The Rest Is Politics - 533. Andy Burnham's Big Gamble: Can He Beat Reform?

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

What is Alastair’s plea to Labour politicians, after this week’s turmoil? After Wes Streeting’s resignation from the cabinet, will he still run against the ‘King of the North’, Andy Burnham, and how bruising would a leadership contest be for the government? How risky is this for Burnham, and can he beat Reform in Greater Manchester? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this emergency episode. __________ Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Vasco Andrade Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Emily Kent Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics.com. This episode is brought you by Fuse Energy. Fuse has introduced the tracker tariff designed to give customers what matters most from their energy supplier, savings clarity and a bit more control. And it guarantees that your rates stay below the off-gem price gap, which saves you up to 200 pounds. And the tariff updates automatically every quarter. Energy prices don't move in straight lines. Global events and market pressures you can't predict and certainly can't control, still find

their way onto your bill. And if you're on the wrong tariff, you can be stuck with higher rates after the pressure has ended. With Fuse Energy's tracker tariff, that changes. If prices fall, your rate adjusts at the next quarterly update. And it's automatic. No switching, no trying to second against the market, you're protected while prices are high and ready to benefit when they fall. Switch to fuse energies tracker tariff at fuseenergy.com slash politics and use code politics to get a free trip plus subscription. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. Welcome to the rest of this politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. And we're talking about developments in the leadership of the Labour Party. We have the

dreadful local election results recently since when there's been massive speculation about whether anybody might challenge Keir Stama, the Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. Step forward this morning West Streeting, Health Secretary, resigning from the Cabinet, saying in his letter of resignation that he no longer has the confidence in the Prime Minister and he wants a broad leadership debate to see who should follow him. And then this evening, step forward Andy Burnham, the Mayor. of Manchester, lots of talk about which seat he might step into and step forward on his behalf, a young MP by the name of Joss Simons, who has stepped down from a seat in the Manchester area.

And Andy Burnham says he wants to ask the National Executive to let him be a candidate. Let me try for foreign listeners just quickly, or any British listeners who, like me, have been doing other work today and haven't been following the ins and outs. Essentially, under the Labour party rules. If an MP, sitting MP, gets enough MPs to back him, just over 80 MPs, they can trigger a leadership challenge to the sitting leader, who in this case is Kirstama. And then the rules are that it goes to an alternative voting system where the electorate voting are Labour Party members and affiliated members, which I guess means members of trade unions or certain types of members of trade unions. And if nobody clears 50% of the first round, the candidate's votes

are redistributed until somebody emerges as the winner. And the system, I guess, was set up in order to try to balance two things. One is to make sure that the candidate was not such an outsider that no MPs were prepared to get behind them. So maybe that was sort of blocking the return of a Jeremy Corbyn, who maybe they thought wouldn't have got the requisite 80 plus votes. And the second thing is, of course, giving a voice to the party. But that means that different MPs now challenging Stama have advantages and disadvantages. Stama has one big advantage if he wants to hang on, which is he can try to hold the MPs and stop them putting their names behind an alternative, and we can talk about that. If he fails to do that, then I guess there will be insiders who may be better at mobilizing the

critical number of MPs, and then there may be somebody, and this is what I wanted to get you with, What if there's somebody like Angela Rainer who might be more appealing to the party in the country? And for someone like me, from an outside, it seems to me she'd almost be a shoe in if it was just the Labour Party members voting. So that's where we are. And final thing I wanted to say before I came back to you is the timing on this is odd. We're doing an emergency podcast now because it's incredibly big news because it feels like the prime minister is about to be challenged directly. but Andy Burnham's routine would be through a by-election, and a by-election would take four to six weeks to happen

before he'd even get into Parliament, and he'd need to be in Parliament before he could run against Kirstama, I think. Over to you. Well, what I'd say, Rory, is that your knowledge of the workings of the Labour Party has vastly improved in recent years, due to your constantly listening to me, banging on about it.

