The Rest Is Politics - 564. Burnham’s Media Machine and West Bank Settler Impunity

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Is Burnham’s Britain’s first ‘TikTok Prime Minister’ and what does that mean for accountability, old-fashioned journalism, and the Westminster lobby? Why are violent Israeli settlers able to act with impunity against Palestinians in the West Bank, and is Israel effectively annexing the territory? Should young people spend the last two weeks of their summer holidays thinking about the challenges facing the world? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's edition of Question Time. Get involved with Politika’s Policy Ideas for Positive Change ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠. The competition is open to all 16–18 year olds in the UK, and submissions close on 20th September 2026. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah 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. Summer sale is HERE: Get an annual membership for an extra 20% off with code SUMMER26 That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. 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] __________ Becoming Burnham Trailer Editor: Dylan Bonham Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is the thinking behind Andy Burnham's communications strategy? Is it working? Will it keep working through the very challenging times as well as this honeymoon period he's living through now? Whether it's ranking pub snacks or collaborating with content creators known as Bus Ante, Burnham's clear intent to reach different demographics in new ways has already led to him being called by some of the TikTok Prime Minister. The new Prime Minister is certainly communicating very differently to the last one. It's a strategy relying a lot less on the Westminster Lobby and a lot more on social media. TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram,

although he's not averse to a long chat on a podcast either, and we're hoping he'll be on this one very soon. But in the end, while strong communications is a huge advantage to any politician in the modern media age, Isn't it true that any Prime Minister ultimately will be judged on how they handle the really big challenges? This episode is powered by fuse energy. Now, changing your energy supplier should be fairly straightforward, yet many of us still put it off, even when we might be paying more than we need to. It becomes one of those jobs we know we should do, but never quite get around to.

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Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN, some of you would have heard a little bit about from me and us that we love NordVPN. Now August always feels like the last chance to switch off enjoying the final days of summer before life starts catching up this again, unless, of course, you're doing a podcast once a week. The problem is, that means we're usually rushing out last-minute emails on airport Wi-Fi or connecting to dodgy cafe networks on the go. And it's very easy to let your guard down when you're in holiday mode. Suddenly you're left vulnerable with your personal data exposed in that busy airport cafe. Which is why NorvPN's app is

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Welcome to the Restis Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And Rory, we're going to talk about Andy Burnham, these communications strategy. We're going to talk about settler violence in the West Bank. So let's get going. What are you going to start? So much interesting and important stuff to get into, and I think we really need to talk about what's happening in the West Bank, which is underreported and incredibly significant. But before we do that, we have a question from Avon Perryman, from Winchester. Where is the line between communicating effectively on social media and becoming a semi-influencer? Do we really need to see Burnham ranking pub snacks or talking about vintage football shirts when there are so many real problems facing the country? I just want to hand

that you were two brief things. First, of course, to remind the audience that you were Tony Blair's Director of Communication, so you understand better than anyone how a new Prime Minister comes in and organizes his communications. You did it very effectively, but you did it some time ago. And the second thing is maybe before you get into the analysis, can you tell us what you think he's actually doing? What's the sense of what's different about his strategy? When I was thinking about this, we had lots and lots of questions about this in the last few weeks. And do you remember we had Jeremy Hunt on the podcast and he said that thing, which I've thought about Lossens, because I think he's right. And he said that, you know, we have to, you have to learn from the way Trump communicates.

And that doesn't mean we all go around, you know, lying and intimidating and all the stuff that he does. But what he meant by that, and this is something that I think we'd accept Kirstama didn't necessarily do, is you've got to be in the conversation. And Andy Burnham has definitely decided he's going to be in the conversation. And he's going to do it in a different way. So I was talking to somebody in his team in the last couple of days, and they were saying, for example, people are saying TikTok Prime Minister, okay, why are they saying that?

Because he's actually started to use TikTok quite effectively. His numbers are growing. And he seems kind of fairly regularly on there. What I've learned, this is something I thoroughly approve of. He's got 10 minutes in the diary every day. And the prime minister, I've said to you before, the prime minister's day. diary is such an important kind of commodity in government. Everyone's in there.

So 10 minutes every day, he's filming something. They'll maybe film a couple of different things on a couple of different themes. And then his team take them away and they package them up in different ways for all these different platforms. And if you think of that, 10 minutes and the reach that he's getting from that is a very, very effective use of his time. More traditionally, and this is maybe where Kiyosthama was more inclined to go, Kierstah would make a speech and then turn it into a kind of press conference, take questions.

I always thought that was a mistake because it meant that the journalists tended to set the agenda and make the weather out of the thing that you were trying to project. I think what Andy Burnham's doing is saying, I'm going to make the weather. I'm going to set the agenda. I will do it by doing big sit-down interviews like I did recently with Laura Kunesberg in Panorama. I will do podcasts. Interestingly, I was talking to one of his team who said that the social care So he made a big speech about social care.

