The Rest Is Politics - 546. Keir Starmer Resigns: What Happens Next?

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

What does Keir’s Starmer’s exit as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour party mean for the UK? After his thumping victory against Reform UK last week, will Andy Burnham face a contest or a coronation on his path to becoming the country’s seventh prime minister since the Brexit referendum? What challenges will Burnham face in his attempt to turn things around for Labour and last longer than his predecessors? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Steve Rosenberg by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. 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: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, it may not have been a surprise, given that we all expected it to happen and indeed predicted it on Friday's episode, but it somehow still came as something of a shock, that Kier Stama, who led the Labour Party to a landslide victory less than two years ago, is now heading for the exit door. One decade since the Brexit referendum, 10th anniversary tomorrow, his successor, almost certainly Andy Burnham, will be our seventh prime minister in that time. The brutal nature of politics was never clearer as he stood outside number 10, listed some of the many changes he made to Britain, but accepted that his MPs no longer wanted him. And so, fighting to hold back tears as he thanked his wife and their two teenage children, he said he would be gone by September and that he would go with good grace. This afternoon, by election Victor Andy Burnham, will take his seat in Parliament.

So what then? What are the challenges he has to meet to ensure he lasts longer than the growing list of recent predecessors? All that and more in today's special live episode of The Rest is Politics. This episode is brought you by Fuse Energy. Now moving home has a way of revealing a mountain of background tasks and endless to-do lists. That's dealing with the boxes, the broadband, the change of address forms, and the discovery that you own far too many mugs. And because of that, people often... and just accept whatever supplier happens to be there. They're too busy unpacking. But choosing your

energy supplier really shouldn't add to the pile. With fuse energy, switching supplier takes just three minutes. One of the quickest jobs on the moving checklist, and crucially, one that could save you up to £200 on your energy bills. Almost 300,000 customers have already made the upgrade. New home or not, there's no reason to stick with an expensive energy supplier. Switch to fuse energy in just three minutes. Use code politics and you'll get a free trip plus subscription on top. Sign up today at fuseenergy.com slash politics. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. So Rory, your first reaction to, as I say, something that was both surprising and somehow shocking. It was, of course, as I'm sure, everybody will say in massive cliches, awful to see yet another prime minister emerge on the steps of

Downing Street to resign. I mean, I was there when David Cameron did it, when Theresa May did it, and then of course Boris Johnson did it, then Liz Truss did it after, you know, what if it was 47, 48 days, then Rishi Sunak did it. So there's that, this sort of odd sense that Britain is becoming a country that's spitting through Prime Minister's sort of Belgian or what used to be an Italian race, although the Italians now hang on. Second thing, I think many of us will feel a sense, of gratitude towards Kiyosama, a gratitude for the way to see it, conducts it himself,

gratitude for his dignity and thinks he did well. But I also think gratitude above all for the fact that he saw the writing on the wall and didn't try to Joe Biden it and hang on to the last moment. But what did you feel? I mean, this must be very deep for you as somebody who's right in the heart of this whole story.

I feel a mix of things. And of course, you know, I know Keir very well. Fiona and I know Vic, his wife and their kids. And I did feel that sense of sort of brutality. And I think, you know, it's hard not to feel there is something a little bit unfair. I mean, you know, for example, if you look a lot of the stuff on social media yesterday, it was basically saying, can't wait to see the back of him, worst prime minister we've ever had. I think that's a very, very hard claim to make when you look at some of the ones that you just mentioned,

List Trust probably and Boris Johnson most of all. But the other thing that was happening yesterday is people were pumping out on social media, long, long lists, including one that I've included stuff that I'd forgotten about, of the things that the government has done. But the reason why it's particularly brutal, I think, is that ultimately there's something about Kiyosthama that the MPs have concluded the public are never going to like. Now, what I can't work out, and I think Andy Burnham is almost certainly going to be the next prime minister. I think he's got a lot of qualities.

I think he's got a lot of strengths. But he's going to meet all the same challenges. And indeed, they're all going to transfer almost immediately to him. You can already see it in the media, the way that they're starting to turn on him a bit. The social media stuff is starting. And by the way, the other thing I felt, particularly as Steve Bray, the kind of the blue-hatted, anti-Brexit campaigner. The first half of Kier's Tharmer's speech was drowned out almost by ode to joy, wafting up from Whitehall. And thankfully, it calmed down so that the sort of the most

important part of the speech in a way was given with a bit of dignity. But I don't think it's a coincidence that we're coming to the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum. Because I do think it's, that is the point of which I think our politics became virtually unmanalienable. manageable. And what we've had in the last decade is a succession of prime ministers trying to make sense of a politics that isn't really making sense. And I think Andy Burnham, if he does come in, that he's really got to seize a sense of boldness, doing big things, including things that aren't necessarily expected. I think the devolution agenda, he's made for that. We're going to have much, much more of that. He's going to have to confront the Labour Party with the choices that Kirstarmer. failed to persuade them to back, not least in relation to welfare spending at a time that we need so much more for national security. But I felt a mixture of sadness for him,

sadness for his wife and their closest friends, but also a sense of realpolitik. Once the Labour Party decides and then moves as it did on the back of that election result on Friday, where everybody you spoke to was saying, it's got to be Andy, it's got to be Andy, Keir's got to go, Keir's got to go. Once that happens, the realpolitik does take over.

But, you know, I find it hard. As you say, I've been there when prime ministers have come and prime ministers have gone, and it's always a very, very sad thing. But ultimately, I think he will get a lot of kudos for the fact that he said, yet again, I make this judgment based on the interest of the country. And, you know, you recognize that that's, in a way, what he's done. He's basically said, once you lose, with the majority that he's got, 170, whatever it is, 411 Labour MPs,

if you've lost that support, you can't carry on. Yeah, yeah, and I think, that's right. And I think the Labour MPs were also right, that once they had completed that he wasn't going to be able to lead them into the next election, everything just followed from that. There's no point keeping them along until the last moment if everything suggests that he couldn't win the next election. you might as well take the risk bringing in someone else.