Look, I think this is, from Andy Burnham's perspective, very high risk. He's the mayor of Manchester. He's a very popular mayor of Manchester. But there is not much love for politicians who make way for other politicians who want to do something different. I think it was Bruce Milan, who became a Labour commissioner. And they thought, well, he's going off to Europe. People are going to be so proud of him. No, not really. So Josh Simon's, a young MP, was a minister, resigned from the government because he got caught up in a scandal about the organization he used to be part of, Labor Together, which was allegedly spying on Sunday Times journalists. This is the seat that Andy Burns is going to go for. The last MRP poll, they predicted for

the next general election, whenever it happens, a 7,000 majority for reform, a graphic which Celine, our social media person, has put around today, the chances of winning this seat, reform 82%, Labour 17%, Conservative 0%. So this is not a safe route in. Now, if you look at those local elections, there probably is no safe route in. I was talking to somebody earlier who was saying,

actually, probably the best thing to Andy would forget about Manchester and try and find a seat in London. It might be a little bit, and even in London it's not sort of absolutely guarantee. So he's got to get in, he's got to then get 80 nominations himself, and then he can join West Streeting. Your point about Angela Raina, I think that if Andy Burnham gets in,

Angela Rainer may feel that that is her sort of politics properly being represented. I think that Angela Rainer, even though today she's been celebrating the fact that HMR, she's been involved with this big tax scandal, HMRC, have said that she's done nothing wrong, which he's not been fine, the tax affairs have been sorted out. But prior to that, I'd say her stock was falling somewhat. This may be putting it back in. But I think as things stand, if it was just Westreting in there, I think Kirstearn would definitely stand.

If it's Westreaching and Andy Burnham, I think he'll work out whether he's got a realistic chance of winning. But the other issue that might get thrown into the mix here is that I said this to you on the main episode last time we recorded, don't rule out the pressure that there will be to have a woman candidate on the short list. So, and then meantime, I know you're a huge admirer of Al Khan's, he's relatively junior MP in terms of how long he's been in there, but he's a minister. And he's been putting it around today or people on his behalf that if there is an open contest, he sees himself as being part of it as well. So it's wide open. It's incredibly confusing. And my sense at the moment of Kea Stama is he's not going to,

going anywhere. So there's going to be a big bruising contest at a time for the country when I just think it's giving the worst possible image of the parties of the country right now and the country to the world. Okay. Well, let's just get into that for a second then. So let's just develop that. What's your basic emotional reaction to this? As somebody who's a real, I mean, this has been your life for a very long time. What's the no-holds-barred, Alistair, reaction if you were talking to a friend or Fiona about what's going on? What do you mean saying on the phone to people today? I'll tell you what I've been saying to people I think have an influence over Kirstama.

I think that it probably was looking back a mistake to blocked Andy Burnham, though I said at the time it is a bit odd if you expect the leader to say, here's the door, come through the door, I know your goal is to knock me out, come and try. Okay. Added to which, and I'm only speaking here secondhand, I've not spoken to Shabana Mahmood, but Shabana Mahmood is a very, very key figure on the National Executive, and I'm hearing that Shabana Mahmood is supporting the idea of Andy Burnham coming in. So I think that what maybe Kyrs Thama could have done in the last 48 hours to have brought himself a bit of time,

as I've been saying to you all week, let's just try and calm things down a bit. This is not a sensible mood in which to discuss these catastrophic election results. But what I think he could have done is said, look, it's perfectly obvious. A lot of you don't like me. I think I've got a mandate for a term. I'm going to try and see that through, but I get that, you know, there's a lot of demand for change. It seems to me that if there is going to be changed,

and this guy Andy Burnham, everybody seems to a lot of people seem to like, he should be part of that. And we can see how we can do that without damaging the Manchester mayoralty. Because don't forget, Andy Burnham vacating the mayor's seat in Manchester means there has to be a violation for that. So my emotional reaction is, even if it's the right thing to get Kirstama to step down ahead of the next election, I am far from convinced that this is the right time or the right way to go about it.

And you said when we talked about this the other day, well, there's never a right time, there's never a right way. And there's something in that. But this feels, I think, it also underlines that there's been an awful lot of plotting going on. Well, there's always plotting in policies. You know that. And I know that. but I think that you've just literally had the King's speech yesterday.

