Is Andy Burnham just Keir Starmer with TikTok?

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

Jon Sopel (0:05)

This is a periscope moment, where you look round the corner and say, what is actually about to come at us? How does he stop just being Starmer Mark II?

Lewis Goodall (0:16)

How are you going to balance the books in this context without massively raising taxes or massively cutting public expenditure?

Jon Sopel (0:25)

He failed to take the action that he knew he should have done on the Welfare Bill because he was too worried about a rebellion by his own backbenchers.

Lewis Goodall (0:35)

Helping people fight a war is bloody expensive.

Jon Sopel (0:38)

Things get even worse for Burnham as a result of him doing absolutely nothing at all, in the Middle East.

Lewis Goodall (0:45)

We have the highest growth in the G7 tick, but we also have the highest borrowing costs in the G7 cross.

SPEAKER_4 (0:52)

It is going to be challenging because the picture around the world is challenging and particularly the situation in the Middle East. And we will look carefully at all of those things. We won't take risks with people's living standards or with the economy as a whole. So we will take it all into account. It's why we wanted to do an earlier budget.

Lewis Goodall (1:15)

That is Andy Burnham on the political outlook. For all the optimism and sunniness, this is a bleak picture going ahead of the budget. He's been called a traditional tax and spender with better TikTok.

Jon Sopel (1:31)

So what does he have to do to make this work? Expend some political capital, cut the triple lock, rejoin the EU. How does he stop just being Starmer Mark II?

Welcome to The News Agents.

Emily Maitlis (1:50)

The News Agents.

Lewis Goodall (1:53)

It's Jon.

Jon Sopel (1:54)

It's Maitlis.

Lewis Goodall (1:55)

And Andy Burnham has done a brilliant job since becoming Prime Minister, trying to project this sense of kind of optimism, hope that things can get better, that he can make a difference. It's the small things that will improve people's lives. But when you zoom out and look at the big picture of what is facing the British economy and the headwinds that they are facing, you realize that it's all pretty difficult. I mean, the cost of energy, what's going on in the Middle East? And we'll come back to that. Again, our energy costs are higher than anyone else's. Our borrowing costs are higher than anyone else's.

We've just had the inflation figures, which show that there's going to be, because of the triple lock, a huge amount extra going to be spent on pensions. And how are you going to balance the books in this context without either massively raising taxes or massively cutting public expenditure at a time when, you know, the pledge is we're going to increase defense spending and all the rest of it?

Jon Sopel (2:54)

Yeah, I think it's worth saying that we are all, I mean, genuinely, we are all massively invested in this working. So this is not a sort of, oh, well, you know, got rid of the last one, the media got rid of the last one, now you're attacking the next one, what's going on here? It's more a point of taking stock and saying, he's had this incredibly successful start. Things have gone pretty well, pretty much since the day of the Maker FeeL by-election. He's got off on the right foot, he's made sort of tweaks that have created good vibes. He's definitely got himself out there, and his polling suggests that he's actually pretty popular. He's got a bounce for labour on around 15 percent. Some of the poll pollsters don't quite agree with where he is, but let's say roughly for 15, 16 percent. So he's doing fine, but this is a periscope moment where you look around the corner and say, what is actually about to come at us? We've talked before on this podcast about the Bonn yields and what that does to every penny that we borrow, how much it is actually costing now. We've talked about the Iran war. We've talked about the fact that John Healey, who left his last job because he felt that he couldn't keep the country safe as defense secretary because the spending wasn't there.

Now, as chancellor is rethinking exactly what we might be able to spend on defense as a country. That's tricky enough as it is.

But I think there are suggestions now, and they are suggestions not from arch enemies, but from people who are genuinely supportive of Burnham, that he has to start sending out quite big signals that something is going to change, that he is going to do the thing that starts to reconnect or re-correct where we are now. And I want you to listen to Andy Holden. He appeared on our colleague Andy Marr's show last night. And he is formerly at the Bank of England and a really close advisor to Andy Burnham when he was in Manchester.