Burnham vs. Westminster and Trump’s Next Target

**Alastair Campbell** (0:01)
Does Andy Burnham want to win power only to give power away? On Monday, the man who will soon be Britain's Prime Minister set out his political and economic vision with devolution central to both, including a No. 10 North and a warning to Whitehall not to block him. There was a lot of passion, there were big promises across a range of policy areas, including quite a lot that Rory and I have been calling for, which Andy Burnham summed up with the phrase good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart. As visions go, I have to say I found it pretty compelling. Let's see if Rory does too.

**Rory Stewart** (0:48)
Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

**Alastair Campbell** (0:51)
And me, Alastair Campbell. And we're going to talk about Andy Burnham's big speech on Monday, and what it says about the pending Burnham Premiership. And then in the second half, we're going to be talking about a series of very interesting elections across Latin America. So Rory, Andy Burnham.

**Rory Stewart** (1:05)
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, is now almost certain to be our next Prime Minister. In fact, I would say certain to be our next Prime Minister, barring something really weird happening. Keir Starmer will step down. Andy Burnham will take over. What's the rough timetable on that, just to sort of bring people back to the basics?

**Alastair Campbell** (1:19)
Well, he'll be in there before the end of July, sort of third week of July, he'll be Prime Minister. Because had there been a challenge, there would have been a leadership contest within the Labour Party, and then it would have properly dragged on to just before Labour Party Conference in September. So yeah, he's going to be Prime Minister by the end of the month.

**Rory Stewart** (1:36)
And yesterday, I had lunch with the Palestinian ambassador, Hussein Zimrot, who we interviewed, and he pointed out, I think, that he's been in Britain seven years and has so far known six Prime Ministers.
We're going to try again.
So and I suppose that's probably the starting point, isn't it? Every one of these people will have gone through something pretty similar, I guess. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunna, Keir Starmer. All of them came into a country where a lot of people were pretty cross, and all of them will have tried to get their advices together and said, what are we going to do to sort out Britain? I think there are probably two things you're thinking about. One of them is how genuinely to make Britain better, and the second thing which is necessary, which is how do you win an election? Most of them probably arrived at a very, very similar understanding of what was wrong with Britain. Cost of living, housing too expensive, people frustrated and angry about immigration, and a real sense that public services were creaking and things weren't really working. So what do you do about it? Now, if you're Boris Johnson, the answer was leveling up. So pumping quite a lot of money into the North of England, and we can talk about that a little bit because actually some figures have come out, and actually rather surprisingly, for those who were skeptical of it, a lot of money went in. If you go to places like Hartlepool, a lot was done. You had Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss who I guess were more on a pro-free market business growth, low tax side. You had Keir Starmer who I think thought his job was to bring a bit of seriousness back into government, and now we have Andy Burnham. So give us a bit of a glimpse of your sense of what Andy Burnham's recipe and vision might be for sorting out the country.

**Alastair Campbell** (3:26)
I think on Monday's speech did give a pretty clear picture of what he means. I mean, a couple of things to say. First of all, he's shown a ruthlessness, which when he was a young MP and a young minister, I never thought he had. But he has shown a ruthlessness.
He has basically decided that the Labour Party was on the wrong track, the country is on the wrong track.
And if we carried on in the track that we were on, with Keir Starmer leading Labour into the next election, Farage was virtually home and dry. That is kind of what's been at the back of his mind. And I think at the front of mind of quite a lot of MPs, particularly after the local elections. So what did he have to do? He had to find a seat, which he did. He had to win it and he won it so big that the parliamentary Labour Party moved was like a herd from Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham. And therefore he has achieved what I knew he was trying to do, which was to become Labour leader and Prime Minister without contest.