Burnham’s Cabinet Purge and Rough Sleeping Pledge: Will Britain's New PM Succeed?

**Alastair Campbell** (0:01)
Andy Burnham yesterday became the 7th UK Prime Minister within just over a decade. Surely, he has to last longer than his predecessors if Britain is to rediscover its reputation for mature, serious politics. To do so requires two things above all, an agenda that makes life better for people and a team to deliver it. The team is becoming clearer with a pretty brutal purge of Starmer supporters and the appointment as Chancellor, not Shabana Mahmood, not Ed Miliband, as so many in the media said, but John Healey, whose resignation as Defence Secretary not long ago was a really big blow to Keir Starmer. And though it may yet lack detail, the agenda is becoming a little clearer as well. I, for one, am very pleased that his first big pledge was to end rough sleeping and today we have the promise of a cut to fuel bills. But the truth is, he faces much the same challenges as Keir Starmer did. So will Manchesterism transfer to the whole of the UK?
Will the purge backfire? Will he and John Healey get the economy going? And what is Andy Burnham's worldview?

**Rory Stewart** (1:22)
Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:25)
And me, Alastair Campbell. So Rory, we got a new cabinet finally. Actually, they were saying on the media that it took a long time. Having been involved in quite a lot of these reshuffles and cabinet appointments, I thought it was done pretty quickly, especially given the brutality of the early stages. Were you surprised how many got the chop?

**Rory Stewart** (1:42)
Yeah, I was. You know, it's something that you're right in the heart of, and I was very much part of. But maybe not everybody follows. It's a very, very, very weird process.
You were saying to me just before we came on that you would say to people, wait by your phone, and they could go on forever. I mean, I remember in 2015, having been a bit despairing about the reshuffles in 2012, 2014, where I waited by my phone and nothing had happened. 2015, I had left my phone on through the night, and I think it was like a sort of Sunday night that they started the reshuffle, and all I got was sort of telemarketing calls or texts from, I don't know, car companies.
So I didn't sleep very well.
Next night, same thing. So finally, I thought about, I guess sort of four in the morning. Okay, forget this. I'm obviously not getting something to reshuffle. So I switched off the ring. I went to bed, woke up at about 7.3 to find these frantic texts from Edward saying, where are you? Get in here now. The Prime Minister wants to see you in Downing Street. So I pulled on my clothes, I rushed off to the train station, picked up a cappuccino on the way, and then managed to pour the cappuccino all the way down my front on my way into Downing Street. So I entered Downing Street carrying a jacket like this, trying to conceal the amazing brown smudge all the way down. Anyway, that's just to say that yesterday I was talking to a number of Labour friends who were sitting there, wondering what was happening, when it was going to happen, how painful it was going to be. I'm afraid I kept being gloomy saying, this could take days and I wouldn't count on it. Actually, to my delight, some of my friends did actually end up getting jobs and got them quicker than I thought.

**Alastair Campbell** (3:21)
It's a very difficult thing because it's like a giant jigsaw puzzle. It's obvious with the speed with which he did it, that he'd worked out who wanted the key jobs and how he was going to get them there.
For example, it's said that he offered Rachel Reeves a job other than chancellor, and I've heard that was variously education or defense. I don't know if that's right. I wasn't there in the room. But the fact that he may have had her penciled in for a job that wasn't chancellor, she said no, that means you then got other pieces you have to move around. This can go on like all day.
And then of course, he's now appointed the ministers of state, junior ministers. And then you have the jigsaw gets even bigger. And don't forget, he doesn't know a lot of these people. So he's having other people say, no, for God's sake, don't put him there, don't put her there. And then he'll have the ministers themselves say, no, I don't want to work with her. I don't want to work with them. And so it can get very, very complicated. But I think he gave a sense of, you know, we've talked about his ruthlessness in relation to defenestrating Keir Starmer, and it was pretty ruthless yesterday. You know, Rachel Reeves, Chancellor, gone. David Lammy, Deputy Prime Minister, has been a senior Labour figure for a long, long time, gone. Peter Kyle, Steve Reid, Liz Kendall, not just her gone, but her department gone. Science, technology, innovation is now getting put back into business. Darren Jones, Prime Minister's right-hand man gone. Attorney General Richard Hermer, Joe Stevens in Wales, Hilary Benn in Northern Ireland, James Murray in health, Nick Thomas Simmons. So it's a big purge this.