I think presumably he will now become quite quickly, go from being a sort of national figure of ridicule to becoming a national treasure. You can see this quite quickly with Gordon Brown, John Major, Theresa May, to some extent, Rishi Sunak. I mean there will be a long, long, 20, 30 years where everybody says, oh, he was really decent, great guy, and what a pity he stepped on. Well, it kind of depends what happens next, doesn't it?

I mean, I thought he got the tone right today, and that's important. But then, you know, there's still an awful lot of stuff flying around. I don't think the relations between the two of them are good enough, and I think Keir's probably too proud. But this idea that actually Andy Berlin might say, look, your big strength seems to be foreign policy, foreign affairs. I don't have much experience in that. What do you think about staying as foreign secretary?

I suspect that won't happen. So it then depends on whether he decides to stay in Parliament, whether he decides to go back to the law, whatever it might be. So I think there's – but the thing about prime ministers, if you've been a significant prime minister, and bear in mind, he's one of a very, very small number of people who've won elections as Labour leader. you're talking Atley, Wilson, Blair and I'm missing one.

You're talking a very, no, in fact, I might not be a missing one. You're talking a very, very small number of people. Did Callahan win an electionist Labour? No, no. No, he didn't. So you're talking a very, very small number of people who won elections. The majority that he won was the third biggest ever, Labor majority, after Tony Blair's wins in 97 and 2001. So in a way, it's just an incredible story about taking the Labour Party, leading the Labor Party at a time when, as he said in his speech, people said the Labour Party was finished, leading it in fairly short order to a massive landslide victory. And then within literally less than two years, he's announcing his departure. So I guess there is a deeper question about whether this says something about the way that our politics has changed. You mentioned Italy. I was looking at this yesterday.

Do you remember these labels Rory? Amintori Fanfani, Giovanni Guria, Chiriaco, Demita. They were all Italian prime ministers between Silvio Berlusconian and Georgia Maloney. George Maloney has now been in power longer than all of the leaders of the UK since David Cameron. So what is going on? Is it to do with a change of what MPs expect of their leaders? Is it just to do with public opinion? Is it just that the media landscape now is virtually impossible?

I don't know. Well, and I think the Labor landslide, of course, as I think we pointed out in the night, was always a little bit misleading. I mean, actually, it was a pretty low percentage of the vote. Historically, it was a percentage of the vote down in the low 30s, which wouldn't have won a majority and was driven by the fact that we were already beginning to collapse into the beginnings of this five-party system that we now have, which allows you to win what feels like a very big majority with only a third of the voting public and much less of

the total public voting for you. So in a way, he was set up in a slightly unfair way, or maybe set himself up in a slightly unfair way by saying, you know, I've won this immense majority. It wasn't the kind of majority that previous prime ministers had in percentage terms when they came in. In fact, obviously, it got less, I think, of a vote than even Jeremy Corbyn, as Jeremy Corbyn loves to point out. I guess the question now, you know, I think we can pay lots of tributes to Keir, but the question now is what's really the challenge for Andy Burnham, assuming it's Andy Burnham. You know, it might slightly be worth streeting, but let's assume it's Andy Burnham. And there, I guess, if you go through those things that you saw on Twitter, a lot of, which is people laying out all the great achievements of Kier Stama and, you know, isn't it unfair that he's leaving given he did all this stuff. And I don't know whether you have those achievements there, but they may be worth at least sort of summarising the kind of things people are saying. And thinking about why, although they look great on a post on X, they don't actually add up to something that really convinces the public that you're a great prime. Yeah, or maybe it made me more that they don't, they don't tell a story. I mean, I won't

go through them all because there's one here and it just says, not bad for a quote's failed PM, and it's got 100, hundreds, let me just go through some, ended the doctor strikes through a pay deal, settled railway worker pay disputes, established Great British Energy, brought rail operators into public ownership, renationalised rail franchises, employment rights bill, moved to ban exploitative zero hours practice, increased national living wage, Renters Rights Bill, strengthened tenants rights, created a national landlord database, set a target of 1.5 million homes. I think we all know that one's not going to be met. Lifted restrictions on onshore wind development, increased NHS funding, school funding, local government funding,

extended support for Ukraine, reestablished Britain's strength in the world, then it's got a whole list on migration, bringing those numbers down, then on health service, bring down the waiting list, etc. So it's, you know, there's a lot there. As I say, I won't get, but there's a lot there you can point. The question is whether they add up to a story. Yeah. And do they add up to a story? And also, if you were going to be, if I play my devil's advocate part, if you were somebody who was concerned about growth and you were more on the kind of, I don't know, neoliberal, conventional side of business and low taxes, what you might say is that most of those things are about either bringing in new regulations

or they're about increasing spending. And what got lost in this story was what Starma was elected on, which is it was all about growth. It was all going to be about growth. All these stories were going to fix and growth. And what actually you got there is the story that your friend Pat McFadden

was complaining about, which is that it's really a story about doing a loss of things which are very popular, of course, with the Labour Party because they're anti-aulsterity, they're more spending, more workers' rights. But what's happened is he's kept the triple lock pension in place, very generous. Of course, lifted the two-child benefit cap.

He's put a lot more money into welfare. They haven't really fixed in any way the problem of the number of people who aren't working. And so a lot of those things boil down to things which are very, very popular with the left. protecting workers' rights and increasing spending on welfare. But there's not a lot on the other side, which is how are you generating the growth to do that without borrowing more and taxing more? Well, I think what we've said since the election, both of the way that Gia Stama and Rachel Reeves have conducted their management of the economy, that the big message was growth.

But I think we always struggled to kind of get our heads around what the key components. of the growth strategy were. And I think that is the most important thing that Kirstama's successor has to grapple with. And obviously who he appoints his chancellor is going to be a very important part of that. I do think he starts from a good base in being so closely recognized as somebody who believes in and has been a, if you like, for Manchester, a beneficiary of devolution and of a more, a less kind of whitehall-centric approach to economic management. But he's going to have to do. You mentioned the triple lock there. I think the triple lock is one of those things that at some point, everybody knows at some point a leader is going to have to confront that.

Well, why not be the one that comes in on the back of this rather strange by-election where you've answered the exam question, who can stop reform? You've got a, you've got wind in your sales. By the way, Roish, I just tell you, Nigel Farage has put out a statement saying, I'm fed up waiting for all these washed-up has-beings to be shoved into place by the Unipati. of Labour thinks he's got another chance of the election, let's have it now. There will be the pressure for that. But I think that's...

