where is the fun in that? The best memories come from stepping outside of your little bubble and being open to the unexpected. And what better way to be open to the unexpected than finally booking that trip to Europe. You guys know I'm a Delta girly. Every time I go, I get my Delta headphones. And when I fly to Europe, Delta treats me like a queen. And they'll treat you too. I was always a little nervous about navigating a foreign country, but then I realized it's so important to grow and see different cultures and to put yourself in different situations. And Delta held my hand the whole time. Being away just helps you put life into perspective and your little worries are not so bad. Travel really is the best way to discover something new about yourself and grow from the experience. Start Step outside your comfort zone this summer. Get some Delta headphones and fly with Delta airlines. They truly are the best way to get to Europe and they just make the whole journey feel so comfortable and seamless. Go book your next chapter right now@delta.com
- [01:08]
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- [01:42]
Luke Jones
From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Luke Jones. It wasn't really a Labour leadership contest. In the end, Zakir Starmer stood aside and Andy Burnham has risen to take his place.
- [01:59]
Andy Burnham
I left the north again.
- [02:00]
Patrick Maguire
I traveled south again.
- [02:02]
Andy Burnham
Was a bit of a Smith lyric there for you. But I'm back in London. Good growth in every postcode, hope in every heart. That's our mission.
- [02:10]
Luke Jones
He was looking for a job. Now he's found a job. But how long until he's miserable? His ascent to Downing street might have been relatively smooth, but this Monday, the real hard work of government begins.
- [02:24]
Andy Burnham
I hope people can begin to feel some of the excitement that comes with the change that I'm setting out today. It promises a new era of possibility for Britain. The change will be driven through the Prime Minister's office in an extended operation based here in Manchester.
- [02:44]
Luke Jones
He sketched out some of his plan for the country, but there are still More questions than answers. Who is Andy Burnham? Cabinet minister turned Westminster outsider. Smith's quoting Northerner, Cambridge literature graduate. Blairite, Brownite, Corbynite. A colleague who knows him and his past very well will explain.
- [03:06]
Patrick Maguire
People talk about the old joke and he hates this joke. A Blairite of Brownite and a Corbinite walk into a bar and the barman says, what you're having, Andy,
- [03:28]
Luke Jones
The story today. Will the real Andy Burnham please stand up?
- [03:41]
Patrick Maguire
I am Patrick Maguire. I am chief political commentator for the Times. And I spend almost every waking hour, well, not almost every waking hour thinking about the Labour Party. And right now that means thinking about Andy Burnham.
- [03:55]
Luke Jones
And before we get into who Andy Burnham is, can we reflect for a moment on the madness of the situation? It wasn't too long ago that people were saying, what do you mean? Andy Burnham's gonna have an MP stand down. He's gonna trigger a by election, he's gonna return to the Commons, he's gonna. And he's gonna win a contest that's too mad. And yet that's exactly what was happening with less friction.
- [04:15]
Patrick Maguire
Well, I remember exactly where I was when I found out Josh Simons, the MP for Makerfield, was going to resign. It was a Thursday afternoon and occasionally, Luke, as you know, political journalists work from settings that are not this office or Parliament.
- [04:33]
Luke Jones
Pubs.
- [04:33]
Patrick Maguire
I was in a pub. I was in a pub, strictly on business, and a colleague texted me and said, have you heard this rumor that Josh Simons is gonna resign? And I thought, classic been around the house with this one. I actually spoke to Josh Simons about this earlier this week. Thank you very much. I sent Josh Simons a text, radio silence. And then I thought, hmm, that's unusual. And then I texted someone who knows Andy Burnham and Josh Simonswell, and I said, is Josh Simons about to resign? And they replied with a very cryptic message that said, the King over the water now departs from Wigan Pier. And at that moment, I knew it was true. And I was sat there and I was having conversations with a range of Labour people whose heads were exploding. And one of them said to me, if Andy gets this right, if he wins, he will be Prime Minister in eight weeks. And nearly eight weeks on, that is where we are.
- [05:33]
Stamps.com Advertiser
Right?
- [05:33]
Patrick Maguire
And it has been a surreal, uncanny Valley experience, hasn't it?