It was covered live on the news channels. It was on the bulletins. The papers sort of, you know, talked about it a lot. But they actually said that the thing that where they're in the focus groups that they do, where they really got a sense of it breaking through was when he went on Elizabeth Day's podcast, that demographic. So I think what they're doing is they're thinking, right, he's a new prime minister. They're conscious of the fact that even though he's been around a long time,

he's basically known by most people as mayor of Manchester. A lot of people don't remember necessarily his time in Parliament. He's known as mayor of Manchester. So he's broadening his profile. I think he sees himself as being in that phase of his premiership where he's getting the country to get used to him, whilst laying out some interesting big things that you and I have talked about. So devolution, vocational education,

and so forth. So he's essentially he's putting together the different bits of a communication strategy around what is traditional interviews, speeches, all the stuff that, you know, you know well, I know well from the time I did it, but then building in much more this sense of the modern. I was trying to think, you know,

who's done this before in British politics and where did it came from? Twitter and Facebook are basically things that get going 2006-2007. Yeah. So just just before Gordon Brown takes up. over. And by the time David Cameron is beginning to run into, he becomes prime minister in 2010, he makes a comment before that election saying that people who go on Twitter are twats,

right? So he's still in a mindset. And I guess Gordon Brown won't have done much social media. But by the time we were getting into the 2015 election, the Conservative Party had hired Jim Messina, who had done Obama's 2008-2012 campaigns, which were very, very much crucial. credited to brilliant use, not just the social media, but of super precise targeting, the use of A-B targeting, for example. And we were sent out knocking on doors with incredible sheets of data, which was supposed to tell us exactly who was likely to vote for us. It seemed on the basis of what they shot for in Tesco's. Fast forward, we then enter a series of prime ministers, only one of whom, I would argue, was ever only good on social media until we got to Andy Burnham.

It certainly wasn't Theresa May's strength. It certainly wasn't Liz Truss's strength, and it wasn't particularly Rishi Sunak or Kyrsama's strength. It was Boris Johnson's strength. I mean, he had a real natural flair for comic video, you know, going all the way back to have I gotten used for you and the rest of it. And you remember, he went into an election campaign where he recreated the scene and love actually standing there with signs outside, which really was Boris Johnson as an actor. I mean, very, very few other primersers would have been able to do that. And I think one of the things I was thinking about

when you were talking about that 10 minutes is that for Kyr Stammer, it probably wasn't just the choice. If you stuck him for 10 minutes in front of a iPhone camera, a lot of the Burnham things seem to be selfies. I'm not sure he really would have been able to perform. I think he would have found it very, very uncomfortable. I mean, Andy Burnham is part of a new group of politicians who are able to do it very naturally. I guess, I mean, you do it very naturally. I mean, you're often asked to do little videos for schools and you've got used to it. But my sense is I'm not sure the sort of Theresa May to Kirstam a lot actually would have

done that well at it. No, I think what makes Andy Burnham an effective communicator for the modern age, even though there's actually something very old-fashioned about it, is that he will talk pretty much the same, whether he's talking to you as an MP that he bumps into in Parliament, or he's talking to a head teacher who's showing him around a school, or he's talking to an interviewer. I don't even be picking up all these impersonators who have started to do Adderderder.

They're all doing with slightly different ways. There's obviously there's the northern thing. Russell Kane does some very funny videos about, you know, I'm normal. I'm just a normal guy. here I'm I put some white bread in a toaster because that's what normal people do. But I think in terms of how it relates to his communication style, I think Matt Ford, who you and I both know Matt Ford, very funny labor guy, and he's got this thing. I don't know if you see any of his impersonations have had any burden of.

I can't do the voice. But in terms of the style, it's basically this thing about, well, what he does, Rory, he asks a lot of questions, doesn't he, Rory? So, you know, he's talking about the economy. And, you know, what people really want is a bit of help with the cost of living. there, Rory? And he's got this sort of start of the of the question. He's very conversational. But then he made this point that he hasn't quite got the tonality structures worked out. So, for example, he would be saying, well, I was at the football last night, Everton.

We played really well and had a few beers with the lads. My head's a bit sore this morning. But I've got to tell you, Rory, if the Iranians don't get their act together, I'm sending in the nuclear weapons. He can't do the pivot. So, and I think, but it, but it, what you're speaking to, and I think Mark Carney's got this as well, is actually they're very natural. They're not being something. They're not. So when you say Kirstama wouldn't be able to use the 10 minutes as fruitfully,

it's because he'd be overthinking at it. And he sometimes just sounded so kind of constrained and, well, is that word right? Whereas Andy, we talked about Jay Snardi yesterday. He obviously felt this was probably in his 10 minutes. He thought, look, I've got to say something about this. It's really serious. And what he said was just, he was just speaking like a human being.

He wasn't really making any political points at all. And sometimes that's, you have to do that as prime minister. And I think what's coming over is that it's very natural and very authentic, not too scripted, not too stilted. Here's another thing I want to give him credit for, because David Cameron did a little bit of the taking you behind the scenes. So you'd sort of see him when he was Foreign Secretary walking up those very grand stairs in King Charles Street and sort of looking over his shoulders saying,

I'm going into a summit on this set and the other. Most of the Andy Burnham stuff I've seen, there is a sense of division between what's going on in the cabinet room and what he's talking to you about. It's not that he's sort of, it's not a reality TV show where he's taking you in behind the scenes.

It's more that if you are going behind the scenes, it's him sitting down with his Cambridge professor and having a little chat about that or something. But it's not quite that he's like, here I am at the cabinet table, the chance that just made a rubbish point. We're not really getting that, which I think it's good. We don't, we don't want that.

No, we don't want that. And also that, if you do that, you're then relying, although, you know, the pub video thing that the question of mentioned was, that's the one that I didn't like that much. He was doing with John Healy rating pub snacks, okay? I think we need a bit less of that and a bit more of the, I'll tell you one when I thought it was really effective. And this, this happened.

And because of the, in part because of the timing of the 10 minutes that they had in the diary to do it, it was when he became, I think, the first political leader of any note, basically to come out against Infantino and the new plans on the World Cup. That was a classic example of where you've got your 10 minutes in the diary. Normally, what they're thinking of doing is using him to supplement what is the main thing the government is promoting on that way. So let me put, I'm interrupting here because this is your thing. or is something very associated with you, which is the grid. And I think the idea of the grid was supposed to be,

this week the big story is adult social care. Last week, the big story is devolution. So the temptation would be to say, got 10 minutes for the prime minister, what we're going to do is we're going to use him and everybody else to say, this is what we're doing on adult social care, instead of which we get infantina.