That's a big, big question, because I got somebody who's quite a canny political operator saying that he thought that the chances of election had gone up. And remember, this is what Boris Johnson did. Boris Johnson won. And he took over a party that didn't need to have an election for another three years, very, very similar.

Truth may have been in two years. He comes in in 2019. And he pretty much promised, like almost all of us, that there wasn't going to be an election because, you know, we were doing very badly in the polls. And he gambled through an election in 2019, turned it around. So there will be some people saying, and he thinks are just going to get worse. You're as popular as you're ever going to be. You've got this wonderful bounce out of beating reform, trigger an immediate election, and see if you can lead through to a more substantial majority for five years and a bit of. of a mandate for yourself and get going, which is presumably the Boris calculation, right?

Look, I think there will be that, and that is definitely a calculation he'll have to make. And if you go back through the history of those calculations, Gordon Brown, when he took over to it from Tony Blair, looked like he was going to and then didn't. And I think in some ways didn't recover from that, because that was, you know, never underestimate how the people in these positions of leadership will get judged on the really big calls that get remembered. And that got remembered and people thought, oh, you were going to do that, but then you didn't.

And now you're pretending you never were, you're never going to. Johnson, as you say, Theresa May is the other salutary lesson in this, though. She decided, I need my own mandate, went for an election, didn't do very well, and was thereby very, very badly weakened. I can see the case. I can see the case. But one thing I think is very hard to imagine, Rory, is that, you know, I'm not sure that a combination of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela could top the sort of three,

the sort of three-figure majority they got at the last election, as you say, on quite a low turnout, where if you take out the people who didn't vote, only one in five people voted Labor. So maybe he could. That's certainly something that's going to be that you'll be thinking about. I think what Keir-starmer's done today is genuinely a benefit to Andy Burnham, because he does need a bit, you do need a bit of time to think and to prepare. Will there be a contest? If there is a contest, what is your pitch going to be? If there isn't a contest, how do you get around the question of democratic legitimacy on the back of a by-election, you know, with a population of 60,000.

And then I was scribbling, you know, one of the problems with, this has happened ever since we've started, this podcast for you, that stuff just seemed to happen, the stuff that you say are one day, suddenly is out of day. So this morning, I've been busy rewriting my column for the new world. And I was actually thinking, if we actually think of the things that Keir's Stamber did less well, okay, what are they and how do they translate to what Andy Burnham might do? And the first thing, I think, the most important thing to me is there has got to be absolute clarity of strategy. It's got to be really, really clear from day one, this is my strategy, this is my plan, this is

what I intend to do. I'm interrupting here, but listen to this will want to know again, what is is your definition of strategy? How do you think about a strategy? How do you define what a good strategy is? It's what I call the big how. It's the means by which you turn your aspiration, change in the case of Kea Starma, into an ongoing story, an ongoing narrative that were all the different bits,

all those hundred things that I pointed to, that people can relate them to the bigger narrative. And it's also something that gives you, the leader in the case of the prime minister, but also the team, and understanding of where you fit inside a bigger, broader message. And I've never been clear, to be honest, what that has been in the last two years.

It's been a bit of a bit of that. The idea is that whatever you thought of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair, it was very clear to people. I remember talking to many people who'd been in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet and even the junior ministers, there was a real sense that everybody in the department knew what Maggie wanted. And that made it very, very easy as the junior minister

to make decisions, take control, and the civil servants would follow through. If you don't get that, it's not just a problem with public communication. It's also a problem with internal management, which is that given there are so many process problems, legal blocks, so many reasons why civil servants are a bit skeptical

about ministers who keep getting changed, driving ahead with things, you really need that sense that if, the permanent secretary would have picked up the phone to number 10, they would know what the answer would be. And that if Alistair or Rory is saying, this is what we're doing, this is genuinely something that fits him with a strategy. And otherwise, what I found is, you know, I would try to do something radical. Let's say, I wanted to say, we're going to double spending on the environment in diffid. There would be a pause where people would think, well, is that what the

prime minister really wants? It's all very well the sector of state doing this. But if they're making this huge announcement. Is this kind of fit in with the general story? But that's why I think that if it is Andy Burnham, his strategy in a way almost writes itself, his strategy is, if you think about what he's been saying, he's been saying that our politics is broken, that it's not working for working people in places like the north of England. And what he's shown in Manchester relates to this sense of devolution of power. So I think that is this, if I were advising him, that's where I'm starting in terms of devising an overall strategy. It's about unleashing the potential and the talent of people all over this country.

And that, by the way, you mentioned permanent secretaries, that will mean, and it should mean, quite a shake-up in the way that Whitehall operates, the way that Westminster operates. But of course, where you go from being mayor of Manchester, big city region, very important part of the country, he's clearly been a success. You know, it's not all down to him, but he's been a big part of the leadership of that successful transformation of a city region. Still big challenges. But governing the country is going to be so much harder. Let me come in on that for a second,

because I think this is what I experienced with Boris Johnson. So he as mayor was surprisingly popular, including with his deputy mayors. So some of these people we've interviewed, people like James Cleverly, people we haven't interviewed like Kipmalt House, had worked with him very closely when he was mayor, and they felt he was a good mayor.

He was good at delegating, he was good at getting behind them, and they as deputy mayors could get on with their jobs and do them. As soon as he became foreign secretary and then prime minister, that all fell to pieces. So almost everybody who worked from his foreign secretary found him a terrible manager.

People like me and Alan Duncan never saw, stop, you know, making huge public statements saying he was the most useless foreign secretary we'd ever worked for. So there's a question, and it's a question, I think, that struck people like Cleverley and Malt House who'd worked with him when he was the mayor. What was it that was stopping him transitioning to be prime minister? And the normal answer is that as a mayor, you can become more of a non-partisan mascot. You don't really need to take particular party political positions. Your power is a little bit uncertain. It's never quite clear with a buck. stops with you or it's the fall to the center, you can deliver things which are very visible.

