The Mancunian Candidate

[00:00:00] The Why? Curve, with Phil Dobbie and Roger Hearing. He's not the messiah. But could Andy Burnham be the saviour for Labour at a low point in its fortunes? Is a new face and a more confident voice enough to re-engage those voters who've turned to reform? And why is a party that has a thumping majority in Parliament unable to govern effectively? Is it just impossible in modern Britain to please an electorate that wants contradictory demands satisfied immediately and will throw you out if you don't manage it?

[00:00:29] So could Andy Burnham in number 10 just be as ineffective as the others? The Why Curve Well, do you know what? There's every chance that's going to be the case, isn't there? Because everyone is completely preoccupied with immigration. They're particularly preoccupied with the number of people arriving by boat, which was about 1,200 last week. So, you know, it's not a number that's going down easily.

[00:00:56] And that just seems to be, for whatever reason, the message that everyone is completely preoccupied with. Because, and we've talked about this in the past, everyone is blaming everything that's wrong in their life on foreigners. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But it's more than that. It's also to do with causes, anger for all sorts of reasons. I mean, I don't think it's just hating foreigners. I think it's trying to find someone to blame.

[00:01:16] And that's part of the problem, because you've got, effectively, a situation where Labour, the party of traditionally, the working class in Britain, is not in tune with what its electorate wants in lots and lots and lots of ways. And the common man, whatever the common man might be. So, I mean, the Labour Party has a massive problem with this. But so does every other party, I think, too. It's one of these things where you can't see a way forward. No, and it's not just a UK phenomenon, by the way.

[00:01:44] I mean, it's happening in democracies all over the world. So, is this the man? I mean, the only thing he's got, I mean, he's got a glimmer of humour. You know, the whole naughty boy thing. OK, so he knows Monty Python, but so does half the population. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, but it was a glimmer of hope for some people going, oh, well, Keir Starmer wouldn't have said that because he just plays it too straight. And I think that's it, isn't it? And there is a flicker of charisma there that we haven't had with Keir Starmer. But it's not enough, is it?

[00:02:13] I mean, you know, charisma can only go so far, I would say. Anyway, let's... Well, I mean, you'd have to say that Boris, you know, another man who was a mayor who became prime minister, had charisma as well. And that didn't get us very far. Yeah, yeah. Jokes only go so far in terms of governing a country. Let's talk to someone who's studied all this in detail, knows a lot about the Labour Party in particular and how it works, or in this case, I guess, doesn't. And that's Professor Mark Wickham-Jones. He is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bristol and a scholar of Labour politics. And he joins us now.

[00:02:42] So, Mark, is he going to change the world, Andy Burnham, or is he just more of the same? I think it's quite likely that we're going to see more of the same with a few changes here and there. A much greater emphasis on communications and a much greater emphasis on presentation. But the substance of what Labour is doing, has been trying to do, is probably not going to change. But have they been doing enough?

[00:03:05] I mean, actually, I think there are a few people watching that farewell speech from Keir Starmer where he went through everything he has achieved. And I think, you know, people might have been thinking, well, actually, do you know what? Now you put it like that. That doesn't sound too bad. And maybe if he sort of like just really promoted his achievements a little bit more, perhaps he would have been in a safer position. Yeah, I think there's no question that they did a bad job in terms of selling themselves. They didn't get over the message of what they were doing.

[00:03:36] But it's also the case that when they came in, expectations were very high. You know, we'd had 14 years of coalition and conservative governments. I think people were really hoping for more. They also chose a few issues to sort of signal their ruthlessness that kind of backfired on them. You know, most obviously a winter fuel payment to old age pensioners that they cut. And people saw that as penny pinching and mean. So in some issues, they created the wrong impression.

[00:04:06] So they being I just wonder whether the chancellor actually was a bigger problem than Keir Starmer. Probably both. I mean, he'd worked pretty closely with Rachel Reeves. She was clearly chosen as a shadow chancellor from a particular perspective. She clearly mapped out an agenda. And there are these kind of fiscal rules that they've adopted as sort of self-constraints. And clearly, circumstances are not great.

