Could Burnham Be Labour’s Next Prime Minister?

Added: 2026-05-15

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[00:01:06]>> Welcome to the rest of this politics with me Rory Stewart >> and me Alistister Campbell and we're talking about developments in the leadership of the Labour Party. We had the dreadful local election results recently since when there's been massive speculation about whether anybody might challenge K star the prime minister and leader of the Labor party stepped forward this morning where streeting health secretary resigning from the cabinet saying in his letter of resignation that he no longer has the confidence in the prime minister and he wants a broad leadership debate to see who should follow him and then this evening step forward Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester. Lots of talk about which seat he might step into and step forward on his behalf. A young MP by the name of Jos Simons who has stepped down from a seat in the Manchester area. And um Andy Bernham says he wants to ask the national executive to let him be a candidate.

[00:02:05]>> Let me try for foreign listeners just quickly or or any British listeners who uh like me have been doing other work today and haven't been following the ins and outs. Essentially, under the Labor Party rules, if an MP, sitting MP, gets enough MPs to back him, just over 80 MPs, they can trigger a leadership challenge to the sitting leader, who in this case is Kama. And then the rules are that it goes to an alternative voting system where the electorate voting are Labor Party members and affiliated members which I guess means members of trade unions or certain types of members of trade unions. And if nobody clears 50% of the first round, the candidates votes are redistributed until somebody emerges as the winner. And the system I guess was set up in order to try to balance two things. One is to make sure that the candidate was not such an outsider that uh no MPs were prepared to get behind them. So maybe that was sort of blocking the return of a Jeremy Corbyn who maybe they thought wouldn't have got the requisite 80 plus votes. And the second thing is of course uh giving a voice to the party but that means that different MPs now challenging Star have advantages and disadvantages. Starharma has one big advantage if he wants to hang on which is he can try to hold the MPs and stop them putting their names behind an alternative and we can talk about that.

[00:03:35]If he fails to do that then I guess there will be insiders who may be better at mobilizing the critical number of MPs and then there may be somebody and this is what I wanted to get to you with.

[00:03:45]What if there's somebody like Angela Raina who might be more appealing to the party and the country? And for someone like me, from an outside, it seems to me she'd almost be a shoein if it was just the Labour Party members voting. Um, so that's where we are. And final thing I wanted to say before I came back to you is the timing on this is odd. We're doing an emergency podcast now because it's incredibly big news cuz it feels like the prime minister is about to be challenged directly. But Andy Bernan's routin would be through a bi-election and a bi-election would take 4 to 6 weeks to happen before he'd even get into parliament. And he'd need to be in Parliament before he could run against Kama, I think. Over to you.

[00:04:26]>> Well, what I'd say, Rory, is that your your knowledge of the workings of the Labour Party has vastly improved in in recent years as due to your constantly listening to me banging on about it.

[00:04:38]Look, I think this is from Andy Bernham's perspective very high risk.

[00:04:43]He's the mayor of Manchester. He's a very popular mayor of Manchester, but there is not much love for politicians who make way for other politicians who want to do something different. I think it was Bruce Milan who became a Labor commissioner and they thought, well, he's going off to Europe. People are going to be so proud of him. Uh, no, not really. So Josh Simons, a young MP, was a minister, resigned from the government because he got caught up in a scandal about the organization he used to be part of, Labor Together, which was allegedly spying on Sunday Times journalists. Now, this is the seat that Andy Burn's going to go for. The last MRP poll, they predicted for the next general election, whenever it happens, a 7,000 majority for reform. a graphic which Seline our social media person has put round today. The chances of winning this seat reform 82%, Labour 17%, Conservatives 0%.

[00:05:47]So this is not a safe route in. Now if you look at those local elections, there probably is no safe route in. I was talking to somebody earlier who was saying actually probably the best thing to Andy would be forget about Vchester and try and find a seat in London. It might be a little bit but even in London it's not sort of absolutely guaranteed.