So I think most days he will be thinking, and his team will be thinking, right, we've got West Streeting is out today, doing some big new announcement on defense, let's get the prime minister in behind that. On Infantino, I think they basically just decided this is a huge story. It does have a political dimension to it. And if he gets in ahead of this, that is a good use of this few minutes that we've got of his time now. And I think that's a, so that's a very good example. Now let me get back to the question from our questioner, because he does raise, I think, quite an interesting point,

which is what's the downside of this? I mean, the upside of this. I mean, the ups and side seems to me that Burnham is charming, likable. He's getting a lot of cuts through. Incidentally, he's a kind of small thing. You'll see a lot of people saying that he's a TikTok prime minister, run the Facebook prime minister. It's true. He's had a very remarkable jump in the number of people following him on TikTok. He's jumped up to about 400,000, 400,000. But interestingly, most of the real cuts through is still coming on Facebook. So there's a very odd thing which is that he's got fewer Facebook followers, but his Facebook posts are getting a million, one of them in case, like, almost five million views.

Just on that, Roger, that's really interesting, because members of the team that I was talking to, they made the point that when he was talking recently about the prisoner release situation, they said that the really big breakthrough was actually when he wrote a piece, I think it was the Daily Telegraph, old style, okay, put the whole thing. thing on his Facebook page, and I don't know if that was the one that got the 5 million views, but that was where they suddenly started to notice feedback coming through. He's getting most when things are visible. So he's really landing, you know, he can land a million views if he's talking about buses. But buses seem to me quite an invisible, tangible thing.

Oddly, when he's talking about cost of living or politics, he's getting, you know, only a few hundred thousand, hundred thousand, hundred, twenty thousand, 160,000 likes. So sometimes a tenth of that, sometimes maybe a sixth of that. And the question then, this is my question, is that a bit of a warning sign for one of the problems of this strategy, which is it works best if you're talking about a bus and a bus route or a pub? But it's less good if you're talking about something's more difficult to visualize, like welfare cuts. Oh, I wouldn't, if I were them, I wouldn't be overthinking it like that. I think they have to know what are the things that they're trying to communicate over a particular period of time. The other thing that, you know, one of my golden rules of communications is when you, the communicator, are sick to death of saying something, that is the point at which is getting to the outer radar of public consciousness.

Now, Andy's got that. I always felt with Kirstama, he was a bit, you know, when you see those footballers doing interviews, and they're like I said, like I said, in other words, they think they've just been given a line and they're just going to say. it. And if you're a politician, you have to say, you have to say things like, because you need energy and Andy's got energy and you need empathy because you have to connect with people. If you say, you know, as I was saying earlier, or, you know, like I said on the interviewer I did this morning, people just think you're trotting out of line. You've got to have that sense of keep saying the same things. And you also keep telling us that you've got to keep saying the same things, but not in the same words. Otherwise, you're like a total robot. He's quite good

making the same point, but in interesting different ways. And I think he does that. So to go back to the Matt Forte, you might be saying, you know, you probably heard me say this before, Rory. Yeah. You know, he'll do it. He's got this very conversational style. Now, when does it get tough?

I mean, he has had this pretty good start. We've had the, the prison's issue. We've had the, you know, the right wing going mad because he put out a message to everybody about, you know, don't put your barbecues out. But I think he's had a good start. It will get tougher when Parliament comes back. And that's when I think this communication strategy gets more tested.

And, of course, the other thing that will happen, it's already happening a bit, is that the traditional media will start to get pissed off. And by which I mean the lobby and the Westminster journalist, they're going to start to get pissed off. He's got to hold his nerve on that. You can sort of see their point, because presumably you felt a little bit peed off when you discover he's going to go on the rest of his football with our friend Gary rather than coming to us first.

No, of course, I understood it. I understood it. Okay, well, maybe you're more sympathised. I'll be honest, Roy, really, here's something, you may not want to hear this. Okay. If I'd have been Andy's, Andy Burnham's comms advisor, at this point in his premiership,

I wouldn't have advised him to do the rest of politics. Shall I say why? Let's hope they're not listening. No, no, Roy, don't worry. It's all under control. It's all under control. He will be coming on the rest of his politics at some point in the not too distant future. But no, I'll tell you why I wouldn't have advised him to do it.

Because you and I would have been interested, would have been nice, would have been polite, would have done his childhood and his background, all that. But we both want him to be talking more than he is doing about foreign policy. Okay? They know that. So there'll be thinking, right, we're in that period of getting the country to get to know us a bit better, to get him to know him a bit better. So during the World Cup, going on the rest is football with Gary Linnaker and Michael Richards and Alangira is, it makes sense. As long as you're not avoiding

the serious stuff. And that's why I thought actually, again, it was probably quite smart not to do the Laurel O'Kunsberg show on Sunday morning where he gets 15 minutes and then three people sort of say how crappy he was or whatever it might be. He gets a full one hour, serious sit-down interview. So I think they're thinking about it very strategically. Well, here's the other challenge, I guess, which is the challenge of scrutiny. So the problem with social media, you might say, without sounding too much, like I'm standing up for the journalists and the lobby journalists, is that on social media, he gets to choose what questions he answers and he gets to choose what he talks about. And I think political journalists would say in their defense, listen, you need us and you need a system where