[00:04:36] I mean, one of the things I think people forget is how good circumstances were the last time Labour came into office in 1997. Yeah. And just how difficult they are now. That's a really interesting point. Because I was going to ask about, I mean, this is a Labour government with a thumping majority. And a lot of the criticism you hear is that they don't behave like a Labour government. I mean, things like the Winter Fuel Allowance, for example, seem to hit at people that they would normally be expected to support.

[00:05:02] And we had a long period of Tory government where, you know, you get perhaps what you expect. But people were disappointed that this was not, as people say, a Labour government. Yeah, I think they, you know, what Labour means now in Britain is not totally clear. I think they've struggled to project an identity. I think people had sort of hopes that there would be something more dramatic.

[00:05:27] The size of the majority could be a difficulty as much as a help in this situation. Because if your majority is huge, MPs don't feel constrained. Moreover, you've got a lot of MPs who basically, they've got no chance of holding on to their seat in three years' time. So they're free to do what they want. They're not going to follow the whips. They're not going to follow the government's instructions. They're going to do, you know, this is their chance in the sunlight and they're going to enjoy it.

[00:05:54] So I think that the sort of data suggests the bigger your majority, the more rebellious. And the more rebellious, sometimes the harder it gets. And the fact that you can't really address the issue. And you said, you know, what Labour is now has changed. And part of the problem is, how do you deal with the people who would perhaps be traditional Labour, but now seem to be moving to reform? I mean, by doing what they're doing, aren't they simply fuelling the push for people to say, well, this government doesn't work for me, to go for the nearest available alternative?

[00:06:24] Yeah, I think there's two different issues there. One issue concerns sort of immigration and national borders and a sort of crisis that spirals back to the 2000s that intensified with the Syrian civil war and refugees. And just knowing how to deal with it. And in a sense, no government has really got a grip on, you know, what do we do about people coming over in these small boats? And reform has clearly latched onto that.

[00:06:52] The second issue is that, you know, it's the same elsewhere, that broadly speaking, incomes haven't gone up for at least 15 years. For some groups in society, they haven't gone up for 35 years. And, you know, the tax constraints on government are huge, but people are not seeing any benefit at home.

[00:07:15] And I think you take those two issues together and you're kind of going to get a sort of electorate that's pretty disenchanted pretty quickly with almost any government. So can we just take you back to that question about Rachel Reeves? Because I do wonder whether she has been part of the problem for the prime minister and for the party. I mean, she comes from a, you know, Bank of England background. And she's followed the idea of fiscal conservatism. She was absolutely fearful of trying to drive too much debt. I mean, she very smartly said, well, OK, let's split.

[00:07:45] Let's split the budget so that anything which is a long term investment is counted as sort of off the off the balance sheet, you know, in a way, because that shouldn't be counted as an operational cost, which is a smart move. You wonder why it's, you know, not been done before. Maybe it has. But she's still within beyond that has has worked within the rules because she's, you know, very concerned about racking up too much debt for the bond vigilantes, pushing up the cost of that debt.

[00:08:12] And of course, you know, looking back at the last conservative government with the prime minister wasn't around for very long. He managed to push those those bond yields so much higher. They've been living in fear of that. So they've been a little bit, you know, hamstrang as to actually what they could do, which is why they were making these crazy decisions like saying, well, OK, we're going to reduce the fuel. Yeah.

[00:08:33] So the short answer to that is that Britain at some stage needs a detailed and long, long discussion about the tax burden and how it's shared out. And that's probably not going to happen for electoral reasons. The longer answer is that, yes, markets really matter. Bond markets matter. Debt matters. You've got to you've got to think about that.

[00:08:56] Where we might be more critical about Rachel Reeves is that not that she adopted these rules, but that she tightened them. So it's a bit like having having adopted the sort of bonds. She then tightened the knots. She then twisted the knots. The rules actually date back to the 1990s. They date back to Gordon Brown. He had two similar rules. One that you only borrowed to fund investment. The second was that the ratio of debt to GDP should stay stable over the economic cycle.

