Is Tony Blair getting in Andy Burnham’s way?

Tom McTague (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

Jon Sopel (0:05)

The soul-searching and breast-beating over Europe goes on. And at the UN General Assembly this week, Andy Burnham was again talking about close relations with the EU.

Andy Burnham (0:18)

We are America's closest ally. We have deep ties with our friends in the European Union and seek to deepen them further.

Emily Maitlis (0:28)

So just how close is close? On the eve of the Labour Party Conference, none other than Tony Blair has interjected into the EU debate and called on Burnham to restart negotiations about joining Europe.

Welcome to The News Agents.

Jon Sopel (0:52)

It's Jon.

Emily Maitlis (0:53)

It's Maitlis.

Jon Sopel (0:54)

And think tanks before party conferences always like to come up with an eye-catching sort of report that will get the conversation going and maybe put themselves at the centre of a debate.

When that paper comes from the Tony Blair Institute and the foreword is written by Tony Blair himself, you can bet it's going to get attention. So the Blair Institute have put out a paper, as you said Emily, that talks about maybe Britain re-joining Europe within the next 10 years and that's saying that should be the aim of government policy.

It's not entirely one-sided because it also says that it needs to be part of a reformed Europe that Britain would need to join, i.e. less sclerotic, more growth-focused and all these other things that Tony Blair has gone on about in the past. But nevertheless, it is a significant contribution. And you always think, are you the outrider for what the government wants when you do a paper like this? Or are you a bloody irritant coming up with something that takes the party in a direction it doesn't want to go just on the eve of conference?

Emily Maitlis (2:02)

So interesting that The Times has called this, to your point, a provocative intervention. And just to take you, as it were, behind the curtain, into some of our chats in the office this morning, we have been trying to work out exactly the state of play of the relationship between Tony Blair and Andy Burnham, to try and answer that question. In other words, is Blair going ahead of where Burnham wants to get to? Is that exactly his role in all this? Or is Blair trying to pull Burnham into the place that he thinks we should be? And to understand that a bit more, I think you have to start kind of questioning the relationship between Blair and successive labour leaders. Now, we know that the relationship with Keir Starmer was, frankly, not a good one. As somebody spelled out to me, it was pretty crap. You know, Keir found Tony Blair pretty overpowering. I knew this person, very close confidant of Tony Blair, told me for the last 30 years, knew Tony didn't rate him. What is different this time round? I don't think Blair has ever particularly denied that. You know, he sort of, he's just sort of shrugged.

Jon Sopel (3:16)

Well, he wrote that whole essay.

Emily Maitlis (3:18)

About why it wasn't, you know, not enough was happening. So in comes Andy Burnham. I mean, there is a whole separate side issue as to whether it ever crossed Tony Blair's mind that he could be the person, you know, by some means that would come in and lead Labour again. It was something that I think Labour MPs would never have countenanced, would never have contemplated. But it's something that those around Tony Blair think, you know, curiously, he would have been up for. He still feels like this very dominant figure and arguably the person who has spent the last sort of 20 years that he's been out of office thinking about the really big thoughts on growth, on technology, on AI, on the NHS, on actually, you know, what it takes to power this country into a place where it is workable again, where politics is workable again. So what has happened this time round?

Burnham has now employed James Purnell, and I think that is critical because James Purnell was...

Jon Sopel (4:24)

James Purnell is the new Chief of Staff.

Emily Maitlis (4:25)

He's Burnham's Chief of Staff who was, and still is, very close to Tony Blair in the Blair cabinet. And I think that Purnell has provided a very helpful sort of route between the two of them.

I've been told with what I would call 100 percent categorical denial that the two have met. Burnham and Blair have not met. I asked if there were phone calls. We do not think they've even had phone calls. But there is some discussion about exactly where they sort of see eye to eye on questions like Europe. And I guess one is the substance and the other is the speed. Because it was only last year actually that Andy Burnham was talking about, you know, sometime in the future, I would love us to be part of the EU again. And Blair is now laying out this blueprint essentially to, in his words, abandon Labour's red lines on further integration with Brussels. Now, we remember those red lines. They were actually Theresa May's red lines at the beginning, weren't they? There's going to be no freedom of movement. We're not going to join the customs union. We're not going to join the single market. And Corbyn at the time and Keir Starmer subsequently, and Burnham still, has sort of stuck to those three as being the three sort of deciders of Brexit. You know, if we're respecting the Brexit vote, then those three lines have got to remain in place. And now there is this just opening of the cracks now, this wriggle room, like, well, do we have to stand by those red lines? What happens if we don't?