[00:06:06]So he's got to get in he's got to then get 80 nominations himself and then he can join West Streeting. Your point about Angela Raina I think that if Andy Bernham gets in Angela Raina may feel that that is her sort of politics properly being represented. I think that Angela Raina, even though today she's been celebrating the fact that HMRC's been involved in this big tax scandal, HMRC have said that she's done nothing wrong. She's not been fined. The tax affairs have been sorted out. But prior to that, I'd say her stock was falling somewhat. This may be putting it back in, but I think as things stand, if it was just westing in there, I think Kan would definitely stand. If it's West Street and Andy Burnham, I think it'll work out whether he's got a realistic chance of winning. But the other issue that might get thrown into the mix here is that I said this to you on the main episode um last time we recorded, don't rule out the pressure that there will be to have a woman candidate on the short list. So, and then meantime, I know you're a huge admire of Al Kahn's. He's pretty relatively junior MP in terms of how long he's been in there, but he's a minister and he's been putting it around today or people on his behalf that if there is an open contest, he sees himself as being part of it as well. So, it's wide open. It's incredibly confusing and my sense at the moment of Karma is he's not going anywhere. So there's going to be a big bruising contest at at a time for the country when I just think it's giving the worst possible image of the party to the country right now and the country to the world.

[00:07:48]>> Okay. Well, let's let's just get into that for a second then. So let's just develop that. What's your basic emotional reaction to this as somebody who's a real I mean this has been your life for a very long time. What's the no holds barred Alistister reaction if you were talking to a friend or Fiona about what is going on? What what have you been saying on the phone to people today?

[00:08:07]>> I'll tell you what I I've been saying to people that I think have an influence over Kia Star. I think that it probably was looking back a mistake to block Andy Burnham. Though I said at the time it is a bit odd if you expect the leader to say here's the door. Come through the door. I know your goal is to knock me out. Come and try. Okay. Added to which and I'm only speaking here secondhand.

[00:08:28]I've not spoken to Shabbana Mammud but Shabbana Mammud is a very very key figure on the national executive and I'm hearing that Shabban Mammud is supporting the idea of Andy Bernham coming in. So I think that what maybe Karma could have done in the last 48 hours to have bought himself a bit of time as I've been saying to you all week, let's just try and calm things down a bit. This is not a sensible mood in which to discuss these catastrophic election results. But I what I think he could have done is said, "Look, it's perfectly obvious. A lot of you don't like me. I think I've got a mandate for a term. I'm going to try and see that through, but I get that, you know, there's a lot of demand for change. It seems to me that if there is going to be change and this guy Andy Burnham that everybody seems to a lot of people seem to like, he should be part of that. and we can see how we can do that without damaging the Manchester mealy cuz don't forget Andy Bernham vacating the mayor's seat in Manchester means there has to be a bi-election for that. So my emotional reaction is even if it's the right thing to get karma to step down ahead of the next election I am far from convinced that this is the right time or the right way to go about it. And now you said when we talked about this the other day, well, there's never a right time. There's never a right way. And there's something in that. But this feels I think it also underlines that there's been an awful lot of plotting going on. Well, there's always plotting in politics. You know that and I know that. But I think that you've just literally had the king speech yesterday. So that's a king's speech that West treating was part of designing. Health is a big part of it.

[00:10:07]and to have gone so quickly from what yes were terrible results without any real analysis other than oh well let's change the leader and I think changing the leader is is easier to say that you should do it and do it than necessary to think through all the consequences what until you've worked out who's going to take over.

[00:10:28]>> I I get you're really angry about this and that you feel that this was the wrong decision and it's going to make a real mess. I guess the brutal question is firstly is it actually possible for K sama to survive now that Wes Streeting and Andy Bham are doing this? I mean or are we just kind of we are where we are and however angry you are about it Karma's very unlikely to be around in 3 6 months time.

[00:10:54]>> Yeah. And by the way, let me say I'm I'm not, you know, I've always tried to put the case for K Star because I think he gets so much sort of stuff thrown at him, but I've never pretended that I think he's, you know, the bees knees as leader of the Labour party or as prime minister. And you know, the Labor person in me genuinely wants this government to do well and would like to see Labor win the next election if possible because I think most governments need at least two ter at least two terms to kind of, you know, make big change. So what I say about that is I I think the his his chances of surviving longterm are a lot slimmer than they were. There's no doubt about that because the message that's being put out there is an awful lot of let's imagine he survives. We now know that there are literally dozens of MPs sitting there day after day after day after day thinking I don't want him there. So even survival is a quite a tough place for Kama to be. So, you know, I think that his chances of surviving are pretty slim to be honest.