[00:09:26] OK, two points about that. First of all, Rachel Reeves is a second rule is tighter. It says the ratio of debt to GDP should fall. But where she really differs from Brown is that he never defined these rules. He refused to define them. We used to have a very amusing meeting when academics or journalists went to the Labour conference. Gordon Brown would come in. He'd be sitting triumphantly. He'd be smiling at all around him. They'd ask him, when did the economic cycle begin, Chancellor?

[00:09:55] So we know whether you're meeting these rules. And he would say, it's a very important question. I'm going to let the Treasury secretary answer it. Or the civil servant. Or someone else. He never defined what the economic cycle was, when it had begun, what it meant. He never defined what investment was. And Rachel Reeves has sort of, not totally, but sort of defined what investment is. If you don't define these things, then the rules aren't quite as tight.

[00:10:24] And of course, in 2008, they found that the rules were problematic. And in a sense, it's the same with Rachel Reeves. As the Ukraine war has prolonged, as we've had another major conflict in Iran, so suddenly these kind of rules have seemed much more constraining than they're envisaged. But can I just go back to the short answer? You know, the reality is that the tax burden probably needs to go up in the UK.

[00:10:54] If you want this kind of welfare state, this kind of spending, if you want this kind of defence projection, you know, you see there are defence issues in a way that there haven't been for 35 years, you have to pay for it. Well, I don't think people under a reform government are going to see that, are they? But just on that point, you talked about how she wants to reduce debt to GDP.

[00:11:20] And so, I mean, that potentially is a downward cycle, isn't it? Because it means you're spending less. GDP slows, which is what we've been seeing. So you have to spend... With accepted growth, growth would offset it. Yeah, you'd hope. So we might be moving... I mean, I used to describe myself as an economist in about 1991. So my understanding is she says that the ratio of debt to GDP must be stable and falling at the end of a three-year cycle. Right.

[00:11:50] So she has defined the cycle. So she's saying by 29.30 that the ratio of debt should be coming down. Now, I don't think that does imply that you're paying debt off. It might imply simply that the economy is growing. Right. But if you've not got that growth... But the reality is... If you've not got that growth, if you've got very slow growth, then that is going to inhibit. To maintain that or to reduce that debt to GDP ratio, you can spend less because you're hoping that you're going to have high growth.

[00:12:19] If you've got low growth, then there's less available for you to spend to try and get future growth, which is the problem. So they're in a kind of cycle that's very hard to break out. And we've seen that very clearly in the last year or so. And isn't that... And the economy is slowing and therefore no one feels better off. That is true. Can I just... Yeah. Yeah. And that's the big problem that they all have. Can I just go back? So the point about inflation is important because obviously that would be another route out of this, which would be to monetize the debt. The problem with that route, of course, is that everyone else is less well off as well.

[00:12:48] And, you know, having been through experiences of high inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s, that's a high risk strategy. But your other point about growth is fundamental in all of this, which is that if you go back to New Labour, and it's one reason why Tony Blair's judgments are so staggeringly ill judged, is that he was the beneficiary of an incredibly benign growth environment. He inherited an economy that was growing very impressively.

[00:13:18] And it continued to grow impressively. And growth rates, you know, A, they've tanked since 2008. And B, they've been disrupted on several occasions. You know, they were disrupted by the great crash in 2008. They were disrupted, obviously, by Covid. They haven't been helped by the Ukraine. So, you know, from my perspective, the era of sort of steady growth rates of 3%, it's gone. Yeah.

[00:13:45] And this is where all, I mean, you know, the economic situation is very clear. I mean, I don't think anyone's going to disagree with your analysis of it really and truly. But, Mark, what happens now? Because we're certainly being told, and as we're recording this on Wednesday lunchtime, we don't know, that Andy Burnham is likely to change the Chancellor. That seems reasonably likely. But is there anything that you can see in what Andy Burnham has said or indicated that he's going to behave any differently?