So that's a King's speech that West treating was part of designing. Health is a big part of it. And to have gone so quickly from what yes were terrible results without any real analysis other than, oh, well, let's change the leader. And I think changing the leader is easier to say that you should do it and do it than necessary to think through all the consequences. is until you've worked out, who's going to take over? I get you really angry about this and that you feel that this was the wrong decision

and it's going to make a real mess. I guess the brutal question is, firstly, is it actually possible for Kiyosama to survive now that West Streeting and Andy Burnham are doing this? Or are we just kind of we are where we are? And however angry you are about it, Kiyosama's very unlikely to be around in three, six months' time. Yeah, and by the way, let me say, I'm not, you know, I've always tried to put the case for Kyr-Stharma because I think he gets so much sort of stuff thrown at him. But I've never pretended that I think he's, you know, the bees and he's leader of the Labour Party or as Prime Minister. And, you know, the Labour person in me genuinely wants this government to do well and would like to see Labour win the next election if possible, because I think most governments need at least two terms to kind of, you know, make big change. So what I'd say, about that is I think his chances of surviving long term are a lot slimmer than they were. There's no doubt about that because the message that's being put out there is an awful lot of,

let's imagine he survives. We now know that there are literally dozens of MPs sitting there day after day, after day, thinking, I don't want him there. So even survival is quite a tough place for Keir Starmer to be. So, you know, I think that his chances of surviving are pretty slim, to be honest. What should he do then? Should he accept that and say, well, that probably does mean that he needs to set a timetable for his resignation, which is what Theresa May did in 2019? Or does he take the John Major view, which I guess was 1995, which is, I'll fight this out.

And yes, there's a lot of people who don't like me, but I can win this and I can take them into the next election? I think that latter position is where he is in his mind right now. But I think a lot of that is driven just by sheer anger as feeling that, you know, why is this all being thrown at me? Now, the answer to that is that's what happens in modern politics. You know, as you know, I'm in Germany. There was literally an article in one of the Broochie papers yesterday

suggesting that Meerts might have to call another general election after a year. Now, I don't think that's where they're going to go. But I think that in modern times with politics as brutal as it is, populism as viral as it is, social media as violent as it is, the sheer hatred that there is high profile public figures in the public is very, very hard. I think he still thinks that he is better than any of the options that are being put forward, certainly thinks that on foreign policy. And I know, you and I've talked about this. I mean, it is a worry if somebody emerges who's literally had no experience of, Foreign policy, probably not giving it that much thought, given how much, given how much on the Prime Minister's plate is foreign policy right now. He's probably thinking that. He's probably

feeling very personally betrayed and hurt. He's probably feeling that, you know, West Streeting is a snake, Josh Johnson's a snake, Andy Burnham's, he's probably thinking all of that. But what he has to do as well as the rest of them, when I say, everybody needs to calm down, everyone needs to step back a bit, that includes him, really work it out. Okay. So, Let's assume then that probably the writing is on the wall for Stama. Maybe very unfair. And I'm actually speaking as somebody who comes from the Tory party, there's a lot of my former colleagues and people in the centre of politics who are saying,

be careful what you wish for. We could have done a lot worse than Keir Stama. He might be a bit boring, but actually he and Rachel Reid is pretty steady, the economy's growing, the bond market's being a bit unfair, actually, you know, there are things they failed to do, but they've not been dangerous damaging politicians, and it could get a lot worse. Certainly, if you're from the Tory party, you would worry that Antio Raina would be much more left wing, that the kind of things that people are talking about in terms of cutting welfare spending. Well, let's look at West Streeting's little manifesto,

or what seems to be his manifesto. He seems to say, vote for me. I'm going to cut welfare spending. I'm going to strengthen defense. I'm going to radically reform the NHS. I'm going to make life easier for businesses. I'm going to deregulate. So it's very much sounds like a sort of more business-friendly, free market version of Kirstama. And then Angela Rainer on the other side sounded in that a large thing that she put out a few days ago to be staking out a much more left-wing position.

Is that right, roughly? Yeah, and it'd be interesting to see, for example, whether if the leadership contest does go ahead and West Streeting does have the numbers, whether he will feel that he has to somehow inoculate himself against the charges that are already being put out there. You've given the version on policy, but I saw one of the first things that happened yesterday when he left that 17-minute meeting with Kirstama was a graph that was put out from somebody on the left pages. These are all the people that have bought West Streeting. I mean, he's going to get a lot of attack from the left. He will be seen as the candidate of the right. There will be a candidate of the left, be that Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband has made clear

that if there isn't one, then he would be prepared to stand. And then Kier Stahmer, I guess, would, if he stood in those circumstances, would project himself as the candidate of the centre. Behind every F-35 jet is a Canadian company. Horizontal Tales built in Winnipeg, engine sensors from Ottawa, and stealth composite panels crafted in Lunenberg to name just a few.