Prime Ministers feel under a pretty strong obligation to sit down with us regularly and take... And he isn't doing that. I mean, there was real grumbles from the political editors who were invited into the gardener number 10. And according to Tom Baldwin, all of them collectively were allowed only four questions between them. So they would say there's a democratic point here. There's a point about democratic accountability that we need to be able to pose questions that he hasn't seen in advance that he's not expecting and he isn't necessarily that comfortable answering. I'm not sure I'll buy that. I'll tell you why. Because we are, as you know, a parliamentary democracy. And he rightly gets tested hardest, should be tested hardest in Parliament. I think he will

do more and more. He'll do lots of media. I think he does make himself accessible. But I think it's this thing. One of my other golden rules is, you know, you, the community, the community, communicate or you the politician, you have to set the agenda. And so avoid the things where the agenda is going to be wrestled away from you. So, for example, and it's just not the case. So I used to do two briefings a day, one at 11 o'clock in the morning, one at four or a clinic the afternoon. Now, I was speaking on behalf of the prime minister. The prime minister's spokesman in this system does the same thing once a day in the morning, 11 o'clock. Now, so that's it. Okay, you're not seeing Andy Burnham, but you are putting whatever questions you want. You are then also able to influence

the government and Downey Street as to whether they then think they need to address some of these questions through him in a different way. If he spent his whole time just not engaging with journalists, not talking to journalists, then I could see that would become a bit of a democratic deficit problem. But I don't think he's doing that. Final ventriloquising for your friend Tom Baldwin, the biographer of Kirstama who kept telling us never to underestimate Kirstama and anyone who'd underestimated him paid the penalty.

His final line was to say that his team seems to have taken pleasure in misleading the lobby journalists that they really enjoyed. Three of them, three of the inner circle, basically told the journalist that Shabana Mahmoud was going to be the next chancellor.

So much so that the FTA, which is very careful following up, ran it. And then after the event, they basically laughed at the lobby journalists and said, well, that serves you right. Shouldn't believe anything that you don't hear from official sources. And Baldwin thought that was a bit silly. Yeah, look, I think if that was how it happened, then it would be a bit silly. What they say to me is that, listen, I had lots of experience with this, and it used to drive me up the wall, because what would happen is a newspaper writes, Rory Stewart is being moved from international development to health, okay?

And then somebody phones you ever says, is this story true? And you say, well, I'm not going to talk about it. I'm just not going to talk about it. What the team in number 10 say to me is that they neither denied nor confirmed anything. Maybe in their body language, they did indicate steer away from Ed Miliband. And that led to people saying, well, the only people in the frame were Ed Miliband or Shabana Mahmood. And that is what led people. No, I don't know.

I wasn't involved in those conversations, but I can see easily how that could happen. Okay. I think if you deliberately mislead the journalists, they're going to get very, very pissed off. And unlike the Americans, by the way, as you and I have talked of this, the Americans don't seem to me stick together at all. The British Media Pack is much more herd-like. And if you, if they start to think that you've been misleading journalist A and journalist B, journalist C and journalist D think it could have been there.

And so they, you know, they'll push back hard at that. But I think at the moment, I'm actually in Italy at the moment, and we're staying with some friends, some of whom, you know, work in this international communications world. And I just said, look, I'm back to the podcast with Roy Stewart. We're going to talk about Andy Burnham's comms, what do you think about it? And they also think he's absolutely nailing it. But where the questionnaire is absolutely right, though, in the end, it is about what are the big decisions you're going to take? What are the economic strategy you're going to pursue?

What is your foreign policy? These big questions are what ultimately will define successful or failure, not how many views he gets on TikTok. Also, what a new world he's in. I mean, it's, I was looking at this amazing Reuters report, which has been done by Reuters Institute report from Oxford University, looking at where people get their news from. Again, we can share that in the newsletter, but the numbers are absolutely staggering. I mean, the number of people who say they basically are not interested in the news has gone from 16% to about 25%. The number of people whose primary source of information comes either from social media

or from people like us, podcasts, is now more than the people who get their information from newspapers and television. It's gone above 50%. And even within, I mean, we know print media is collapsing. something we've talked about a lot, and we know that television news watching is going down. Maybe less reported is the fact that traffic to the newspaper's own websites and content is dropping very dramatically too. I saw a really interesting example of it. You can see it again and again if you go on X and you see what these companies are having to do to try to get

people in. I saw one of the most kind of big blue chip names in British journalism trying to work out how to convince people to register on their website and see if they can offer them a few free articles a month. How do you think you do that in the modern world? Again, do you imagine that you're the economist or the FT and you're trying to get people to register and get three few articles? How would you do it on X? Have you got an answer? Have you got a good answer? Yeah, I've got a good answer. Yeah, I'll tell what it is. So what you do is you post something saying how to relax on your holiday and get off your phone. Click here.

free registration and you can read the article. In other words, you're one of the big blue-chip news organizations, but you're beginning to believe that the best way of getting people to register is to send sort of lifestyle holiday. I think that sounds terrible. Yeah. That's the opposite of why I would say. Absolutely.

I'm not having that at all. If that's the FT or the economist or Bloomberg or Politico, no, I don't support that strategy at all. But, you know, look, I'm nearly 70. Maybe I'm just sort of out of all this. But it's interesting. I like talking to, I had a really good chat with one of his comms team about, you know, because what I think is going on, I don't think they're obsessing about it. The thing I used to loathe about doing the job that I did with the Tony Blair was the sense I had that the journalists are never happier than when they're actually talking about themselves and their own trade. And that's why, you know, whatever strengths or weaknesses or mistakes or whatever I made, that's why. what really used to drive them mad about my relationship with them. I was always conscious the fact that they were interested in me in large part because they were so interested in themselves.