[00:14:14] And particularly on this financial question, is there any way forward? He might try and relax the constraints that Rachel Reeves adopted in some sort of way. But he'll be nervous about doing it because of markets. He might try and look creatively for some sort of tax increase. And again, Gordon Brown was very creative back in 1997 in terms of taxing credits on dividend payments,

[00:14:43] which historically hadn't been taxed. There's probably no room for something similar. Maybe a windfall tax if you could find some sectors of the economy, but nothing stands forward. So, you know, and at this stage in the parliamentary cycle, you're unlikely to want to do something risky because anything risky, you want the payoffs to come in before the election. So that's just going to be steady as you go. New face, new voice, same policies.

[00:15:12] I mean, Labour aren't getting any better, are they? No, I mean, this would be the difficulty. And, you know, if the press is to be believed this morning in Britain, he's going to meet the defence commitments that caused the defence secretary to resign a couple of weeks ago. So, you know, I mean, he's a better communicator. So maybe he can sell the bad news better. Maybe he can dress some of this up. Maybe they can rearrange some stuff.

[00:15:40] But the reality is that, you know, they are hamstrung. And they're also hamstrung partly by tax cuts made by the Conservatives in the early 2020s. So, you know, the Conservatives cut tax in a way that was probably unsustainable. But again, nobody, you know, there's this kind of obstacle, this kind of arc of the covenant, whatever you want to call it in the UK, that tax rates can't go up. You cannot tax income any higher.

[00:16:09] You cannot tax pensions. You know, pensioners get this incredibly protected status where they pay less tax regardless of their income. They don't pay national insurance, even though we don't have hypothecated taxes in the UK. So national insurance does not pay for national insurance. It's all a bit of a mess. And you've got a newspaper discourse that is fairly hostile backing all of this up. But one thing they could do... Sounds a bit gloomy. Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

[00:16:39] But one thing they could do if they're looking at tax changes is they could say, well, OK, we're going to tax unearned and earned income the same. So if you've got capital gains rather than it being... Or dividends, for example, all the money from that, you're going to pay the same as you would on income tax for your earned income. I don't think they'll risk it. I mean, capital gains tax is part of it. But even more important is, you know, the fact that pensioners don't pay national insurance.

[00:17:08] So I'm a pensioner. So on my income, I pay significantly less tax than members of my family who earn a similar amount, but have to pay national insurance. Yet I'm the one that's retired. I have less costs. I've paid for my house. You know, I'm not starting to bring up a family or pay nursery fees. You know, but if the government tackled that,

[00:17:32] and they did think about it in opposition, at least three, four newspapers, five newspapers would go ballistic. Do you really want that hostility? But does that matter? Because, I mean, one of the interesting things about this is that Kirsten has been an easy hit in many ways for the papers. And do papers actually matter that much anymore? The Daily Mail has a sort of regular daily meltdown, it always feels, on the front page.

[00:18:00] But nobody under 30 reads a newspaper anyway. The influence is that much less. Isn't Labour tying itself up on the things that you needed to think about at the end of the 90s, getting the sun on board? It doesn't matter anymore. And look at Farage. I mean, he gets a hard time sometimes by the press, but he manages to run roughshod all over them because he just sticks to a point, argues strongly and seems to get away with it.

[00:18:26] So maybe you just need a leader who's got that same, you know, vociferous approach, who can fight against the press. I think they will perceive that it is too late in the electoral cycle to take that sort of risk. I'm not sure that Farage does get the same sort of criticisms that other politicians get.

[00:18:50] Has he been criticised for appearing on, you know, podcasts with people that deny mass shootings in the United States and things like that? I think he actually gets quite an easy ride and quite a lot of publicity. He's getting a hard time over the slug of money that he was given, of course. Eventually, eventually. Track it. Track it since it first became news. I think eventually some of the press was embarrassed by their failure to raise it.