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and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. One small thing there, you just said Ed Miliband might stand. And that again for most listeners, I think will be absolutely staggeringly astonishing. I mean, this is the guy who managed to maneuver his way into being labor leader in 2010. From the point of view of you and me and many others, David Miliband, his brother would have been a better choice, took Labor to defeat in 2015. Seemed, we thought, not really whatever his merits are as a man, not quite to have the full capacity to be Labor leader. I mean, can Labor seriously be thinking of sort of jumping back 16 years and trying to, trying,

Ed Miliband again? Well, I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm simply saying that I know that he is of a mindset that if they continue to block Andy Burnham and if none of the others managed to rise up to get sufficient support to take on West Streeting, then he would do it. In other words, the point I'm making is that he's been operating as if you like a guardian of the soft left, seeing West Streeting as not being of the soft left. So that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying he's going to be in this, but

that underlines to me how much if we're not careful. Because the other thing, you talk about me being angry. I'm not angry about this. I'm just sort of frustrated really. Because one of the things I think that I've been shocked at, we've seen this with some of the scandals,

most notably the Peter Mandelson's scandal, but also some of the so-called smaller scandals, is I've just been watching the way that Labor is being portrayed as being no better than the last lot. That's lethal. And that plays completely into Farage's hands. And, you know, when you think about what people say about the last lot, well, inflation, stagflation, economy not growing, public services, not rapidly improving the way that they wanted, you've got a sense that the Labor Party is now doing what people hated about the Tory party. Fighting all about themselves, all about the next leader,

who's up, who's down. The stuff that, you know, I think most of the public hate. Now, if you're Andy Burnham, you're always treating, you think Kirstarmer's got to go, it's part of politics. But once the public starts to think, this is what you're in politics for, as opposed to you're trying to make my life better, it's lethal. And I really worry for the Labour Party that No party has a divine right to exist. So there's that, there's a huge existential threat, which is it could end up like the Socialist Party in France, or I'm very worried about the direction of conservative parties going. It's possible our two big parties could be in real trouble.

We might be entering a five-party system where they shrink and vanish. There's another thing I don't quite get. How is it possible for anyone on the right, like West Streeting, to win with Labour Party? members. I mean, isn't that the same problem that I had running against Boris Johnson, which is broadly speaking in 2019 when I was running? The Tory party wanted somebody on the right of Tory politics, and it was all very well, you know, people used to make a joke that I was the the Tory party leader that everybody wanted except for the Tory party members. I mean, isn't that the problem with West Streeting? It's all very well that people like me love him,

but how's he going to get the votes for the Labour Party members if he's running against Andrew Rayner or Ed Miliband or Andy Burnham? He'll be thinking, a similar version of what you thought, you thought, and, you know, if you think about it, go back to your time in that challenge, you were coming from almost from a, not a standing start, but you were in a way the least known of the main names going into that. And yet, you did manage to break through. I think he'll be hoping that he can project himself in a way that people say, say what you like about him, that guy's a winner. That's what I think he will be trying to do. and maybe portray the others as being all about the politics, as it were.

But, you know, the fact is he's been in politics all his life. He was, you know, Nash, we talked to him on Leading not long ago. In fact, I think I'm Ryan saying that all of the people who are being mentioned, including Angela Rainer, who we got on the podcast this week in our Gen Z series, all of the ones that are being taught about, we have interviewed on Leady. But when we interviewed was Streeting, did you have a sense then of where he was politically, Did you feel that the way that he's projected himself now is what you imagine him to be? What I got on that was somebody who was a good talker, was surprisingly relaxed,

was interesting about his Christian faith and his background, was very funny about his family background, was convincing, I thought, on the NHS and the kind of reforms he wanted to bring through in the NHS. But it's so difficult for an outsider to answer the question. I just had a Labour MP ring me, and she just said, Angela is just much more popular with the party members. And then I had another MP who had both West Streeting and Angela Rainer up to their constituency. And they were like, well, West Streeting did a great job. He speaks very well.

But Angela, they just loved. She's just of them. There's just a kind of emotional resonance that Wes doesn't get in. If that's true, it slightly sounds as though he's lacking some kind of secret source. Yeah, and he may do. I mean, I guess the last, you know, I mean, when Tony Blair stood for the Labour leadership, he was seen as the guy on the right, but he managed to keep quite a large section of the centre and the left with him, and he managed to kind of hold that together.