[00:11:56]>> What should he do then? Should he um accept that and say, "Well, that probably does mean that he needs to set a timetable for his resignation, which is the what Theresa May did in 2019, or does he take the John Major view, which I guess was 1995, which is I'll fight this out, and yes, there's a lot of people who don't like me, but I can win this and I can take them into the next election." I think that latter position is where he is in his mind right now.

[00:12:23]But I think a lot of that is driven just by sheer anger feeling that you know why is this all being thrown at me? Now the answer to that is that's what happens in modern politics. You know as you know I'm in Germany there there was literally an article in one of the broad sheet papers yesterday suggesting that mers might have to call another general election after a year. Now, I don't think that's where they're going to go.

[00:12:48]But I think that in modern times with politics as brutal as it is, populism as viral as it is, social media as violent as it is, the sheer hatred that there is at high-profile public figures in the public is very, very hard. I think he still thinks that he is better than any of the options that are being put forward. Certainly thinks that on foreign policy and I know you and I have talked about this. I mean it is a worry if somebody emerges who's literally had no experience of foreign policy probably not given it that much thought given how much given how much on the prime minister's plate is foreign policy right now he's probably thinking that he's probably feeling very personally betrayed and hurt feeling that you know we're treating is a snake Josh Simons is a snake Andy Burnham he's he's probably thinking all of that but what he has to do as well as the rest of them when I say everything needs to calm down.

[00:13:42]Everyone needs to step back a bit. That includes him. Really work it out.

[00:13:46]>> Okay. So, let's assume then that probably the writing is on the wall for Star. Uh maybe very unfair and I'm actually speaking as a somebody who comes from the Tory party. There's a lot of my former colleagues and people in the center of politics who are saying be careful what you wish for. We could have done a lot worse than Kia Sama. He might be a bit boring, but actually he and Rachel Reed is pretty steady. The economy is growing. The bond market's being a bit unfair, but actually, you know, there are things they failed to do, but they've not been dangerous damaging politicians. And it could get a lot worse. Certainly, if you're from the Tory party, you would worry that um Anra would be much more leftwing that the kind of things that people are talking about in terms of cutting welfare spending. Well, let's look at Wes Streeting's little manifesto or what seems to be his manifesto. He seems to say, "Vote for me. I'm going to cut welfare spending. I'm going to strengthen defense. I'm going to radically reform the NHS. I'm going to make life easier for businesses.

[00:14:54]I'm going to deregulate." So, it's very much sounds like a sort of more businessfriendly free market version of Kiestama. And then Angela Rainer on the other side sounded in that uh large uh thing that she put out a few days ago to be staking out a much more leftwing position. Is that right? Roughly.

[00:15:14]>> Yeah. And it'd be interesting to see for example whether if the leadership contest does go ahead and and West Street does have the numbers whether he will feel that he has to somehow inoculate himself against the charges that are already been put out there.

[00:15:28]you've given the version on policy but the you know I saw one of the first things that happened yesterday when he left that 17-minute meeting with Karma was a graph that was put out from somebody on the left basically these are all the people that bought we're streeting I mean he's going to get a lot of attack from the left he will be seen as the candidate of the right there will be a candidate of the left be that Andy Bham Ed Milliband has made clear that if there isn't one then he would be prepared to stand and then karma I guess would if he stood in those circumstances would project himself as the candidate of the center.

[00:16:02]>> One one small thing there you you just said Ed Milliban might stand and that again for most listeners I think will be absolutely staggeringly astonishing. I mean this is the guy who managed to maneuver his way into being Labour leader in 2010. Uh from the point of view of you and me and many others David Miliband his brother would have been a better choice. took Labor to defeat in 2015.

[00:16:27]Seemed, we thought, not really, whatever his merits are as a man, not quite to have the full capacity to be Labour leader. I mean, can Labour seriously be thinking of sort of jumping back 16 years and trying to trying Ed Milliband again?