[00:19:18] The reality is people are a bit scared of his bite. The question of newspapers. Well, you're totally right that young people don't appear to read them. They don't also, they don't appear to vote either. So who does vote? Very true. We know that it's the pensioners. Actually, newspaper reading in the UK. Check it out. But I work in Nashville in the United States. How many people live in Nashville? Maybe one million. Yeah.

[00:19:48] Try and buy a newspaper casually in Nashville. Oh, you can't. You're all in the States. Anywhere. I mean, I've been in the States. Yeah. There is not a single copy of the New York Times in the whole of Nashville. So I'm sitting in Bristol. I could go down to my local Sainsbury's now. There'll be five copies of the New York Times. There is more casual readership than one might imagine. The question of causality is really difficult.

[00:20:16] You know, are people reading the Daily Express because it chimes with views that they already hold? Or are they reading the Daily Express and then developing their views? So you're completely correct. It's a really complex issue and it's really messy. But I think the crude way is just to say it doesn't help Labour having that discourse. People are scared. Right. But, I mean, there's a debate, isn't there?

[00:20:42] You can go down the Farage Road or you can say that, look, immigration isn't as big an issue as they are making out. We need to tackle it. And this is what the plan is. The economy is struggling, but there's a plan and this is what the plan is. We do need to change our tax rules and this is what the plan is. And I know I'm going to get some flack from this, but I'm going to give you answers. I mean, if Andy Burnham has got the strength to try and push all that forward, that is the only way the discourse in the country is going to move forward, isn't it? But he doesn't have...

[00:21:11] Is he up to it? He doesn't have the mandate. But mandate's the problem in all that, Phil, because in this situation, and you can already hear it, people saying if he does get crowned a coronation effectively without even a vote within the Labour Party, is he then going to have a democratic deficit? And people will say, well, the only way you can actually do what Phil just listed there is have an electoral mandate. So go to the country. Yeah, I mean, I think he is going to get a lot of flack on that.

[00:21:37] You can see how they're going to try and push back that the manifesto holds, that the mandate is based on the manifesto. But I think you're correct. I think you should put some of these points to government ministers. I mean, Torsten Bell would be the person to ask about this, the Treasury Minister, because, I mean, he knows all of this way, way more than I do. And he knows the constraints.

[00:22:03] I think, you know, the point I would make is that people have, you know, kind of had enough, I think. And that, you know, we know that there's this extraordinarily volatile electorate. I mean, Andy Burnham's by-election, it's meaningless. Those same people, they might well vote Green for the mayor of Manchester when that comes up for election in a few weeks. They might well vote reform at the next general election. You know, we know that the electorate is totally volatile.

[00:22:33] So it's a scary ride. But I, you know, I just think they are incredibly constrained. Yeah, but actually, you said that it's meaningless what happened at Makerfield. But I'd say maybe not, because what you did see was a coalition of virtually everybody who wasn't pro-reform against reform. I mean, the Lib Dems, Tories, Greens, between them got virtually nothing. Because people who might feel that way said, we've just got to make sure the reform don't get in. Couldn't that be repeated across the country? Sure.

[00:23:02] And that's what happened. No, no, no. Sorry, that's true. And I didn't mean it was meaningless in that sense. I meant it was meaningless in terms of some sort of longer term commitment to a Labour vote that would stand up to reform. So the sense that Andy Burnham is the man that can beat reform, I think, is unproven. It's certainly important in terms of its consequence. It certainly is significant in the way that the vote shifted. But broadly, that's what happened at the 2024 general election.

[00:23:32] In other words, if you look at constituencies, the gap between Labour's vote and the Lib Dem vote or Labour vote and the Green vote, in most places, was quite large. Whereas the gap in 2024 between the Conservatives and reform was tiny because they were competing against each other. And what happened in Makerfield was that actually it's more worrying, in a sense, because the Conservative voters knew that they could no longer support Conservative.