And so I like the idea of maybe think that Andy Burnham, you know, I hear he still reads the newspapers. I think we need to iron that one out, but he still sort of gets the papers. And because the worst thing about all the government buildings, I don't know why they do it, they leave the newspapers lying about everywhere. So if you're waiting to see somebody, and there's the Daily Express or the Daily mail there, you know, you're tempted to pick it up. No, don't, don't waste your time. It's going to get inside your head and knock you off track. So I think that they shouldn't overthink it. They know he's very, at the moment he's popular, he's at a good start, but you're now going to build up to the party conference, return to parliament. The big stuff has to start happening. And around it,

you build a communication strategy, but his job is, that's a small part of it. And so the question is absolutely right. You and I, journalists will talk about his comms. He'll think about it a bit, but don't think about it too much.

And he's so naturally good at it in terms of this style that he has. He's going to great on some people. And already people are saying, you know, when will this TikTok nonsense end and all that? Just ignore it. Because if he was only doing TikTok,

people would think he was a joke. But they see it. him doing T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T. They see him doing the big speech. They're going to see him in Parliament. Don't underestimate how important that's going to be when Parliament comes back. So I think he's doing pretty well. I do think the tone has been very good. I mean, he's not a comedian. It's not Boris Johnson. He's not even like George Maloney. He's not actually trying to generate content by doing outrageous things. He's certainly not Trump. And nor is he showing off. I mean, there's not a sense of kind of massive personal vanity or projection or overly selling. I mean, so I think, I think, I, I think, I

I think, no, I think it's great. Well, Rory, before we go to the break, you had a little break from this sort of intense podcast work and allowed me to do a three-part mini-series with Steve Rotherham, Metro Mayor of Liverpool, city region, huge friend and very close political ally of Andy Burnham. And Steve and I sat down and we've done this three-part series, which we're calling Becoming Burnham. and it traces how Andy Burnham went from a teenager, radicalised by Thatcher-era-Liverpool, to being our seventh prime minister in just over a decade.

You can hear about all sorts of things. This is all from Steve, Andy Burnham's imposter syndrome, Catholic guilt complex. We're going to hear about Andy Burnham the DJ, Andy Burnham the footballer. Very interesting on how his word humiliated he felt, losing particularly the second leadership election, the one that was won by Jeremy Corbyn.

an astonishing story about how Andy Burnham actually found out about the Manchester Arena bombing, which will alarm some people, but there we are. His big beef with Boris Johnson and the Battle for COVID funding, Manchesterism and all that, and above all, maybe Steve's very well-informed predictions of how Britain is going to develop under Andy Burnham. So that's all coming up on becoming Burnham. You won't want to miss it, so sign up at the rest ispollities.com. Here's a quick taster of the series that I've done with Steve Rotherham.

Who'd want to be Prime Minister in this country? On Monday, 17th July, 26, the UK got its 7th Prime Minister in just over a decade. Andy Murray Burnham. Some call him the King of the North. Others are vibes leader. All warmth, no wait. Well, I'm sitting down with the man who knows him better than anyone. Steve Rotherham, Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City region.

I got introduced as Andy's busy mate. So how do you think he's feeling right now? He's probably thinking, how did this all happen? Just weeks into his new job as mayor of Manchester, Burnham has to lead a city in shop. Breaking news out of Greater Manchester. Phoneed Andy. Phone rings out.

Phone's Andy again. The phone rings out. Andy. My girls are in Manchester. A bomb's gone off at the arena. Can you get the girls out of Manchester? Do we? Get them out now. Good evening.

The next pretty defining moment was COVID. Protect our NHS. Stay at home and save lives. And there was Boris Johnson trying to play me and him off against each other, stupidly believing somehow that we weren't phoning each other every night. Every time I had a conversation with Johnson, I'd be telling Andy and vice versa. A frustration of a Prime Minister, the political leader in this country, playing politics during one of the most difficult times that any of us have ever been through.

Andy's people skills are very, very good. And yet his relationship with Keir, it seems to me, did very quickly become a bad one. Yeah. Do you think if he had been a lot, understanding Gorton Denton, that you might have had Andy back in. They didn't want all the best players on the pitch. We're going to squander this three-figure majority, and we're going to lose the next election as Nigel Farage.

The first set of local elections frighten me. The second set literally had me petrified of what might come next. To hear my three-part series with Steve Rotherham, sign up at the rest is politics.com. And just a reminder that members have access to a whole range of brilliant series, including Caroline Lucas's new series on climate and national security, my series with Matt Clifford on artificial intelligence, Alice's deep dive on populism, the story we both did,

looking into the real J.D. Vance, and much, much more. When we come back from the break, we'll get into something completely at the other end of the scale, which is Settler Violence, the West Bank, and what's happening in Israel, Palestine at the moment. Hello, everybody. It is Dominic Sanbrook here from the Premier Gollhanger podcast. The rest is history. And I wanted to tell you about a new series that we have out this week.

It is about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Now, of course, this is one of the great landmark events, one of the darkest moments, really, in modern British history. It pitted neighbour against neighbour and set the streets of Belfast and indeed of Britain a blaze. Now, I can't exaggerate how important this story is. In fact, I think in Britain, we don't talk about this as often as we should. you had a low-level civil war in part of the United Kingdom. You had in 1972, almost 500 people dying in a single year. It changed the way, I think, that Britain thought about Ireland, but also the way that Britain thought about itself. And of course, it was a constant factor in a lot of people's daily lives.

If you want to deep dive into perhaps the darkest moment in modern British history, then join us this week on The Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96.

Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Welcome back to the rest of politics. Question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. Rory Noor, Tripp Plus member from Wiltshire, in light of Palestinians being besieged in their own homes in Kuzra in the West Bank and the increasing expulsion of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, what can be done to reign in the terror wrought by extremist settlers on Palestinian communities? Is the world doomed to watch helplessly until America ends its unequivocal support? Let me begin with two quotes from

members of the Israeli Knesset, a minister and a former minister to set what seems to be happening in Israeli politics. Here's one of them. I think targeted killings should be carried out every night. 30 or 40, not only those who pose a danger, if there are those who are not worthy of life, they are not people. In fact, I'm already complimenting them by calling them people. That's a quote from one minister. A minister. Think of it. So really interesting, because you'll pick up that there's a very interesting echo there. He's using an equivalent of a German word, yeah, Labens versus Laben, you know, people who are not people, unpeople.

Here's a quote from another minister, former minister, Mirov Cohen, who's more from the centre. Villages are being attacked, communities deliberately driven from their homes, sheep are being slaughtered, orchards burnt, people are being attacked because they are Arabs. This is indeed terrorism. It is Jewish terrorism. So that's Mirav Cohen talking about what is now happening in the West Bank. And she's brutally clear, but we've got Naftali Bennett, who's many people thinks potential future prime minister, saying we did not establish a Jewish state so violent groups could operate within it. We've had the chief of the IDF saying it's a completely, completely unacceptable what is happening. But here's the question. Israel is the most effective

security state almost in the world. Extraordinary intelligence service, internal intelligence service army. Its control of the West Bank is unbelievable. Surveillance, vehicles, roads, infrastructure. And yet apparently it is completely unable to protect a house with a few Palestinians in it from being attacked by violent settlers with the Israeli army standing right by and it goes on for days. How's that possible? Well, it's possible. It's only possible if they're working together. And I'm afraid that's the conclusion that you're left with is that actually this is part of the Israeli state and the way that it operates. And the questioner, how can this be stopped, the international community, for want of a better phrase, has to stand up in a way that at

the moment nobody seems to be standing up. Apart from the NGOs, is anybody really speaking out against this at all? You know, we talked earlier about Andy Burnham clearly wants to be a domestic prime minister. Fine, I get that. And that's maybe quite a good thing, then it's somebody's high profile as Edmillaire and is Foreign Secretary. But my God, I could have done with some pushback from the British government on Netanyahu. calling the Britain, the Islamic Republic of Great Britain. I mean, there are a lot of people in Britain who can't stand him, and that has turned a lot of people against Israel.

You and I, I think, are both supporters of the state of Israel and supporters of a two-state solution. Very few people have done as much to damage it as he has. For him to talk about the Islamic State of Great Britain, I find deeply, deeply, deeply offensive. To be fair to Mick Huckabee, we've talked about him before, he is the American ambassador to Israel. He is as big a supporter of Israel as you're going to find. He is a huge supporter of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, despite its illegality. And he has

described the settlers have been besieging these homes in Kushra as, quote, Israeli terrorists. That's as tough as statement as I've ever heard coming from him. The point is this, though. I saw a, I can't remember where I saw it. I saw this picture in the, think it was in the New York Times. And I've actually kept it here on one of my documents. He said, a young girl. with her mother in their home, in Khuzra, and they're just looking out at these people who are terrorising them. And they just look like, I mean, they're really kind of beautiful faces, and they're looking out with this sense of kind of dignified fear

and total bewilderment as to what's going on. And what happened is that the security forces did go, and they did say to the settlers, listen, go away. And then the settlers went away for a bit. And then the security forces went away again. And then, of course, the settlers came back. What's the judgment they've reached now? Well, we probably have to get the Palestinians out of there then.

Who does that help? That helps the settlers, who are bit by bit, slowly taking over the whole place. And, Rory, I know you wanted to talk about the, you know, the numbers game and the land. So just, why don't you just talk us through? what's actually happening in terms of land taking? Well, let's start with a brief explainer and reminder. So after the 1967 war, Israel annexed the West Bank. So this big Palestinian territory, which was then administered by Jordan.

And what you've seen since 1967 in what's called by the British government the occupied Palestinian territories, so international law does not recognize this as part of Israel. international law sees this as it would see Israel being in South Lebanon at the moment as a country invading its neighbor and occupying its neighbor. Settlements have been rolled out and of those settlements about 163 are considered illegal by Israel and about 143 are considered legal by Israel but they're all illegal in terms of international law. And if you look at this map of area A, B and C, which is a map of the West Bank, you basically, see that the majority of the territory now is under Israeli control. It's area C. And areas A and B are these tiny little archipelagos or islands increasingly separated from each other by Israeli security forces. And the Israeli settlers are reinforced by Israeli governments who on the one

hand seem to want to say, these are illegal, we don't approve of it, sorry it's happened, but by the way, we're going to provide schools for them, we're going to provide water supply for them, we're going to provide roads for them, and we're going to send in the Israeli military to protect these settlements. And by the way, we're going to approve more settlements, which is happening at a very, very rapid rate at the moment. So what's going on? If you look at a map and what's happened over the last 80 years in the region, but particularly since 67, it seems pretty clear that what's happening is this is being annexed. The Israeli government, most Israeli politicians don't like that language,

although there are people in the Knesset who are very open about it and simply say this is Judea Samaria, this should be part of Israel. But if you look at what's happening on the map, it's happening again and again. And the tendency seems to be to be pushing Palestinians out of almost all the rural areas. And this is what a lot of the settler violence is about, olive trees being attacked, orchards being attacked, sheep's being attacked, into urban settlements, which are increasingly divided from each other. So I was talking to a Palestinian friend today. And they were saying that they had just taken them two and a half hours to travel 15 kilometers that morning from Ramallah up to Jerusalem driving, yep, 15 kilometers. Almost nobody in their family at the moment is visiting places like Hebron because you simply don't know whether you're going to be able to get there at all.