- [05:39]
Luke Jones
Yeah. How is he preparing for power? And how long has he been preparing for power?
- [05:44]
Patrick Maguire
Well, this is a bone of contention, because Louise Haig, who is central to Andy Burnham's preparations for government, former Transport Secretary, who will be running his government in some capacity, probably as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. She'll be running, running number 10, running the cabinet Office, coordinating across government. She said she was on a. Another Lesser podcast the other day and said, you know, we've been working on this for a year, we've been preparing for a year. And that really riled people who are still loyal to Keir Starmer. I got a string of invective from people saying, how dare she? You know, she was plotting to bring us down. I think it's fair to say, though, that obviously Andy Burnham has been thinking about the Premiership for a long time. The preparations have really stepped up a gear since Josh Simon's resigned and it's he, Andy Burnham and Louise Haig, who've been in and out of the commanding heights of Whitehall talking to senior civil servants about their plans. But of those plans, by the way, we know broad contours, but not necessarily the specific detail. We will have to wait.
- [06:50]
Luke Jones
What about the man himself? Because you have met him many times, interviewed him many times, and he does have this sort of bifurcated image in the public imagination, as much as he exists there of either sort of Fred Perry, northern dad on one side, or sort of Cambridge graduate, political spad and Westminster operative. When you meet him, how does he come across?
- [07:10]
Patrick Maguire
Andy Burnham is someone I really instinctively recognise, and part of the reason for that is we are both what you would call wools in Merseyside.
- [07:22]
Luke Jones
What does that mean?
- [07:22]
Patrick Maguire
Well, wool is short for woolly bug. Right. So if you meet a proper scouser, and I've got to be careful here, because Andy Burnham was actually born in Liverpool but grew up outside it. So, you know, I think Andy Burnham has called himself a wool. So I'm not committing a hate crime. If you are from Liverpool, you would say someone from Southport like me, or someone from Newton Le Willow's culture. Whichever part of Andy Burnham's life you want to define him as is a wool. It's a woollyback too, Vindhi. Yeah, well, yeah, I'm trying to read Budget.
- [07:49]
Stamps.com Advertiser
Okay.
- [07:50]
Patrick Maguire
Finally, finally we have a wool Prime Minister. So, you know, Andy Burnham is a classic sort of, you know, from the sort of nether regions, that sort of the liminal space between Liverpool and Manchester, who is obviously, in some respects, up to a point, a Westminster lifer. But he's also a really specific product of a really specific time and place, which is Merseyside, Greater Manchester, South Lancashire, you call it, and its environs specifically in the 1980s, and immerse yourself in that World. And I think once you've done that, a lot of the things that Westminsters look at and say, what are you talking about? Or you know, you can't be serious, actually suddenly make a lot of sense.
- [08:31]
Luke Jones
And just explain that for me. Because until I read your pie on his Catholicism in particular, I hadn't realised that was such a large part of his identity. I sort of understood vaguely the kind of labor route and even to a certain extent, even though I don't really like football, the sort of Everton aspect of it. But the Catholicism was a surprise.