[00:24:01] And as soon as you find that and them hemorrhaging to reform, that's when reform starts to pick up seats. You add in some Labour voters that are a bit pissed off or some voters that abstained in 2024. And then reform starts to do really well. And we've got this sort of weird old first-past-the-post system that means, you know, people will start winning seats on 20, 21% potentially in that sort of situation. It becomes incredibly fluid. Yeah.

[00:24:29] Let's just go back to the beginning again, just for a second. Because that farewell speech from Keir Starmer, where he listed all the stuff that he'd done, you know, and it's reasonably impressive, really, in the circumstances. You know, reducing NHS waiting lists, all that sort of stuff. He's done stuff. It's not as though he's been stationary. But it still sounds dull. Even when he's saying goodbye. You know, we got a glimmer of emotion when he started talking about his wife and his kids.

[00:24:58] So Andy Burnham is clearly a great communicator. So if Andy Burnham, all the way along the line, over those two years, had done all of that stuff, the question is, would he have done? Would he have been as successful? He would have communicated that better. And then, so is that enough for the next two years to say, well, we've done this already in the last two years and this is what, you know, we're carrying on doing it and we're doing it better. And maybe without those fiscal constraints.

[00:25:21] And I wonder whether the market will be a bit more forgiving if there's a bit more government spending, if there is some sort of example of a plan which is going to drive growth rather than just constraining spending because that seems like the right thing to balance the books. So if you get a combination of that, a bit more government spending and the Andy Burnham factor, which is communicating better, it's got to be better than where we were, hasn't it? Or it might just be deck chairs on the Titanic. I don't, I don't know.

[00:25:51] I mean, it's, it's kind of, you know, Andy Burnham in some ways, what's in, what's interesting is how similar to Keir Starmer he is. You know, Keir Starmer, a technocrat, very pragmatic, looking for the solution. Andy Burnham coming out of local government. What are they doing there? Kind of looking for a social, a solution. You know, buses aren't very good. How can we improve them? Housing, not enough. What can we do to raise the housing stock?

[00:26:20] You know, it's not really a values-based ideology. It doesn't really have a narrative. And indeed, Andy Burnham has often been criticised for changing his mind, for shifting position, for realigning himself in kind of, you know, not a totally dissimilar way from the indecisiveness and from the U-turns that characterised Keir Starmer. So, you know, communication aside, we might be in for a very similar period.

[00:26:47] Now, it's possible for Labour supporters and Labour figures to have an optimistic narrative about that. But it's kind of also pretty easy to see that two years down the line, we might just be in a similar position with a Labour prime minister coming under a lot of pressure, voters being dissatisfied, by-elections going against them. You know, it's hard to know. Well, Mark, we've looked at the economics of this to quite a lot of extent. It does matter hugely. But there's a lot else.

[00:27:16] And Keir Starmer, many people say, you know, he was never here, Keir. He was doing foreign affairs a lot of the time. Do we have any idea what Andy Burnham's take on all that? Again, is it just the same thing with a slightly better smile and a better joke? Well, he's got, you know, that's a really important point. And I think the answer is we just don't know.

[00:27:34] And a lot's going to depend on who becomes foreign secretary and, you know, quite how he can sort of negotiate with, you know, an ally in the United States that isn't always clear in terms of what they want or where they're going or, you know, the quid pro quos. You know, it's going to be complicated.

[00:27:53] There is one other point that I would add at this, which is that if you go back to 1997, one thing that Blair did incredibly effectively was some policy initiatives that involved no money. And if you can find a policy that is free, that might really help. So two examples in Britain in 1997, devolution, give the Scots a parliament, set up the Welsh Assembly. Basically, it's free. It's not a spending programme.

[00:28:23] Second one, obviously, really important, Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Huge kudos to Blair, you know. So if you can do that, that might help Burnham. Something that's cheap, you know, maybe... Any ideas? None. None. None. And my advice is disastrous. I haven't been asked for advice for over 10 years. Yeah, banning social media for under-16s, I suppose that's free.

