This Could Destroy Andy Burnham’s Leadership Bid | Steven Swinford, Patrick Maguire & Lara Spirit

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]If Keir Starmer's offer to the Labour membership in 2020 was Jeremy [music] Corbyn in a suit, is Andy Burnham just going to put Keir Starmer in a pair of short running shorts?

[00:00:11]>> [music] >> We've had two big shifts in his approach. You can some people call them U-turns. One is explicitly so, the other less so, but the first was he is now saying explicitly, I will abide by Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules because the cost of government borrowing kept spiking. Uh you know, it was going to be used against him. So, he's now there. He That is done. He will not borrow extra for defense as he's previously said. And that is a big shift from what he said before, and that has huge consequences for his premiership, which we'll talk about if he wins this, which we'll talk about in a moment. And the second is on Brexit. In the space he went from an interview on Saturday in which he was saying there was a long-term case for Britain rejoining the EU.

[00:00:50]Um and then that is gone. At the Great North Summit speech, he was saying, uh no, I'm not we will not be rejoining the EU under me. So, that is he's trying to take off the the table two big issues.

[00:01:01]In doing so, there is a risk that that severely constrains what he could do if he wins this election.

[00:01:08]Yeah, I mean, I think that Europe stuff with Andy Burnham is very interesting speaking to, you know, Labour sources about this because he has had a real evolution on the question of Europe from someone who obviously campaigned, to be fair to him, very energetically for the Remain campaign during the referendum, and then was extremely sour on the prospect of I mean, well, post election on what happened. You know, when when a number of people in in Labour were clamoring, you know, under Corbyn and outside of Corbyn for either, you know, much much closer relationship with the European Union or for something like a kind of second referendum. He was very careful about that. You know, he did he did sort of come around to the prospect of that when there was the threat of no deal.

[00:01:47]There was a suggestion that he may even vote for Brexit if it did if it did come to that. And then he sort of went quiet on the issue for quite a long time to emerge at Labour conference, of course, last year, to say this remark. Now, I think, you know, it was quite a casual remark that was said in this in this interview and it is quite hard to know exactly how calculated that was as an intervention, but it was, of course, perfectly pitched to the Labour membership, who we know are extremely pro-European. I think that speaks to Wes Streeting's intervention at the weekend as well on this question. And so, I think in many ways I do think it's quite unsurprising that we saw this clarification from Burnham, not just because of the seats demographics, but also because of the fact that he is going to have to come in if he does take over to a pretty divided party. And there has already been a really strong reaction, not just from Reform in the Conservative Party to these questions and from to Wes Streeting's intervention, but also inside the Labour Party. I mean, my phone on Saturday, when we were writing the front page of the Sunday Times, was was literally alight with people in the Labour Party in this government saying, "This is a disaster. This intervention is going to be really, really difficult for us.

[00:02:47]We're just getting our heads around how we can pitch a closer relationship with the European Union, and this throws all of it out of the water. It's totally ideological and it's really badly thought through." And that was specifically on Streeting's intervention, but it does apply to the prospect of Andy Burnham, if he did win this election, saying, "Okay, I want to go firmly down a rejoin path." Now, I think the significance of this is that it does end, you know, a very long-running amerta in the Labour Party on the question of Brexit generally. And they are going to now have to have this conversation, this reckoning about a topic that has been really uncomfortable for many of them for a very long time.

[00:03:15]And Wakefield in a way is a kind of perfect test case for how you navigate these arguments. And so, I think people will be watching Andy Burnham very closely on that question. And then on the fiscal rules, again, I think I mean, in many ways that is a more significant intervention from Burnham because it wasn't very long ago that Lou Haigh, one of his very close allies, you know, published that paper, which was essentially 10 days ago, yeah. 10 days ago, re-looking at that question. And this for many people on the soft left is is a doctrine that they hold to be extremely dear, that the that the fiscal rules have been something very, very damaging and constraining for the Labour Party, and that to truly govern well, you need to find a way of amending them and and and changing them. And that's something they believe massively passionately. So, I think that is going to be something that will have bristled people perhaps ever so slightly more.