- [08:47]
Patrick Maguire
Yeah, exactly. So when I saw Andy Burnham on the campaign trail in Makerfield, we were sat in the garden of the Labour Club in Stub Shaw Cross in Ashton, and we were watching the Challenge cup final, the Rugby League Challenge cup final on the telly. And we were having a couple of beers and I said something one of his would be constituents had said to me. Cause they'd said to me sort of quite gloomily, you know, the thing you gotta understand, lad, is that this place was built by three institutions, the Catholic Church, the Labour Party and Rugby League. And these days it's only rugby League that people care about. And even that is on its arse. And I put that to Andy Burnham and he sort of smiled wistfully and he said, you know, I always used to say the three things that shaped me were Everton, the Labour Party and the Catholic Church, in that order. And you know, that sounds almost glib, it sounds like a slogan. But actually that's the core of his politics. So let's take them in turn. Everton Football Club. Certainly not in the 80s when it was a very good football team. But, you know, he would say that is working class solidarity, the underdog, the Labour Party, right? It is a sort of congenital Labourism. You know, son of a telephone engineer and a GPS receptionist, right? Grew up in what he describes as a working class home, you know, so he's born into the Labour Party is an unthinking thing. That is the political expression of who he is. You know, he couldn't be anything else but labor and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is a really interesting one because if you say to someone, this politician is a Catholic these days, you think, well, J.D. vance, you know, you think of what in America you now call trad Catholics, often converts, right? When you think of an English Catholic in public life, you might think of someone like Widdicombe. Well, indeed, you think of somebody for whom the. The theology or the doctrine is really important. And they might have departed from The Church of England, because of a doctrinal difference. Ordination of women priests now, but it comes, for instance, whereas Andy Burnham, it's different. It's a bit like the Labour Party, you know. So Andy Burnham is born, you know, his mum is from an Irish Catholic family. Like many Catholic families in Liverpool, Andy Burnham grows up a Catholic because, you know, every, you know, almost everybody does. And he goes to Catholic schools and he's an altar boy and he and his brothers fight to be the one to hold the communion plate. And he said repeatedly, you know, he was reading the catechism at school. And one day when he was about 14, and in the background the miners strike is raging. He's watching Derek Hatton on the television, the deputy leader of Liverpool City Council, a member of the Trotskyist militant tendency. Really controversial for him. History at war with Mrs. Thatcher and with the Labour leader Neil Kinnock. But in Liverpool, he was something of a folk hero for a time, should say, in the interest of fairness. Andy Burnham since said he grew out of that pretty quickly and fell in love with Neil Kinnick's oratory. But, you know, that's the roiling political context. Right. Every day he's going to school in Newton Le Willows and the bus takes him past striking miners at Parkside Colliery and he's reading the catechism in school. And he realizes, he says, the political enfranchisement of that. Everything I'm learning about Catholicism on earth is the Labour Party. And there's a very progressive, pragmatic archbishop in Liverpool called Derek Warlock. You know, he's clashing with Rome often on questions of contraception, on questions of even stuff like, you know, can we please have gluten free communion wafers? So how does that stuff. Yeah, no, exactly. And there's sort of, you know, he is looking at his working class congregations and saying, you know, these people did a different style of ministry. And Andy Burnham is an altar boy and he's pressing play on these sermons from this. What Thatcher would have said was a sort of dangerous left wing archbishop. And Andy Burnham is listening to that and thinking, this is it. So this is the sort of political, sociological environment he grows up in. You know, it's all about solidarity, the underdog. You know, an old friend of his had this beautiful phrase. You know, he said, Andy's politics is the politics of working class Catholics in Lancashire. You know, you kick one and they all limp. And that explains all the transformations we've seen in him. You know, that's the one through line throughout it all.
- [13:16]
Luke Jones
And how did that then actually come up against the matter of actual hard governing politics when he was then working as a special advisor and then eventually became an MP in 2001? I mean, what kind of political world was he surrounded in then and how did that impact him?
- [13:29]
Patrick Maguire
Well, it's interesting because he doesn't have a particularly easy rise into power. So he goes to Cambridge, our only
- [13:38]
Luke Jones
Prime Minister to have read English literature.
- [13:40]
Patrick Maguire
Well, indeed, when he sees office. Indeed. So he goes to Cambridge and then wants to be a journalist to go down to London and works on a trade magazine for industrial tankers for three years and eventually meets someone who knows someone who gets him a job as an advisor to Tessa Jowl, a New Labour grandee he specialised to Chris Smith, the culture secretary. Then 2001 gets his parliamentary seat in Leigh, one of the atter Wigan seats again, near where he grew up. He becomes a sort of model Blairite in some respects. But it's interesting when people talk about the old joke and he hates this joke, you know, when I spoke to him, he referred repeatedly to that joke. A Blairite, a Browner and a Corbynite walk into a bar and the barman says, what are you having, Andy? And he hates that joke because he thinks it flattens him, doesn't understand why he's loyal to the Labour Party, as we were discussing before. But also he sort of thinks, well, hang on, I was never quite any of those things. I went back and read his maiden speech and there's a really striking passage in the middle of it where he says, and again, it sort of pre figures a lot of the arguments he's making now. He's saying, people in my constituency don't like this place. It only brings them bad news. And it hasn't been able to stop what we now call globalization or market forces losing the manufacturing jobs. And he's speaking in a debate about Europe and he's saying, a factory in my constituency in Hindley, which now part of the Makerfield constituency represents, has just shut down. The jobs have moved to the Czech Republic. So can we all sort of chill out on this happy clappy Europe stuff? So it's really interesting, looking at that,
- [15:17]
Andy Burnham
I am worried that an air of inevitability is growing around the loss of manufacturing jobs from this country with vague terms like market forces and globalization cited. That is dangerous. And as a country we need to work hard to keep jobs that are desperately needed.