And I think the worst part of what's going on, it's interesting in West Streeting's letter. He said this has to be about ideas, not petty factionalism. But I thought there were elements to the tone of that letter that were quite petty, I thought. I mean, even the start, the results are in. And we thought he was going to talk about the local election results. He was all about, haven't I done a great job in the National Health Service? And he's about my team and my special advisors. And I thought, you might have mentioned the Prime Minister of the Chancellor in that.

They're the ones who are deciding how much money you get kind of thing. So I think, look, West Street, well, my take on West Street, he's a very bright guy. He's got a lot about him. He's clearly very ambitious. and he's clearly very, he's pretty tough and ruthless as well. We can see that from the way he's operating in the last few days. But I've said to you many, many times before, I think it's almost impossible to work out whether somebody who's been very good

at, say, being the Health Secretary or Mayor of Manchester, whatever it might be, and whether they can make that step up to a job where there are just so many more elements to it. And the truth is, they might be able to. I'm not saying they can't. And nor am I saying that I think Keir-Starm has been, you know, as good as you and I wanted him to be or even expected him to be. But I still think, you know, I was talking to somebody

and worse on the foreign policy side of things today. It was, you know, they were saying they're really quite worried about not knowing in the next, you know, who in the next few weeks is going to be whether Keir-Stahma's going to be there or not. I think that's, you know, these are not issues to be trifled with. Well, let me finish them with my final optimistic sales pitch to cheer you up as you go into your fancy dinner in Germany. Okay. So presumably the optimistic story is this one, which is that Adi Burnham runs.

He runs in Josh Simon's constituency in McAfield. He wins. By winning, he proves that he has the secret source to defeat reform in what was supposed to be a pretty safe reform seat. Suddenly you've got man from the north. successful mayor who's proven that he can beat reform in an absolutely tough by-election which they were throwing millions of pounds in, he comes in and it turns out that,

and this is my optimistic story, that by being mayor, he's actually become a better politician than he was when he was in Westminster. He's learned a new style of talking, he communicates better, he's got bigger ideas. He brings in Keir Stama as his foreign secretary, because my goodness, Starmers got all the foreign track record and the defense stuff.

rebuilds the government, goes into an election wins. How about that for you? It's going to like that. I mean, the one thing I say about, I talked about Catherine West, who's decided she'd buy a vote for Kirstaba. I did think the one genuinely interesting observation she made was, you know, everybody expects, except Kier Stahmas done a good job on the foreign policy front,

make him foreign secretary. Now, would Kier be so proud as not to be able to countenance that? I don't know. You see in other governments, we look at the Norwegian government at the moment. You've got my friend Jonas, who's the prime minister, and you've got Stoltenberg, who's the foreign minister, who's a former prime minister. So it's not a guy. I think you've, I think you... David Cameron, David Cameron, very recently. Alec, Alex Douglas Hume, Tory Prime Minister has been willing to do it. Exactly. So I think you've cheered me up quite a lot there. I've got to say, Roy, you took the Mickey out of my nice dinner. This, we discovered, Fiona and I booked into this hotel, and we discovered that on this site,

was the 2007 G8 summit. So Putin was here and Tony was here. My goodness. Sarkozy was here and Merkel was here. But the bloody Wi-Fi has been an absolute nightmare. So, you know, Germany, Forchsprung Dürch technique. They've gone backwards, I would say, because I can't believe Vladimir Putin put up with chubby Wi-Fi.

Well, thank you very much, Alistair. We've just had confirmation as we're recording. that Kierzama said he won't block Andy Burnman, so we can assume that Andy Burnman will now come forward and try to take this seat. So much more to cover. And I guess we'll be returning to this many, many times over the next few weeks,

because I fear we're likely to have a new Labour leader in place by the summer. I think we're definitely going to have a contest. And I think that's sensible that Kier Stama said, we can't block him twice. It would be very interesting to see the extent to which, I mean, does Kirstarmer go and campaign for Andy Burman? If I was anti-Berner, I'd be encouraging Kier Saam would stay as far away from my by-election as possible. Maybe, but my point is he'll get asked about the thing the whole time.

I'd have to say he's a great friend of mine and blah, blah, blah. I mean, my big plea to all of them is try very, very hard insofar as you possibly can not to just make this a gigantic soap opera and never, ever, ever forget the watching general public. Good. All right, Alastair. See you soon. Speak soon. Bye-bye.

Thanks, Rory. Bye.