Boris, buses, bicycles, actually with Andy Blenum, two buses, quite an important part of it. And suddenly now you're prime minister and you are hit from nowhere by COVID, Ukraine, and you're struggling with things like public finances, which are much, much, a very, very different, I think, from a local mayor's budget. A local mayor, you know, will have responsibility maybe for transport, policing and housing. That's about it, usually. And that's okay because you can work with the local councils to try to sort out planning. You can spend some money on transport to get a bit of revenue in. But you're not responsible for the stuff that is actually drives the whole British budget. You're not responsible for hundreds of billions of pounds going into welfare and the

NHS. And the really big questions on, if you do something, For example, what's it going to do to child poverty? And one of the things that Kirstama was being praised for is that child poverty numbers went in the right direction because the reason they weren't in the right to knowledge was exactly because of this welfare spending that people are cautious about. And it would back over you on this mayor. Yeah. Well, I think the other thing you can do if you're a mayor, you can disappear from view from time to time.

Whereas you can't do that as prime minister. And, you know, one of the things that I think Kirstama found difficult in the job, if you remember when David Cameron was prime minister, One of the things he did best was the public narration of what he was trying to do. I mean, he was on the news all the time, and he looked in command and he looked confident. Kirstar always looked to me like somebody who, that was the part of the job he least enjoyed. He liked the part of the job where you sat down with lots of different reports to consider and lots of bits of data to look at and discussions to have, and then you make a decision.

I want to the criticism, of course. Sorry, footnote, that's also true of Rishi Sunak. I mean, it's amazing talking now that he stepped down how many of his ministers say to me, how wonderful he was. Yeah, he knew what he was. When it came to details, yeah. Yeah. So that's the first thing. You can disappear.

Andy, I think, is a good communicator. But I'll give you another example. You talked there about you don't have to be sort of so political in the sense is what you were saying. You call it being a mascot. And part of Andy's whole message is about politics is about bringing people together. I was last week I was comparing an event for the Tessa Jal Foundation. Tessa, Andy's political career started as an advisor to Tessa Jal. Now Tessa was kind of, you know, she was walking empathy.

She was walking politics. He's about bringing people together. And Andy's got a lot of that about himself. A lot harder when you're standing at the dispatch box with, you know, 50 Malcolm Marshall fast bowlers coming at you from all sorts of different direction. Quite hard to hold on to that line that, that you won't do party political point scoring. So the communication, I think you'll be much better,

but I think it's going to get tougher. I think the other thing, you know, to go back to what I think... Sorry, you're making so many interesting points. I want to interrupt you on that one. So one of the tests that presumably is Prime Minister's questions where is the classic one, where I remember certainly Theresa May saying, I remember Rishu Kuhnak saying, I remember Jeremy Corbyn saying,

and I remember Kirstama saying, we want to get out of the punch and duty. We don't want this ridiculous, you know, sort of stupid lines, and we're going to try to be more dignified and collegial. And of course, what happened is they were massively punished for it. And in fact,

in the case of Kemi Badenock, she had to make herself much more into something almost like a stand-up comedian, have all these sharp lines ready to go and be much more brutal. So that's going to be the one test for him immediately, is he going to stand up at Primus's question? try to bring the sort of style he had as a Manchester mayor and find himself being mocked by the opposition

and disappointing his own party who quite like that. Yeah, yeah, stick it to them stuff. Well, just to give you one instance on that, and by the way, we're on the back of Norse today, where we ask the people who are listening or watching now for a poll, should there be an early election, and it's running at no 72, yes, 28. But let's just take, how does he handle,

I mean, it's quite strange our Parliament at the moment, because you've got the government there with a massive majority, and yet the leader is about to go. You have a new leader coming in. He's going to stand there with all these 400 and odd MPs behind him. And at the start, most of them will try to be behind him. But he's going to have all sorts of divisions that will start up, not least when he starts to reshape his team.

And then you've got the official opposition, who are kind of filling this bit, then you've got the Nats and the Liberals. But it was really interesting how often in recent months, the debate has actually been directed over towards this very small group of MPs led by Nigel Farage. Now, Andy Burnham has won the by-election, in part actually, by not tearing lumps off the reform candidate, you know, who, by the way, gave a lot of material that could have led Eddie would say it, but decided not to. So how do you handle Farage

if you're trying to do this different style of politics? And what's clear from the word go, from Farage's statement on the back of what Keir Starmes, there's no, there's no, you know, Stama's good grace in there. This is the Udi party at work, and we've got to get rid of the bloody lot of them. So, and I think the other thing, just to go through a few other things that I think he's got to bear in mind maybe more than Keir Stamber did. The first is the first big decisions really, really, really matter. So back in 97, our first really big decision was Bank of England Independence.

If you go back through the early days of the Starma government, the first big thing that people remember was the winter fuel payment. Now, they'd done lots of things before then, but they weren't done with the kind of cut through and the boldness that said, that's what this government is about. And just to remind people, the winter fuel payment, they boldly said that they were going to cut the winter fuel payment because it costs billions of pounds a year,

and it's allowing people like you or my mother who don't need the money, to get a winter fuel payment. So certainly the Treasury has been desperate to cut that for years and years and years. And people like me who, trying to look at the logic of it, I've always thought it's a bit daft and why did Gordon Brown introduce it. But he does it and then he U-turns, doesn't he? Yeah, exactly. So he does it, gets what he thought was going to be political strength

by showing we're prepared to take difficult decisions, then is shown not to be able to get it through, even with this massive majority, which suggests lack of political authority, so therefore gets no credit at all for that U-turn. And just on the other thing that I think maybe was underestimated is MPs, I'm speaking to you here, you know this, MPs matter. It is, I think the question the historians will really struggle with is this question of how you've gone from that majority to this so quickly.

And I think if you were to ask a lot of the MPs, particularly the new ones actually. I think a lot of the new MPs say, I was talking to one of them recently, and she said, do you know, I don't feel I know Keir Stama any better now than I did at the start.

And I think the other thing, advisors matter. Advisors are incredibly important. I think it's helpful to Andy Burnme has now got a bit of time to put together because, again, the advisors you might have

to help you be the mayor of Manchester, you're talking about a completely different level of operation. You've got to get the right people around you. And Keir Stama, he relied too much on one source of advice. That was Morgan McSweeney. It's really weird this point about making friends with MPs and getting to know them. I mean, I agree it's a little bit like managing some sort of hysterical ballet company and there's a lot of egos and narcissism around. But it is amazing how consistently you hear this.