- [15:31]
Patrick Maguire
But nonetheless he has a sort of irresistible rise. Like lots of people of that generation, he is A Home Office Minister under Blair, where he is called Flogam and Burnham because he had quite traditionalist lines on law and order and crime. And then he ends up in Gordon Brown's first cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Then he's Culture Secretary, which he said was his dream job. Then he's Health Secretary. Right. So he, before he's 40, he's in the Cabinet.
- [16:00]
Luke Jones
He obviously has run for Labour leader before, unsuccessfully. Why did they go badly?
- [16:05]
Patrick Maguire
It was interesting. In 2010, he runs against a very crowded field of the Billaban brothers. Ed Balls, he's number four. And then Diane Abbott.
- [16:14]
Luke Jones
Right.
- [16:14]
Patrick Maguire
And he comes fourth. You know, he's backed by lots of, you know, his fellow Northwest MPs, but. But, you know, he's young. He's not really the name on anyone's lips at that point. 2015, he was the front runner. He had been a very popular Shadow Health Secretary, really forceful opponent of the Tories, and was the front runner. But there was always. He almost sort of blinked, you know, when he got there. Harriet Harman, who was then acting Labour leader, instructed her MPs to abstain on a welfare vote in the comments. And Jeremy Corbyn, of course, who at that point is the no hope left wing candidate, says very unambiguously, well, no, I'm not gonna abstain on a matter of principle. I'm gonna vote against these savage Tory welfare cuts. Everybody else abstains along the lines of the whip. Then Andy Burnham gives this really tortured explanation. You said this bill was unsupportable, and yet you didn't vote against it. And your support over the last few days has been leeching to Jeremy because of that.
- [17:13]
Andy Burnham
No, unsupportable. And I didn't support it.
- [17:15]
Patrick Maguire
And indeed we didn't oppose it.
- [17:18]
Andy Burnham
And indeed we voted.
- [17:19]
Patrick Maguire
Yeah, we did.
- [17:20]
Andy Burnham
We voted against the amendment, said this House declines to give the bill a
- [17:26]
Luke Jones
second
- [17:28]
Patrick Maguire
reading against Ian.
- [17:29]
Andy Burnham
But I've said I wanted the position to be stronger. But there's a bigger point here, isn't it? In politics, leadership is not splitting the party.
- [17:38]
Patrick Maguire
And so his natural supporters in the union movement and the Labour membership flocked to Jeremy Corbyn instead. And he would say, now, look, I was just. I was just sort of pushed into a really inauthentic place by the constraints of the party wit, by Westminster culture, by the London media. You know, I felt like I had to be somewhat something I wasn't. And sort of, he emerges from that a pretty brute, if not diminished, figure. And if you said to people at that point, Andy Burnham is going to be made Labour leader by acclamation in 11 years time and he'll have totally reinvented himself and he'll be the most popular Labour politician in the country. People would have said, well, hang on, he just doesn't have it in him. But it's that time in Manchester, I think that allowed him the time and space to find a political brand that worked for him.
- [18:36]
Luke Jones
Coming up, how did Andy Burnham's time as the mayor of Greater Manchester give him his political mojo back? And does all of that tell us anything about what his theory of power for Westminster might be? Morphin Patrick Next.