[00:28:50] I mean, obviously, it's a Starmer policy rather than Andy Burnham, but he could run with it. That would be the sort of thing that I'm talking about. On foreign affairs, you know, they're hamstrung, aren't they? You know, we have a major international crisis or a major difficulties and tensions. You know, we are going back. We have gone back to a Cold War world. And, you know, that imposes certain things.

[00:29:18] Plus the fact that the defence secretary's resignation shaped the way in part for his ascendancy means he has to, you know, I think he has to respond to that. I don't think... Yeah, we discussed on this show warfare versus welfare just recently. And that's still the issue, isn't it? I mean, and he's got to address that.

[00:29:40] Yeah, I mean, the only thing is that if you take a slightly old-fashioned view about it, you'd say that, you know, the guns help pay for the butter. So, you know, there is this argument that, you know, if you can try and focus some of the defence spending, maybe it'll help, you know, regenerate the economy, lead to a bit of growth. You know, build your drones in the UK. Yeah. Drones in Doncaster and bullets in Birmingham is what I've heard. Yeah, exactly.

[00:30:09] So 85%, I'm looking at a number here, and I think it actually might have grown a little bit, of Brits really don't like Donald Trump. Nigel Farage is in bed with Donald Trump. Couldn't he just actually, Matt, Andy Burnham take a more hostile relationship to Donald Trump and actually win some support that way? Yeah, which did work for Kia up to a point. But only... So two things there. It only works up to a point.

[00:30:30] I mean, we're still incredibly reliant on aspects of, you know, of what's going on in America, you know, in terms of trade, in terms of technology, in terms of defence. Secondly, I think if you track Farage carefully over the last 12 months, he's a little bit more careful in how he relates to Trump and to the Americans. Yeah, well, it worked for Hugh Grant, didn't it, in Love Actually? But that was amazing. You're showing your age now. You're showing your age.

[00:31:01] I suppose, I mean, just drawing this together, you're suggesting really, Mark, if I'm reading you right, that almost there's almost nothing Andy Burnham can do to result, to resist the inevitable rise of Farage and reform and that Farage, you think, is still pretty much on the way to number 10, perhaps 2029. I wouldn't care to predict what will happen in an election in three years' time because everything is so volatile and because, you know, there's so many things that can happen between now and then.

[00:31:31] On the basis of where things are at the moment, we'd be looking at some sort of hung parliament. You know, we know that Labour's got a good ground game. It's very unlikely that reform has a good ground game for a general election campaign. We kind of know that residual voting comes in more in a general election. So, you know, there's kind of what we call second order voting at devolved local government by elections.

[00:31:59] So, so, but, you know, you'd probably be looking for a messy outcome with some sort of hung parliament. If I was a civil servant, I'd be getting out my volume of the art, the art and science of compromise or the art and science of negotiation or, you know, because it could be complicated. We don't really have any tradition of that. But perhaps the art of the deal might help. Maybe, maybe, or maybe. It's a whole different approach. Or maybe we just learn to start saying prime minister for hours. That's a grim, a grim thought.

[00:32:27] So, in the meantime, I mean, just again, back to one of the early questions. I mean, I think you said nothing's changed, but at least he's a better communicator. That has to stand for something over the next two years, doesn't it? Yeah, no, no. I wouldn't want to say nothing has changed because he can tweak it. You know, he may get a bit of a honeymoon. He may get a bit of a bounce. He can communicate.

[00:32:51] We've got to see what he's like at Prime Minister's Questions, which is this sort of weekly theatre in the House of Commons, which Starmer was not particularly good at as prime minister. He was much better as leader of the opposition. So all of that can develop. And, you know, it's but and we don't know about his appointments.

[00:33:14] And there's some there's some strange, you know, some some various names being floated, which suggests a sort of sort of package almost going back to the sort of Blair years. Some of it was James Purnell's in there somewhere, I think. So the James Purnell thing. Yeah, that's what I was referring to, which just seems extraordinary because I wouldn't have put put them together. But, you know, clearly, Purnell was highly regarded as a cabinet minister in the 2000s.