When I was in Parliament, everybody grumbled that David Cameron didn't make enough effort. The story then was that he and George Osborne were too grand. They were this sort of Hotting Hill set and they thought backbench MPs weren't posh enough and weren't interesting enough and there wasn't any point spending time of them. So they just kind of hung out with each other and with their special advisors and went to the Cotswolds with Hugo Swire or whatever they did, right? Then the story would have been, you know, fast forwarding very much the same, I'm afraid, with Rishishishinak, which people would have said, you know, he's not clubbable enough. He's not spending enough time in the tea rooms. He's not spending enough time in them. And presumably,

understandably, it's because these guys are very, very busy. They have a lot of things on. And the fact is, backbench MPs can be pretty boring and demanding and take a huge amount of your time. And many of them, oddly, quote, Tony Blair, which is where I want to come back to you, which is that when I challenged the camera administration about why they were behaving like this, they would say, well, you know, this is what, I don't know what they called Tony Blair, was it, the master anyway.

The master. their idea that this is how he did it. It was all about what was happening in number 10. You didn't really need to have to worry about that. But presumably you're saying that you think that actually you made a better job of dealing with MPs than Stalmers managed to do. And in which case, goodness gracious, Burnham's got to do it. And he's got to acknowledge from the beginning. It's going to be painful, tough, time consuming. It's not enough to do a few drinks in number 10, which is what the whips will always do. Every time the party's discontented, why don't we invite the MPs and their wives and three series for a summer drink in number 10, you've actually got to

do the horrible thing, which is really feel that you're sitting down with them almost in terms. God, there's 400 of them, but you've got to sit down with them individually. You've got to know their names. You've got to make them feel you care. You've got to praise them for the stuff they're doing in the constituency, and you've got to make them feel that you mean it. Over do you? Well, I think I've told you before, George Bush telling me that he became president by writing

a lot of letters. And I think you do, you need, look, you can't expect the leader of the Labour Party or the Prime Minister to spend the whole time. But I give an example, you know, Gordon Brown was actually quite good at this. He had people who would be going through Hansard to see who made good speeches and then just drop them a little postcard saying it didn't even have to be from Gordon. You know, Gordon said, what a great speech you made in the such and such a debate and what have you. So that kind of thing. But I think what, look, I think if Tony Blair was being absolutely honest, he'd say often it was a complete pain in the ass to have to do it. But he had Bruce Crow caught his PPS and later on David Hanson and others who were saying to him, we've got to keep the PLP on side.

Sally Morgan, part of her job. Pat McFadden, part of his job was, you know, keeping the MPs. And the whips, of course, the two-way thing. But most prime minister's questions, at the end of most prime minister's questions, as you say, Tony Blair, unbelievably busy, hundreds of foreign. leaders to talk to, visits to make, that we would always build into the diaries from time for MPs, even if it was just signing bottles of Scots that then go to them for their next constituency raffle, whatever it might be. And that is, as you say, a balls aching part of the job. But the reason why it's so important for Andy Burnham, see, I think one of the things that Kier Stama thought is I have helped transform the Labour Party post-Corpon, and I have led it

to this amazing victory. Now, I'm not saying this is what he said, but I think part of he's thinking, so all you lot who keep moaning at me, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me, right? So don't expect me to spend all my time when I've got a country to run and all this and that. But Andy Burnham doesn't even have that because Andy Burnham's coming in. And a lot of these new MPs, I was talking to a group of new MPs two or three weeks ago. This was before it was so obvious what was going to happen. And one of the two that were very down on Andy Burnham, They thought that the sort of combination of West Streeting doing what he'd done and then Andy Burnham making the by-election so much about him, they were getting a bit sort of iffy about it. And one of them said, look, he's going to come in here and think we're all going to bow down.

He said, we don't know him. We don't know this guy. So he's going to have to, and listen, Andy's very good at this stuff. Don't get me wrong. He's very good at relations. He's very good at being warm and charming. And once you tell him your kid's name, they'll remember it and all that stuff, which is part of politics, whether we like it or not. So I'm not saying he can't do it, but I think if we're going through the things that Keir didn't maybe do as much as he should have done,

and I think the point about advisors is so important. You know, I copped it in a way that Dominic Cummings did, Morgan McSweeney. You get some advisors who you sort of become, in a way, too high profile. But that being said, I think that I will always say the difference, say, between me and Cummings in relation to Johnson is I didn't have my own agenda. and secondly, the difference in relation to Morgan McSweeney, I was not the only advisor whose mindset the MPs and the minister's thought mattered to Tony Blair. He had a whole group of people and you need that.

You can't just rely on one track of advice. I also wonder whether there isn't an opportunity for him as the Tory party fragments to bring over moderate Tories. This is, I mean, who knows, because it might all turn around, but if the Tory party is on course to being like the Liberal Party was after the First World War, the strange death of Liberal England, one of the moves that the Conservatives made at the time was to pull a lot of the leading lights of the Liberal Party over into their ranks. So I think there are a large chunk of people who are in play

between Kemi Badenok and Andy Burnham, if it's Andy Burnham, and who aren't going to go Lib Dem, much to the fury and frustration of the Lib Dems. They're people who are horrified by reform, horrified by the Greens, define themselves as centrists. And so one of the questions is, will he really lean into this idea

that he's about unifying? And that's, again, difficult culturally with the Labour Party because I remember these slightly comical conversations that we were having with Bridget Philipson and Rachel Reeveson before the election when I was trying to get them to guess how Tories felt or who Tories were and they really struggled to empathize

and really understand Tory well. I think Andy's much better at that I think because he will have got used in Manchester to dealing with Tories. He was very charming, for example, when we had him on with Andy Street. He did Tale of Two Andes, which definitely worth listening to people. But that's another thing that would be interesting. Cameron did it to some extent, getting people like Andrew Adonis on board, getting former Labor

Ministers to run commissions, chair things, which was actually quite sort of interesting in the early days. I don't really remember this, but in sort of 2010, 2011, 2012, it was quite difficult for Labour MPs to attack commissions that he'd set up. he put David Lammy looking at racism and youth justice. I think that was the issue. He had other people looking at child poverty who were former Labour ministers, and suddenly the whole thing becomes a bit sort of unsettling for the opposition.

