Is Andy Burnham's win the death of Blue Labour? | Jonathan Hinder interview

**Jonathan Hinder** (0:00)
Am I tough enough?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:01)
Strong and stable leadership.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:02)
Total ruba.

**Jonathan Hinder** (0:03)
Hell yes, I'm tough enough. Shut the fridge.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:05)
Not another once.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
It's the PoliticsJOE Podcast.

**Jonathan Hinder** (0:10)
When we talk about the people that Labour was formed to represent and has lost, those people who are doing the real work that really matters in the economy, the people that went out during COVID, because their job couldn't be done at home, sending emails and doing PowerPoints, they are the working class people we are talking about who don't support us anymore. And actually, we should be trying to win them back. People say, oh, but they're gone. And it's like, but why are they gone? They're gone because we left them.
We left them more than they left us. A lot of people in the party just don't want to talk about immigration. They genuinely don't think it's a priority to actually sort out the immigration issue. But it is for the country and it is for Labour voters. That's where the parliamentary sovereignty stuff comes in, that belief that actually it should be the democratic parliament, which is actually deciding these things. We want the rule of law, not ruled by lawyers.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:59)
Jonathan Hinder, MP for Pendle and Cliffhrow. Welcome to PoliticsJOE.

**Jonathan Hinder** (1:03)
Thanks for having me.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:04)
How have you been? How have you been? The last couple of days, a bit of psychodrama in the Labour Party, the release of the second round of the PETA files. What's it been like in the Commons?

**Jonathan Hinder** (1:12)
Yeah, so I don't really feel like we learned that much new from the files, but obviously it put in print or in digital print what people have known for a while and it was quite a start to see it actually in those kind of WhatsApp conversations between ministers and cabinet members.
So, yeah, very uncomfortable. I think it is going to kind of make us ask more questions about what we want the Labour Party to be and I think that's a debate that we need to have.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:44)
We'll touch back on that in a moment.

**Jonathan Hinder** (1:46)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:46)
You've been an MP for just under two years now, been up on that two year anniversary in July.
How has it been? Has it been what you expected? How have you found that kind of move from being in the police force to then being a Labour Party activist and then kind of being an MP? How have you found that over the last two years?

**Jonathan Hinder** (2:01)
I mean, it's an incredible privilege, first of all, you know, and sometimes when you're running around busy, you kind of forget to appreciate that, but it is an incredible privilege.
But it's obviously been quite a wild ride the last couple of years. I think it's fair to say that I probably didn't know Westminster as well as most of my peers, and I think, you know, despite the fact that I had worked in London in the police, I'd not worked for an MP, I'd not really been involved in Labour politics before leaving the police, I wasn't really allowed to, other than be a kind of paper member, if you like.
So it's been a steep learning curve in terms of understanding Westminster but also the parliamentary Labour Party and so forth. And obviously, you know, we can't get away from the fact that it hasn't gone as well as we would have liked for the government. So I think I thought that I might have a bit more time to settle in, to really focus on getting to know the role. But within six months, it felt like we'd been kind of hurled into this conversation about what the Labour Party is for, where we're going and so forth, which were obviously still happening now, to some extent it's coming to a head. So I want to play a full part in that, but it has kind of felt like everything's been on fast forward. I'd kind of envisaged that I could spend a bit more time on policing as it happens. My specialism being that, and it being quite rare in the Commons, I thought I would spend more time on that than I have. And I'm still trying to do plenty on policing, but also I've got a lot of views on what we should be doing. And that's ultimately why I left policing to become a politician.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:41)
So you were selected under the kind of Starmerite Trench of 2024, but I wouldn't say you're a kind of classic Starmerite, whatever that means.