[00:33:44] About about the time Love Actually was out. So, yeah, again, in the deep, dark history. We'll have to do a reading list for younger readers and listeners. Lots of people watch Love Actually as a kind of classic British movie. I mean, it's old, but you kind of can understand. For those who for those who didn't get my reference, Hugh Grant gave it to the it was the British played the British prime minister. And he gave it to the basically stood up to the Americans in it in a way that to which there was applause in some in a way that no British prime minister would ever dare do in real life.

[00:34:13] So that's why we enjoyed it in a movie, I think. But anyway, we'll see how it all transpires. But it's a it's a it's not. Yes. I guess. How long does it take for the Labour Party to recover from this chapter? Oh, the Labour Party never recovers. This is the Labour Party. Don't don't don't think this is the atypical period. The Labour Party is only happy when it is doing this. You know, activists in the Labour Party, what they want is a really good fight with them.

[00:34:43] Well, they've certainly got that. It's the British way, isn't it? Muddling through somehow. And yeah. All right. Which is all very well until it doesn't. Mark, thank you very much indeed for talking to us. That was really fascinating. And we'll come back to you, I'm sure, before long to say, well, you got that wrong. Yeah, exactly. Come and tell me how wrong I've been. I look forward to it. Well, it'd be nice if you are. It'd be nice if you are. Let's put it that way. All right. Very good to talk. Bye. Thanks, Mark. And the amazing thing as well in all of this is people will vote for Farage.

[00:35:11] I mean, we talked about that slug of money. How much was it that he took? It was five million. Was it something? Five million. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah. And, you know, and that's come up in the news quite a lot lately. And yet he seems to just, you know, drift over it. And people are still going to vote for him, even though you wonder why. What is he promised for that money? You don't you don't you don't just give someone five million pounds and not expect anything. Well, we have to be careful. We don't we don't know. We don't know. And I mean, but it is something that has wounded him a bit, I think.

[00:35:41] And it's talks to the point that, you know, a lot of the people who vote for him are not people who would remotely have anything like money of that kind or think of it even. But are they content for their leaders to be to kind of receive handouts? Because handouts create influence, don't they? That's that's the point. Yeah. And and this is why what we want to talk about is is corruption, because I'm not saying this is corrupt, what he's doing, but it raises the issue in people's minds.

[00:36:06] You know, get MPs who get freebies to go to, you know, the races or something and they have to declare them. But even so, you think, well, you know, next time a vote comes up, you're not going to turn a blind eye to that. So I think we we tend to think that, you know, compared to other nations in the world, UK politics is it's not squeaky clean, but it's better than most in terms of how the system controls any external influence. But is that is that false thinking? Have we got that wrong?

[00:36:35] Is it actually much worse than we think it is? I think it might be. But also, I mean, if you look at America, I mean, obviously, you know, people took up the venal republic because so many of Donald Trump himself, his businesses, his followers benefit financially from things he does. But again, doesn't seem to damage his credibility. But a lot of countries of the world, there's a lot even Australia, you know, these things go on. It's a question of where you draw the line and say one thing is, you know, fair enough influence, at least it's open and above board.

[00:37:00] Or is it actually manipulation by rich people for their gain through politicians who are, you know, rather greedy? I mean, that's really what it comes down to. Are we all being played? Is the question. I think that's a fair way of putting it. I think that's what we want to find. We want to talk about what does exactly constitute corruption. How bad are we compared to others? And, you know, should the rules be tightened? You know, that kind of thing, which I think matters when it comes to politics, knowing is the person you're talking to being genuine?

[00:37:30] Yeah, that's right. Because it's a real challenge, obviously, to democracy if it's being driven by people who are just doing stuff for money, which is almost certainly what Donald Trump is doing. Yeah, yeah. All right. All of that next week on The Why Curve. Join us for that. We'll see you then. Bye. Bye. The Why. Curve.