Well, it did. Michael Gove asked me to do a review of mental health in prisons, and I remember at the time thinking, well, I think I'm being drawn into a trap here. But anyway, such as the chaos that he got moved on to a different job very soon thereafter. So what you're basically saying, Roy, is this a memo for you to take? charge of British prisons. Absolutely.

This is just my job application yet again to another Labour Prime Minister. Review of the BBC, review of off-com. Do you fancy that one? You name it. Anyway, standing by, public servant, standing by. Listen, let's move on to the thing that I want to get you on to, though, which is we've talked a lot about theory, strategy, style people skills.

But I suppose the big question now is what's in the national interest and what are the really big calls that a future prime minister needs to make? And how does Andy Burnham, let's assume it's Andy Burnham, but it could be West Streeting, but let's assume it's Andy Burnham. How does he think about these things? And I've got some dilemmas in my mind, right? Does he return to the Rachel Reeves view, which as far as we can understand it is that they needed. to cut things like wind-fuel payments, concessions for Farmers on Inheritance, payments for unemployment benefits, because that was an important part of generating growth. Question one. Question two, does he, like Rachel Reeves and Kirstama, believe that he really needs to stick to this ruling out

any rises in income tax, which forces you to do a lot of weird, quite damaging taxes and borrow more money because you can't put income tax up. And broadly speaking, all of that stuff, I think, sits in a question about competitiveness, winning back business, and what kind of Labour Party this is. Is this a party that is about – and I agree, Andy will resist this, but sometimes there are things which feel like a choice between our priority is more equality and our priority is more growth.

And look, obviously, there's a third way idea that you can do both, but we haven't had growth in this country really since 2008. And a lot of the problems in the countries stem from that. And I just don't know

how radical he's going to be. On the triple lock pension, let me finish on this one. Is it actually plausible that the guy's going to come in and really be prepared to kick pensioners in the teeth in order to achieve long-term gain?

The short answer is I don't know. I'm not sure. But that's the sort of thing that I mean when I say that his first days and his first impressions and his first decisions are going to be so, so, so important. And I think it would be best for him and for the country if in a way he were prepared to confront the country with the reality of the situation that we're in. I think you can persuade the country, for example, that Russia is a bigger threat than we've maybe been prepared to acknowledge. I, as you know, remain obsessed with the fact that we've still not properly fully understood Russia's role in Brexit. There was a very, very interesting. Call me obsessed, Roy.

And by the way, talking of Russia, I must direct people to our leading interview this week, which is BBC. Steve Rosenberg, the Russia editor. It's one of my favorite interviews, actually, and partly because I won't give away the ending, but mainly because of the ending. It's the best ending of a podcast we've ever done. That's all I'm going to say. But yesterday, we have this extraordinary situation.

One of the things that's kind of obsessing me and keeping me awake at night is that you now have the combined forces of MAGA in the United States and Donald Trump. I mean, how disgusting yesterday that he sort of pre-announced. Kier Stah Marmer's announcement. Almost implying that he was on the apprentice and had fired him.

Exactly. It was really weird. It was disgusting. And then with two lies saying that, you know, when you've got immigration actually coming down and crime coming down, he talked about soaring immigration and soaring crime. So you've got MAGA, you've got the hard right around Europe, including in our own country, at a time when the hard right is so radicalizing some people that you have like that guy going around the streets of Edinburgh with a knife, just.

just going around randomly stabbing Muslims. And I think it's shocking, by the way, that that has not had the same sort of outpouring as we had recently when somebody was stabbed in gold as green. And I think there is a sort of double standard there. And then, but then alongside that, you've got Maga the Hard Right and you've got the Kremlin. So yesterday, Roy, I don't even if you saw this,

one of the, Trump did his post saying, Kirst Tharmer's going to go, nice guy, but, you know, I always knew he wasn't up to kind of thing. You were fired. One of the first people to repost that with something like we've got him or, you know, we've come together and got rid of him or we've got our man kind of thing was Kirill Demetriyev, the Steve Wittkov of the Kremlin, Putin's right-hand man. So that's the other thing that I think. And that problem is not going to go away just because you're a bit more charismatic. That problem is going to be there.

Well, let's develop that second problem. So if the first problem is domestic, growth, the economy. The second problem is what are Andy Burnham's instincts about the shape of the world and how Britain sits in the world for the next five to ten years. So is Russia a security threat to Britain by 2030 or by 2030? is a hell of a big judgment call he's got to make because all our defense procurement depends on that. Have we got 10 years to sort ourselves out or four years to sort ourselves out drives almost everything he's going to have to do in the expansion? What sort of threat is China to us?

We forget about China, but actually, of course, the reality is that China is something that has wiped out a lot of European and American and American industry, through a cheap currency, through subsidizing, and through a lot of very impressive technology strategy, right? And then the third one is what's his instinct on the US? And this is a really difficult thing. This is where one never really sensed where Kierstahmer ended up. The problem with sending Mandelson to Washington is Mandelson was still very much struck in the world that if you just had to be nice to Trump and there was no real alternative. If Burnham senses, as I think the whole world does now, that Trump is the canary in the coal mine, Trump shows us how dangerously dependent we are on the US for everything, how the US basically has us by the throat. And we did rather an interesting infre which is coming out soon with Malcolm Turnbull.