- [18:58]
Hannah Berner
This is Hannah Berner, the co host of Giggly Squad. We could all just stay in bed scrolling through other people's vacations forever, but where is the fun in that? The best memories come from stepping outside of your little bubble and being open to the unexpected. And what better way to be open to the unexpected than finally booking that trip to Europe. You guys know I'm a Delta girly. Every time I go I got my Delta headphones and when I fly to Europe, Delta treats me like a queen. And they'll treat you too. I was always a little nervous about navigating a foreign country, but then I realized it's so important to grow and see different cultures and to put yourself in different situations. And Delta held my hand the whole time. Being away just helps you put life into perspective and your little worries are not so bad. Travel really is the best way to discover something new about yourself and grow from the experience. Step outside your comfort zone this summer, get some Delta headphones and fly with Delta Airlines. They truly are the best way to get to Europe and they just make the whole journey feel so comfortable and seamless. Go book your next chapter right now@delta.com
- [20:05]
Patrick Maguire
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- [20:15]
Luke Jones
I felt like it was a good match.
- [20:17]
Patrick Maguire
From the first time we talked about
- [20:19]
Hannah Berner
BetterHelp is there to meet people at
- [20:20]
Patrick Maguire
their needs, giving them a space to feel safe. There is a stigma about therapy, but with BetterHelp I meet people where they are. Wherever you are.
- [20:30]
Hannah Berner
That's where BetterHelp begins. Visit betterhelp.comrandompodcast to get started.
- [20:36]
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- [21:17]
Luke Jones
Patrick Maguire. We're talking about Andy Burnham and what I can't get my head around, both when his time as Health Secretary, but then also when he then goes on to leave Westminster and becomes the Mayor of Greater Manchester. To what extent he's good at the job or is actually responsible for any of the good things that might have come from that of either position.
- [21:36]
Patrick Maguire
Well, that's the interesting thing about the Manchester mayoralty. He obviously takes that job in 2017. A cynic would say, well, look, you're two years into Jeremy Corbyn at that point. He hadn't won the Labour leadership in 2010, he hadn't won it in 2015. He'd been Jeremy Corbyn Shadowholme secretary, hadn't called for Jeremy Corbyn to resign. But clearly being in Parliament then, if you were a Labour mp, was completely miserable. Jeremy Corbyn hadn't yet won his famous not quite victory, but he would say moral victory in 2017, and it just looked like it was going to be a thankless slog. And Andy Burnham saw the opening for the metromarialty in Greater Manchester and took it and Manchester. Compare it to Liverpool. You know, Andy Burnham's other city was one of Mrs. Thatcher's favorite places. You know, she spoke, you know, James Anderton, the head of the police there, was her favorite police chief, right? So it was a very different city in terms of its attitudes and response to Thatcherism. And it become a sort of laboratory for quite dynamic experimental local government that was entirely unsentimental about dealing with the private sector. And the city is going gangbusters if you're a developer or whatever, when Andy Burnham takes over in 2017. But what Andy Burnham does, I think, is twofold. One, he brings a degree of profile to that post. And if you compare it to some of the other metromarities, right, it's the one everybody talks about outside of London. You know, he's a national figure and he understands the power of a story. I was born in Liverpool, but my journey began in this area. I went to a school about two miles over there, and I remember coming here 1984 and getting battered on these
- [23:22]
Andy Burnham
pitches on the rugby league field.
- [23:24]
Patrick Maguire
But I Didn't hold it against them. I sent my three kids here because Eddie's is a great school and he's so effective a storyteller that, you know, people assume that it all started with him, when actually it's the culmination of a much longer, sort of decades long story. But he's made that merit so distinctively his own, even right down to the sort of, you know, painting the buses yellow, and has managed to take what was, you know, pretty prosaic local government reorganization story into one of the great foundation myths of British politics, one of the great reinvention stories, personal reinvention stories of British politics.
- [24:04]
Andy Burnham
I will continue to adopt a place first rather than party first approach, which is the foundation of Greater Manchester's success. This is the new politics we are pioneering. I will take it as an instruction to complete the building of a public transport system that befits a city region of our stature. And I will do it within this numeral term, uniting bike, bus, tram and train in a single integrated system.
- [24:37]
Luke Jones
As all of this came about, as he inches ever closer to the King and to Downing street and to all those levers of power that Keir Starmer says, you Yank, nothing happens. Labour Party members, almost entirely, but for a few, seem to have fallen very much in line. Is that the sense that you are getting from them? Are they completely on board? For the moment?