[00:03:57]But at the moment, a lot of them are just uniting around the fact that they really desperately want Andy Burnham to win this by-election and will be hoping that he can do so. Now, is he going to end up in a position that we saw with obviously Keir Starmer and also with Rachel Reeves where these things then become extremely difficult and kind of constraining factors if you do then end up in office. I think you know, at the moment for the reasons we've just spoken about, this by-election is a really difficult thing for Burnham to win and he'll be prioritizing winning that above everything else. Uh Patrick, we should just talk to that briefly because in this speech that um Burnham did at the Great North Summit in Leeds, there were kind of three big things he talked about, really quite chunky things. One, nationalization implying but not stating explicitly the nationalization of things like water, energy, other things. Two, he talked about uh reindustrialization. Didn't define what that means, but that presumably means spending quite a lot of money in local areas. And three, he talked about maximum devolution. Again, didn't spell out what that means, but the fair bet is that that means kind of tax-raising powers going much more locally. I think one of the challenges and and we're going to be scrutinizing this very carefully at The Times over the course of this by-election campaign is what does he actually mean by these things, Patrick?

[00:05:08]>> Yeah, look it and as you say, it's in cohaid, it's pretty vague. There is work being done to put meat on the bones of this Commonwealth which is a a sort of left-leaning Labour-linked uh think tank has just put out a big paper on Manchesterism which people will be um people will be studying much more closely now. Uh but and a lot of this, by the way, um is spooking the markets. Spooking the city. When you hear people talk about uh undoing Thatcherism, when you hear people talking about um uh uh about nationalization. Um and the tricky thing for Burnham, right, is finding a message that is capable of maintaining his reputation within the Labour Party but also reassuring the markets. Because there is a There is a story Andy Burnham could tell about about Manchester, which and and you saw bits of it in the video Laura mentioned, you know, working inside by side with business, right? He could basically say, "I'm going to do to the entire country what Howard Bernstein and Graham Stringer and Richard Leese did when they were running Manchester City Council, right? We'll have a great productive relationship with with business and we and then we'll do what I have been doing as Greater Manchester Metro Mayor, which is, you know, reinvesting the proceeds of growth in a strong strategic state and public services." Um but he's he's not he's not really communicating that, right? Because, you know, it's a it's a Labour members and PLP facing sort of anti-politics message right now about the whole thing being broken.

[00:06:38]Um when actually I don't doubt Andy Burnham's critique of regional inequality, etc., etc., is sincere, but you know, he has made the market economy work in in Greater Manchester and, you know, very soon if if he does win in Wakefield, um the audience that is going to matter in terms of his ability to do anything as Prime Minister, uh and, you know, we can shout about the democratic illegitimacy until the cows come home, but ultimately, you know, successive governments have left us exposed to to the people we borrow money from and Andy Burnham is going to need to reassure them that he can be trusted with it. And I don't think he's a million miles away from that as someone who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury in a Blair government and is ultimately running Manchester, you know, it is not socialism in one city.

[00:07:23]It is something much more textured and, you know, less less obviously left-wing than that in terms of its underlying model.

[00:07:31]But it is, you know, he's going to have to put meat on the bones quickly, right?

[00:07:34]And it maybe, maybe, and this is a big question, is he just going to do what Keir Starmer has been doing, which is run a sort of continental social democratic government, but you know, with a bit more charisma and by leaning into the left uh to the left leftish elements of its platform. Right, cuz this is a pretty left-wing government all things considered. Will Andy Burnham just do a bit of left populist messaging and people will suddenly say, "Wow, you know, this government's doing loads of progressive things." I you know, I got a text from someone just before we started recording saying, you know, if Keir Starmer's uh offer to the Labour membership in 2020 was Jeremy Corbyn in a suit, is Andy Burnham just going to pop as Keir Starmer in a pair of short running shorts?

[00:08:14]Very short running shorts, yeah. Yeah, exactly, but with a different with a with a with a different presentation.