And he talked about capacity and intent. He said, look, I'm not saying that either China or the US, has the intent to weaponize our dependencies, but you also have to think about capacity and you also have to ask yourself, look, if you have built a whole economy dependent on American cloud computing and AI and American defense recruitment and the dollar and the payment systems,

is it inconceivable that Trump or a future American president might weaponize those dependencies to get what he wants? And if it is conceivable, how do you build the strategic autonomy. I mean, not complete sovereignty, but how do you build strategic autonomy? And that relates back to the bigger question, the big elephant in the room, which is, of course, the only way that Britain can do this is with Europe. The real answer to how you stand up to Russia,

China, the US, do any of this middle power stuff is not just talking about what we do with Canada and Australia and New Zealand or Japan or South Korea, but accepting that right on our doorstep is an entire institution, which was largely designed in order to try to coordinate between nation-states and in order to have some strategic autonomy. Yeah, and again, I mean, I know Andy well, but I don't, I have an instinct for what his answers might be in those, but I don't know. And of course, the one part of that you didn't really go into was Europe, because that's going to be a very important part of his messaging as well. So if you take those things one by one, I think it's very, very hard for any leader of the country right now to make the case that

there isn't a genuine threat from Russia in all sorts of different ways. And I think we need to be much more open with the public about what they are. A very interesting interview I spotted the other day with Al Khan's, who's obviously just left the Ministry of Defence. He was talking about the influence of Iranian and other misinformation campaigns on Scottish independence debate. I presume that is based on stuff he was briefed about when he was in the MOD. So I think all that kind of thing we need to be much more open with the public about. So I think he's I'm imagining he will want to be pretty hard over on defence. But we all know one of the reasons that Kier Stahmer was weakened in recent days

is because he lost his defence secretary, John Healy, because his defence secretary, John Healy was not happy with the decision-making process around the defence investment plan and felt that Kier-Starmer and Rachel Rees were taking too long and making their own decision. So Andy's got that problem in his plate straight away, if he becomes Prime Minister, unless Kier-Starmer gets that sorted before he goes. On China, again, I think there's, it is one of those where you have to be very, very clear early on about a strategic position. And so he needs a bit of time to think of those things.

And then on Europe, I mean, I can remember Andy as a, you know, pretty not maybe as obsessed as I am, but not Brexit derangement syndrome in the way that I am. But at the same time, that's where his kind of core belief is, that Britain's, Britain's place is in the heart of Europe. But of course, he's just been elected in a constituency that is very much not necessarily of that view, even though most people think that Brexit has been a bit of a disaster. I mean, just to underscore people, a constituency that voted two-thirds for Brexit, you know, 65% for Brexit. I mean, it's a very strong leave constituency. I want, Rory, can I read you, can I read you, let's see, let's read between your lives. Andy Byrne was posted as follows. Keir Stama has given huge service to our country.

I want to thank him for his leadership and dedication during such a challenging period. His decision marks the beginning of a transition. It's important that this process is conducted in an orderly responsible way. I will put myself forward as part of this process. The country expects stability, seriousness and a continued focus on the issues that matter most. And that is what it will get. As we move forward, our priority must be to work together to get. the country back to where we all wanted to be. People want to see progress on economic growth,

cost of living, public services, housing, et cetera, et cetera, political change should never distract from the responsibility to improve people's lives. The Labour movement has always been at its strongest where it looks forward with confidence and purpose. That is what we'll do from here and we will make sure this transition is a positive process of renewal for our party in our country. So we don't really get much in terms of that's very much sort of being nice to care. Let me let me give you my final one. And this I guess is really my job pitch. I'd be pitching myself if I was trying to help Andy to try to get people to think seriously about AI. Because I think we're underestimating the fact that this could in three years change almost everything.

It could have a radical impact on unemployment. A lot of people could lose their jobs. It could completely transform the balance of power in terms of how weapon systems work. It could completely transform productivity in public services. and the problem is that we built it all on an American stack. So what are we going to do about it? And somebody needs to sit down with Andy Burnham and get his choices. And again, it'll be his gut instincts, I guess, as well as his thing.

What's he going to think if you say, okay, we could gamble that the US in the end is going to be nice to us and they're going to want our markets and they're never going to do anything as brutal as cut off our access to these frontier models. So let's just keep cozying up to the US and integrate ourselves and maybe build some smart apps and the life sciences which they may want to use and that will grow our economy. Second choice, we're going to try to build off Chinese open source models and we're going to not develop our own frontier AI, but we're going to build off Chinese open source models and do some rather interesting things as backup. Choice number three, we're going to build a lot of data centers and we're going to build a lot of data centers. and we're going to buy a lot of chips, and we're going to host American weights in Britain and Europe, so that if an American president switched off access to the next generation of Mythos,

at least we've still got the last generation and put legal protections in. Final one, we go all out for a Manhattan project, trying to get Japan, South Korea, Canada, Europe, Middle East together to build our own frontier models on the grounds that this is everything. This is like electricity, this like gas, it's like nuclear. that we can't afford to be without it. And the cost of that would be phenomenal. And he's also going to be facing the politics of AI, which maybe we need to talk about more,

because Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, was booed off a stage trying to talk about AI at a commencement. In America, public opinion is moving against AI very fast. People are very worried about losing jobs, very worried about data centers. and that will become bigger and bigger in Britain. Who's going to take up the anti-AI mantle in British party politics? I'm not sure that would be Andy, but at the same time, again, I don't really know what his views are on all those choices that you've just set out.

I thought it was interesting in his campaigning and in Makerfield and also in the speeches that he made since winning. He did say that part of the challenge facing the country was that we do not go down the dark and dangerous road that American politics has gone. gone down, which said to me, he's going to be more in the kind of call Trump out than just sort of, you know, pull the envelope from the pocket, as it were. But that's a big call as well, how you handle that relationship. It's, again, very, very high up in his intro when he takes over. By the way, your role is to apply for jobs. My role is to tell you what's happening inside the process now unfolding. I've given you Andy Bertham's reaction. West Treating has basically just put out a statement withdrawing any part.

possibility of campaigning. He's basically saying he's going to get behind Andy Burnham. He thinks that's what everybody else should do. He supports what he's trying to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he does mention, by the way, that one of the big issues that he's been setting out, plan for Britain to grow again, grow together, progressive capitalism, focused on wealth creation as much as wealth distribution, leading the world in the fourth industrial revolution and protecting people from its risks, modernising public services, giving Britain energy security. I am reading into that,

he's bidding to be Chancellor of East Shecker. And he's bidding to be a Chancellor of Shekker who agrees with quite a loss, I think, of what your friend Tony Blair said in his essay. So can Andy Burnham do that? Can he bring in somebody who, I don't know what the polite word

from somebody who's from the right of the Labour Party is. What do you call that? You call it the soft something. I noticed left-wing labour people are called soft left. What do you call people who are on the right of the Labour Party?