- [24:59]
Patrick Maguire
Look, there is an extent to which this is people piling onto a train that's already leaving the station. So are there 349, and that's the number of people who've nominated Andy Burnham at the time we're speaking. Are there 349 people who absolutely love Andy Burnham in the parliamentary Labour Party? Not really. There's a big coalition of the sort of never possessed and dispossessed of Starmerism who felt that Keir Starmer was aloof, useless, disrespectful to Labour MPs and had strayed too far from the party's values and employed a load of thugs and bullies. Right. I'd say they're the people who came first to Burnham, people who work with him, you know, and there are lots of several of those around the cabinet table who know him of old and have known him as mayor. Some of them are sort of lightly skeptical, some of them are slightly baffled, but all of them like him. He's quite an unusual Labour politician, actually, in that I spend a lot of time listening to Labour people describe their incredibly specific hatreds of each other. I've never heard Someone say, andy Burnham's a bad guy or a horrible person. You know, everybody likes the man. Some people say, well, that's a. You know, that's not great, actually, because Andy's a. Andy's a nice guy, but, you know, what's going on upstairs? Or what's he actually going to do? Or, you know, does he want to live in a world where people won't like him? Right. Would he really struggle with that? That's been the thing in Manchester. He's had. He's not had an easy ride, but he's crested a massive wave of popularity over the course of his mayoralty and, you know, that could yet come crashing down both. Both within the parliamentary Labour Party and in the country. But, you know, I think the Labour Party knows that it needs to make something work and this is basically its last chance. I wrote a column a couple of weeks ago whose headline was Labour is a powder keg. That could easily blow and it could quickly, right. There are lots of people who will feel let down and humiliated when they don't get jobs, when they're sacked. There are people who feel like this, you know, respectable government that had been plugging along and trying in really hard circumstances to get stuff done and was finally seeing results has been crushed under the heel of his Adidas Gazelles and one man's ambition and they don't really have a plan, Right. So, you know, yes, I'd say critical mass Labour MPs obviously want this to go well and they are drawn to power like Moss to a flame. And everybody's a Burnhamite now.
- [27:25]
Luke Jones
And this is before we get into any kind of policy area?
- [27:27]
Patrick Maguire
Yeah, totally.
- [27:28]
Luke Jones
And do you think we are, as you look into your increasingly busy summer, are we in for a period of hunkering down and silence and steady she goes. We're gonna think of some things. Or is it gonna be a case of new policy every single day? Let's get the awkward things out early. A couple manifesto U turns out there just sort of roll this while we're popular and we're new.
- [27:49]
Patrick Maguire
Well, indeed, yeah. I think Andy Burnham gets into Downing street and gives that speech from outside the door and signals that big action is coming on. The cost of living on utilities, on xyz and then spends the summer glad handing people and in a sort of version of Tony Blair's masochism strategy, going where he knows he might not get a warm reception. So places like Aberdeen, places like Port Talbot, you know, seats that Labour have lost to reform, or where the Tories are Resurgent or where the nationalists are resurgent.
- [28:22]
Andy Burnham
Right.
- [28:23]
Patrick Maguire
He will want to be really visible and he'll want to say, well, as I've already said, we are gonna change the things you don't like. We are gonna put more money back in your pockets. And his scope to make massive changes to start with is limited. But it means that the budget, when it comes in autumn, is going to be absolutely massive. He will want that to happen.
- [28:46]
Andy Burnham
That's the point.
- [28:46]
Patrick Maguire
For the unpopular stuff, yes. That will be the big bang. And it will be where the winners and losers from his political argument, the group to keep an eye on. It's not an ideological thing. And fittingly for Andy Burnham, it is place first. They are MPs in the southeast, in and around London, who won their seats for the first time in 2024. They are looking and listening at and to Andy Burnham and thinking, does he have a message for seats like mine? And some of them are now empowered to say. Feel empowered to say it publicly. And that's gonna be a big test.