And it's not just the checkpoints will suddenly be closed. It's the settlers will actually attack your cars on the road as you're moving through. So this is two types of legal system. These settlers are mostly judged by civilian law, and they almost never are successfully prosecuted. 94% of investigations against settlers have had no indictment, and only 3% of them have ended up in convictions. Whereas the Palestinians are processed by military law, military courts, military detainment. And to make it even worse, there's a third group which is causing a lot of the mayhem, which is a group called Hagmar, which is a form of reservist militia. who the Israeli settlers predominantly from those areas with guns,

who've been directly involved. One of them has shot two people, drove his car into someone praying. No investigations happened. Why? Because the police say, the Israeli police say, well, we can't investigate them because they're soldiers. And then the military say, oh, they're not really soldiers. So they're not business for the military court.

Anyway, back over to you. Cool. Maybe a good point to tell listeners and viewers, who haven't yet got across the latest episode of Leading, you and I sat down last week with these two extraordinary guys, Mayo's Inon and Aziz Abu Sara. Mayo's lost his parents on October the 7th, and he gave a really harrowing account of what it was like,

discovering that his parents had been murdered. Aziz's brother was basically died because he was tortured inside Israeli prisons. So you've got a Palestinian and an Israeli who both lost close, close family members, because of this conflict, they've now come together, written an extraordinary book together, but they're now basically campaigning for peace. And I'd love it if some of the people, the big decision makers listen to them, but also I think all of us should just listen to two people who are explaining why the current approach of the authorities, pretty much wherever you look, is never going to work. And the only thing that's ever going to work is if people

do somehow reconcile in the way that these two are. doing and asking others to do it's the most I mean if people haven't listened they must it's probably I think one of the most encouraging conversations I've had one of the lovely things about this podcast is that we've got this privilege I guess to talks people every week and I just left so moved and inspired and it's strange because what they're saying is they they accept sounds naive but they basically say just work backwards it's got to be about peace it's not in anyone's interest to keep slaughtering each other. And once you accept that peace has to be the answer, it's possible. It can happen. This cannot be the route. There are still figures in the

Knesset and in the IDF who recognize that this is a recipe for disaster. That if you release violent settlers, if you push more and more Palestinians off their land, you are going to repeat the Nakaba. You're going to repeat that massive cleansing, which then led to decades of terror, resentment, hatred, and alienated Israel from the entire Middle East. So it's got to stop. And those were two wonderful voices, Israeli and Palestinians, suggesting how that might stop without too many recriminations. There was very little jargon. There was very little talking about the past. I left the way that they kept saying, this could be done in two weeks. So two weeks comes and two weeks goes, it's not been, I say, yeah, but we could do this in two weeks.

And I just love that mindset because actually it's true. He could end this. He could end in two weeks. Just on the figures, Rory, so the West Bank, roughly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, 511,000 Israeli settlers, okay? Palestinians now, they occupy roughly 30% of the Gaza Strip, right? 30%, 40% of the West Bank. and 13% of East Jerusalem.

So they're being squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. It makes me think of those police operations of ketling where you just get people into kind of small, ever smaller spaces. But what does that do? One is it reminds me a lot of when my father was fighting the communists and the Malayan emergency, where they created something called a white areas policy,

where basically they removed communities from rural areas and put them in these urban settlements so that they could supervise them and surveil them and put gates around them and fences around. The second thing is I was wondering whether there wasn't an echo when we were talking about the Hagmar militia with the Royal Astor Constabulary. And a question of whether you can, whether it can possibly make sense for the Israelis to say the people responsible for security in this area are the settlers themselves and expect to police their own neighbours and expect them to be fair with Palestinian families. Yeah. the chief executive of UNICEF just come back from the West Bank says he's worked in

humanitarian development for two decades and more he's never seen anything as bad as he's seen in the West Bank Pope Leo my new hero Rory particularly now that my blurb from the rest of his politics is on the front cover of his book he's come out with another statement today which let's end this discussion on something a little bit more positive though so you may you probably know Rory I'm sure you watched Burn against West Ham on Sky Sports football yesterday. Absolutely. Good comeback, wasn't it?

Good comeback. Yeah, yeah, very good, very good. I mean, some weaknesses, I thought, on the midfield, but otherwise fine. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. Anyway, but here's this thing. We were talking last week about racism in the context of Abdul Al-Sayyad. And I got this lovely email from a gentleman by the name of Wakas Farid.

He said, you mentioned the racism Al-Syad was facing because his wife wore a headscar. Well, guess what? at Burnley Football Club, the women's team, unlike the men were promoted last year, they're now professional team. They've employed a team doctor who happens to be my wife. Check out at the exercise medic. And she's the first headscarf wearing sports medicine resident doctor in the country, my knowledge.

So there we go. Burnley Football Club is doing the right thing. Let's finish on a more positive note, as you say. Carl, Alice and Rory. It's the last couple of weeks of the summer holidays, and I'm completely out of ideas for what to do with my children. Any suggestions? I mean, I feel for him. I've got my children endlessly playing football with me at the moment, which you would have proved of. Are you? I'm a bit better than they are. Yeah. Are you? Do you let them win? It's only because they're 9 and 11. No, I'm really, I'm really competitive. There's only three of us. We take turns in goal, and then whoever scores gets to go and goal. I'm always trying to hoof it from a life. large distance. I was talking to some of this last night. What age do you stop losing deliberately with your kids? Do I get the sense that you've never lost deliberately?