Well, no, soft left is, so you've got hard left, which would be, I guess, you know, yeah, but even Corbyn, you know, hard left in the old days was kind of Derek Hatton, Mulhern, militant. But yeah, Corbyn probably be seen as hard left. And then soft left will be more Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham, etc. I don't think we like to make the comparison on the right. So soft right, I don't want to be soft right. I'm kind of, I'm left of center. I'm hard. I'm hard. left of centre. But yeah, so anyway, what it means is that if there's no challenges, I'm just trying to think how this works. Are we now in a Theresa May situation where if there are no challenges, then Andy Burnham comes Prime Minister in July or September? He's crowned and comes in in July. Absolutely.

That's the way I understand it. It may be that somebody else will jump up and challenge who isn't west streeting. You know, you can imagine somebody's. Yeah, exactly. We need to have a competition. The reason, of course, I favoured it very much with Kamala Harris is I thought it does two things. One is it puts you through your paces and sees whether you really can hack it as a campaigner on a national scale. And secondly, if you win it, it gives you a degree of legitimacy and democracy that's actually brought you through.

So, Alison, look, just come back to this once more, because I think it really would encourage, I don't know this is the death now for poor a word's, isn't it? I do think there are many, many people in the centre ground and in the business community who'd be very reassured if West Rating became the Chancellor. But does that mean that he's not going to get the job because the Labour soft left will be horrified? Well, and the thing he's going to have to do, he can't govern according to one strand of opinion in the Labour Party. You just can't do that. It does have to be broad and merit-based. It really does.

And obviously politics is a part of it. And, you know, has he even tacitly or even openly said to Lucy Powell, who's been very, very important in his campaign, you'll be back in the cabinet. Said to Louise Haig, you'll be back in the cabinet. Said to Andrew Rayne, you'll be back in the cabinet. That's three cabinet positions that three other people then have to vacate. And then he thinks, oh, maybe that John Healy? Absolutely. Does John Healy, both John Healy and West Streeting, if you're looking for a list of the people,

who have brought about or helped to engineer this situation that looks like Kirstlam is going to resign under pressure and you're going to take over without a contest, then it's part of politics that you look to reward the people who helped you get there. So that means that then, you know, is there a danger then that people who actually you and I would say were very effective, well, sorry, there's no room for you. He will want to bring on.

He probably will want to bring on some of the younger people to show the younger people that there is a there is opportunity onward. So listen, it's the thing I've said many, many times, having watched one prime minister in particular very, very close up, but also Gordon and the ones I covered as a journalist, is I don't think anything prepares you for it. I don't think anything prepares you for it. And yes, Andy's had a very, very, quite a long,

he's been an MP, he's been a junior ministry, he's been a cabinet ministry, he's been a very successful mayor for nine years. but this is happening at a time when the challenges facing all of us are so immense. I was even thinking today, I mean, I've got my Brexit derangement syndrome saying something very symbolic about, you know, literally tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the referendum. We're still dealing with that. Today, we're talking about possibly having the highest temperature that's ever been recorded, okay? We're living with climate change.

And yet, because of Trump and all that is going down, we're living with polarization. We're living with the muskification of the social media landscape. We're living with a media that just doesn't really want to cover politics as it is. It wants to turn it into a soap opera. None of that's changing. None of that's changing unless... And we've got, I mean, the final one for me, because I think we're coming to all the end, but the big question is, is he going to buy into the idea that Britain needs something very, very radical?

That we can't just manage decline. it can't just be business as usual, that we're becoming increasingly irrelevant and marginalized, partly because our economy is just not performing. And therefore, he's going to be prepared to take real political risk, show real courage, make some people very, very angry, including fighting with people in his own party, and doing things that will horrify you and me in the hope that in the end we say three years later, well, okay, I was really angry that he did X, Y and Z, but I've got to say he's got growth going. This is really working. Britain's feeling much stronger and more significant than

before. Yeah, well, it has to be the latter. So I think the root is either. I wouldn't put my money on this, but I think, you know, don't rule out. Maybe you have an election. You take, you call Farage's bluff. You actually, you take out, what you take out of the maker field by election is that deep down the country does not want. even in a place like that does not want Nigel Farage as prime minister. You call that bluff. You then get your own mandate. Big, big risk, but, you know, don't rule it out.

Or he comes in, fights off the legitimacy claims. Basically, he says, no, our constitution means I can, you know, be prime minister, because I'm leading the party that's got a majority in Parliament. And then he has to show that it can be a lot better than what we've had so far. Either way, it's a tough road. It's a tough road. There's no point pretending this is going to be easy. It's not easy.

Politics right now, I think, is as hard as it's ever been. and I obviously wish him luck I desperately want Labour to be successful I wanted Kiyosthama to be successful I feel deep sympathy for the fact that he's not been able to survive and he's not being able to survive for political reasons and that's the life that he chose so on we go

so there we are we've we've June the 22nd it's a day of history Rory because you know what else happened on June the 22nd no what else happened to football 40 years ago today, the hand of God rose in the sky. Your favorite man? There is behind me. The dodgyest thing ever.

It's dodgy thing ever. Listen, I'm also... It's about winning. As Andy Burner will tell you, it's about winning. So for those of you who've been watching us lives, thank you for all your comments. And they've been great. Medieval Arpad Cook's goodness, watch Rory fall for all the conservative fallacies. Someone else Labor needs to institute.

capital gains tax, the quality for income tax, people talking about Mamdani, people saying fanatetics, the UK won't be able to build a deep tech stack by themselves. They'll need partnerships. So thank you for everyone who came and sorry we didn't bring you into that conversation, but those are exactly the arguments that Kiyosal is going to be having a centre team. And thank you, Alistair, so much for taking us through so much to that. Thank you. And just to remind people that question time this week is going to be a special with the European Commissioner for Climate and Energy, Dan Juergenson, former Danish government minister, very, very smart guy, very interesting guy.

So if you've got any questions that you want Roryn me to put to Dan Juergensen, then just go online and you can find that. And I think this will probably do as our main podcast of the week, unless anything even more dramatic happens tomorrow. Very good. Thank you very much for listening, guys. See you. I look forward to seeing question time.

Bye-bye. Thank you.