[00:16:43]>> Well, I I I I'm not saying that's going to happen. And I'm simply saying that I know that he is of a mindset that if they continue to block Andy Bernham and if none of the others managed to rise up to get sufficient support to take on West Streeting, then he would do it. In other words, the point I'm making is that he's been operating as if you like a a guardian of the soft left, seeing West Streeting as as not being of the soft left. So that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying he's going to be in this, but um um but that underlines to me how much if we're not careful cuz my the other thing you talk about me being angry. I'm not angry about this. I'm just sort of frustrated really. But because one of the things I think that I've been shocked at, we've seen this with some of the scandals, most notably the Peter Mandlesson scandal, but also some of the so-called smaller scandals, is I've just been watching the way that Labor is being portrayed as being no better than the last lot. That's lethal. And that plays completely into Faraj's hands. And you know when you think about what people say about the last lot, well inflation, stagflation, the economy not growing, public services not rapidly improving the way that they wanted.

[00:18:00]You've got a sense that the Labor Party is now doing what people hated about the Tory party.

[00:18:08]fighting all about themselves, all about the next leader, who's up, who's down, the stuff that, you know, I think most of the public hate. Now, if you're Andy Burnham, you're always treating, you think Karma's got to go, it's part of politics. But once the public starts to think this is what you're in politics for, as opposed to you're trying to make my life better, it's it's lethal. And I really worry for the Labour Party that they that this, you know, no party has a divine right to exist.

[00:18:39]>> So there's that there's a huge existential threat which is it could end up like the Socialist Party in France or I'm very worried about the direction Conservative parties going. It's possible our two big parties could be in real trouble. We might be entering a five party system where they shrink and vanish. There's another thing I don't quite get. How is it possible for anyone on the right like West Streeting to win with Labour Party members? I mean, isn't that the same problem that I had running against Boris Johnson, which is broadly speaking in 2019 when I was running? The Tory party wanted somebody on the right of Tory politics. And it was all very well, you know, people used to make a joke that I was the the Tory party that leader that everybody wanted except for the Tory party members. I mean, isn't that the problem with West Streeting?

[00:19:24]He's it's all very well that people like me love him. that how's he going to get the votes the Labour Party members if he's running against Angela Raina or Ed Miband or or Andy Bernham >> he'll be thinking a similar version of what you thought you thought and you know if you think about go back to your time in that challenge you were coming from almost from a not a standing star but you were the in a way the least known of the main names going into that and yet you did manage to break through I think he'll be hoping that he can project himself in a way that people say say what you like about him. That guy's a winner. That's what I think he will be trying to do and and maybe portray the others as being all about the politics as it were. Now, but you know the fact is he's been in politics all his life.

[00:20:08]He was you know national we talked to him on leading not long ago. In fact, I think I'm right in saying that all of the people who are being mentioned uh including Angela Raina who we've got on the podcast this week in our Gen Z series, all of the ones that have been talked about, we have interviewed on leading but when we interviewed where we're treating did you have a sense then of where he was politically? Did you feel that this that that the way that he's projected himself now is what you imagine him to be? Yeah, I mean what I got on that was somebody who was a good talker, was surprisingly relaxed, was interesting about his Christian faith and his background, was very funny about his family background, was convincing I thought on the NHS and the kind of reforms he wanted to bring through in the NHS. Um, but it's so difficult for an outsider to answer the question. I just had a Labour MP ring me and she just said, "Angela is just much more popular with the party members." And then I had another MP who' had both Wes Streeting and Angela Rainer up to their constituency and they were like, "Well, Wes Streeting did a great job. He speaks very well, but >> Angela, they just loved she's just of them. There's just a kind of emotional >> resonance that Wes doesn't get."

[00:21:21]>> If that's true, it slightly sounds as though he's lacking some kind of secret source.