- [29:23]
Luke Jones
And just a final thought, obviously, we've discussed there the scale of the challenge, some of the contours of what he might want to do or what he might be able to do, and then also where he comes from, what is driving his politics and what his background is. But one of your in particular criticisms of Keir Starmer was him not necessarily having an organizing principle of government and a theory of power, because that's the other challenge in public life these days, isn't it? Not just what you'd like to do, but how do you actually make it happen and have it all fall into line, make those levers actually do something? Does Andy Burnham have a theory of power that could connect all of what you just said there?
- [30:00]
Patrick Maguire
So Andy Burnham's theory of power is something called the unaccountable state.
- [30:04]
Andy Burnham
What we've got at the moment across large parts of the north of England, we have hollowed out councils and we have an unaccountable state where too much is delivered by arm's length or outsourced agencies that local councillors can't control.
- [30:20]
Patrick Maguire
And what he means by that is, you know, he's been speaking about, I want to end 40 years of neoliberalism. I want to overturn Thatcher's legacy. When we think about Thatcher's legacy, of course, we think about privatization, deregulation, the city, all of that deindustrialization. But quite key to everything she was doing was centralizing power. You know, she was constantly at war with local government. She was abolishing the Great London Council, Merseyside County Council, Greater Manchester County Council.
- [30:47]
Andy Burnham
Right.
- [30:48]
Patrick Maguire
To take the power back for herself. So for the past 40 years, the story has been councils getting less and less powerful. As Andy Burnham would see it, a private interest taking over essential services, things being outsourced. And the voter, their sole interaction with politics is politicians saying, we can't do that. Sorry, mate, nothing we can do. Actually, you've called the wrong office.
- [31:11]
Andy Burnham
In recent times, we have experienced severe, repeat flooding in Platte Bridge, Bickershaw and Ashton. Caroline Simpson, group chief executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, answered a call from myself as mayor and Josh Simons as local mp to get the agencies around the table. And we had to move heaven and earth to get that single conversation going and a plan to deal with it, which we're still waiting for. It shouldn't be like that.
- [31:45]
Patrick Maguire
It's sort of a world in which politicians are less and less powerful in the face of outsourcing, centralization and privatization. And you can file his criticisms of Westminster's culture into that as well. You know, he would say the party whips or party managers or people like Morgan Mats Sweeney are just as unaccountable. They make the state unaccountable because they force MPs to behave in a way that doesn't serve their constituents or feels like it silences them. And all the while the voter is alienated. They're saying, why isn't my politician responsive to me? Why can't they fix this? Why aren't they responding to the anger in the constituency about this issue and voting loyally with the party line? And Andy Burnham's public Persona, the one he's constructed, his storytelling, his presentational style, it's all been an attempt to sort of to overturn that, to embody a more accountable state where, you know, you know, the guy who can fix this and he'll show you that he's fixed it. And I'd say that's his theory of power. I mean, whether it will survive contact with the parliamentary Labour Party, with the bond markets and a really impatient electorate is another question. And I think you'll see it from day one of his premiership.
- [33:01]
Luke Jones
And day one will be when?
- [33:03]
Patrick Maguire
20 July. Yes. So he will make a trip to the palace on Monday morning. Andy Burnham will be on the steps of number 10.
- [33:11]
Luke Jones
And what will you be doing?
- [33:12]
Patrick Maguire
Great question. I assume I'll be on Downing street or more likely in the Times Parliamentary office, listening attentively, trying to. Trying to spot the references to Catholic social teaching, the subtle allusions to Philip Larkin and his prosecution, then going on the phone and asking Keir Starmer loyalists how much they hated it, and synthesizing the two in an impeccably fair but always authoritative 1200 times yes, exactly. Exactly. Patrick McGuire, thank you very much. Cheers Luke.
- [33:55]
Luke Jones
That is all from us. Keep your eyes peeled for Patrick's reporting on the new leader and who his cabinet picks are, as well as all of that gets underway on Monday. And if you've got any questions for us in this new era of UK politics, you can email us at any time. Thestoryatthetimes.com is how to reach us the producer today was Harry Stotts, the Executive producer was Taryn Siegel, and sound design and theme composition was by maliceto. I'm Luke Jones. See you soon Sam.
- [35:01]
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