[00:21:26]>> Yeah. And he may do. I mean I I guess the last you know I mean when when Tony Blair stood um for the Labour leadership he was seen as the guy on the right but he managed to keep quite a large section of the center and the left with him and he managed to kind of hold that together and and and I think the worst part of what's gone on it's interesting in in Westing's letter he said this has to be about ideas not petty factionalism but I thought there was there were elements to the tone of that letter that were quite petty I I mean even the start the results are in and we thought he was going to talk about the local election results. He was all about haven't I done a great job on the national health service and he my my team and my special advisers and I thought you might have mentioned the prime minister and the chancellor in that they give that they're the ones who are deciding how much money you get kind of thing. So I think look at West Street West my take on West Streeting he's very bright guy he's he's he's got a lot about him. Uh he's clearly very ambitious and he's clearly very he's pretty tough and ruthless as well. We can see that from the way he's operated in the last few days. But I've said to you many many times before I think it's almost impossible to work out whether somebody who's been very good at say being the health secretary or mayor of Manchester whatever it might be and whether they can make that step up to a job where there are just so many more elements to it. And the truth is they might be able to. I'm not saying they can't. And nor am I saying that I think Karma has been, you know, as good as you and I wanted him to be or even expected him to be. But I still think, you know, I was talking to somebody in worse on the foreign policy side of things today was, you know, they were saying they're really quite worried about not knowing in the next, you know, who in the next few weeks is going to be whether Kama is going to be there or not. I think that's, you know, these are not these are not issues to be trifled with.

[00:23:26]>> Well, let let me finish then with my final optimistic sales pitch to to cheer you up as you go into your your fancy dinner in Germany. Okay. So, presumably the optimistic story is this one, which is that Eddie Burnon runs. He runs in Josh Simon's constituency in Mackerfield. He wins.

[00:23:42]>> Mhm. By winning, he proves that he has the secret source to defeat reform in what was supposed to be a pretty safe reform seat. Suddenly, you've got man from the north, successful mayor who's proven that he can beat reform in an absolutely tough bi-election which they were throwing millions of pounds in. He comes in and it turns out that and this is my optimistic story that by being mayor he's actually become a better politician than he was when he was in Westminster. He's learned a new style of talking. He communicates better. He's got bigger ideas. He brings in K Star as his foreign secretary cuz my goodness, Star's got all the foreign track record and the defense stuff.

[00:24:26]>> Rebuilds the government, goes into an election, wins. How about that for you?

[00:24:29]>> I was going to like that.

[00:24:33]I mean the the one thing I'd say about I talked about Katherine West who's suddenly decided she might vote for Kaba. I did think that the one you know genuinely interesting observation she made was you know everybody expect excepts Kama's done a good job on the foreign policy front make him foreign secretary. Now would Kia be so proud as not to be able to countence that? I don't know. You see in other governments I mean look at the Norwegian government at the moment. You got you've got my friend Jonas who's the prime minister.

[00:25:01]Then you got Stolenberg who's who's the foreign minister who's a former prime minister. So it's not a I think you I think you >> David Cameron David Cameron very recently Alec Alec Douglas Hume Tory prime minister has been willing to do >> exactly. So I think you've cheered me up quite a lot there. I've got to say Roy you took the mickey out of my nice dinner.

[00:25:19]this we disco Fion and I booked into this hotel and we discovered that on this site was the 2007 G8 summit. So Putin was here and Tony was here and Sarosi was here and Merkel was here but the bloody Wi-Fi has been an absolute nightmare. Um, so I'm so you know Germany for broom dur technique they they've gone backwards I would say because I can't believe Vladimir Putin put up with choppy Wi-Fi.

[00:25:51]>> Well thank you very much Alistister and we've just had confirmation as we're recording that Kama said he won't block Andy Bernon. So we can assume that Andy Bon will now come forward and try to take the seat. So much more to cover.

[00:26:03]Um, and I guess we'll be returning to this many, many times over the next few weeks because I fear we're likely to have a new Labour leader in place by the summer.

[00:26:12]>> I think we're definitely going to have a contest and uh I think that's sensible that they K star said we can't block him twice. Be very interesting to see the extent to which I mean does K star go and campaign for Andy Bernham in a bi-election?

[00:26:27]>> Yeah, if I was Andy Bernham I'd be encouraging KA to stay as far away from my bi-election as possible.

[00:26:32]>> Maybe. But my point is he will get asked about the thing the whole time and have to say he's a great friend of mine and blah blah blah. I mean my big plea to all of them is try very very hard in so far as you possibly can not to just make this a gigantic soap opera and never ever ever forget the watching general public.

[00:26:53]>> Good. All right, Alistister, have a great speak soon. Byebye.

[00:26:56]>> Thanks Rory. Bye.