Yeah, exactly. I'm like Boris Johnson, like, mowing down the Japanese children on that. Now, come on. But apart from football, whether you're doing, do you have any other suggestions for what children could be doing during their summer holidays? They should be thinking about the future of the world, Rory. They should be thinking about the big challenges facing. the planet because it is their future that we're talking about, okay? Now, do you remember, so here's the thing, and I'm being serious here, this is for parents to get their kids involved, and it's the kids to get involved anyway, okay? So do you remember that last year we helped promote a competition for Politica, policy ideas for positive change, where 16 to 18-year-olds

submitted their ideas to change the country for the better? And this year, year or eight, it's even better. It's not just the UK. There are no category restrictions. You can write on any topic, 800 to 1,000 words deadline September 20th, okay? Just a small addition, which I mean, I'm going to get in there before you pointed out. Traditionally, the majority of entrance were from private schools. And since the appearance on trip, I'm pleased to say, there's been an incredible turnaround. 84% of entrants were from state schools. So there's still a lot of people from private schools entering. I encourage them to do so. It's wonderful. It's just standing in, but there's a huge number of people from state schools also entering too.

Well, that is good news, Roy, and I was really impressed the way that you said that you said you were pleased that this had happened. By the way, I saw this way, did you see, have a guess, Roy, which UK university has the highest percentage of students from private schools? UK university, core, blimey. Could it be, you know, something like Durham or Bristol or Edinburgh? Well done. Durham. Durham. Durham is number one. Number two is Imperial College. Number three is Edinburgh. Number four is Oxford. Number five is exeter, six UCL, seven Cambridge, 28.2, eight LEC, nine is Bristol and ten is Newcastle. So there we are. Six point five percent of UK children go to private schools, but that's the numbers, 39.1 percent at Durham. Nice working class area.

When I was at Oxford, I think it was still over 50 percent. And I guess when my father was there, it probably would have been 80, 90 percent. Listen, it's 16 to 18, 18-year-olds, no category restrictions. Idea can be on any topic, but these ideas for positive change, 800 to 1,000 words. Deadlines September the 20th. It's a lovely length, 800 to 1,000 words, and love to see a great idea for positive change. A shout out for the last year's winner. It was Rosie Halsell. She wrote a piece of tackling barriers to women's sport, recommending free sports barfittings across all secondary schools. And since that, by the way, She has met her MP.

She's been on BBC News. She's been on her local news. She's connected with Sheffield United Football Foundation. And she's working with Raddick's Big Tent and Booby-Doo, a sports bra company, to transform her idea from theory into practice. So that is what we want. We want ideas that we can then help promote and support and get them to happen. And to sign up for that, just follow the link in the episode description. Now, Alasat, I'm going to do something which is very, very mean to you.

but occasionally you tease me, so I'm going to tease you, because this is going to be extremely painful for you. Oh. Alistair, I received a little box in my house and a note, and it went like this. It's my house of Scotland. Dear Rory was horrified to hear Alistair mentioning two French preserve makers on trip reasoning. Here are some classic Scottish preserves. We are a second-generation producer based in Galloway. Love the pods and books. Keep up the great work. All the best. Rory Hesketh, it seems to say. So let's do a little shout-out for Scottish preserves.

Yeah. And here is, look, here's amazing cherry jam from Gatehouse of Fleet, Raspberry Jam. Best humor. I don't know whether anyone can see it here. Yeah. And it's not totally branded the jam, but it's really lovely. It's called Galloway Lodge. Galaway Lodge, very, very simple branding, the most delicious jam. And of course, I'm here speaking to you in Perthshire, and Angus and Dundee, absolute centre. Dundee's centre of the marmalade, got all those famously, got all those oranges. Jam and Juton journalism. That's it.

Jam and Juton journalism, that's it. So I didn't want to put you on the spot. But along with everybody praising you here in Kreef for your piping, I just wanted to say that you missed a trick on Scottish jam. Well, isn't the only reason I mentioned the French guys is because I was in France. I mean, if I'd have been in Scotland, I'm talking about Scottish Jamb. I think to say they were horrified, he's strong. I will always... That's what he said.

I can share the note with the music. I'm not making that up. No fake news. I'm sure he's not, but I think that's a bit harsh on me, if I may say so. Somebody relentlessly promotes everything good about Scotland and Scotland being everything good. Talking of which, although this is rather upset me as well, we've just had piping live in Glasgow and we've had the World Pipe Band Championships.

won by another bloody Canadian band. I told Mark Carney about this and he said, this is the consequences of global Scotland. Well, here's another consequence of God. Yesterday, Sunday, was the Kreef Highland Gathering. And it was, I mean, really incredible. You had the Morrison's pipe band. You had the Comrie pipe band.

You had Blair Gowry, marching through down the high street in King Street. I mean, I don't know how many hundreds of people, huge noise. But then we had. had the Cattery Police Academy Band. So there we are, all the way from the Gulf to Kreef. Ah, well, in which case, I'm going to give a shout out to my teacher Finley, because my teacher Finley, who runs the National Piping Centre in Glasgow, he taught the Katari Pipe Band. He teaches them. Oh, I wonder what Finley was there. You should talk to say hello.

He probably was. He was definitely a piping life. But the other thing we should put in the newsletters, because as you know, Rory, one of my remaining campaigns in life is to get universal love for the bagpipes played well. There is the BBC We sometimes criticised They did a great job of covering it Because they were just pumping out stuff on social media And on their website

There's one particular shot of the masked bands Playing Scotland the Brave And it is honestly You can see why the bagpipes led people into war It's fucking brilliant Final shout out My childhood friend Thomas Grouchon Who very sadly died

Was absolutely at the core Of getting these first big mass bands gatherings going in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Good for her. 25, 30 years ago really began getting these mass, you know, 10,000 people, I think is what he was aiming for at one point. So I think that was a hugely wonderful legacy. Well, the biggest, you know, Canada win the, Simon Fraser University, Canada,

win the World Championship. Australia's got the current world record for the biggest mass pipe band gathering. Final point, Rory, maybe this was your clues. We did a poll last week because we're now becoming the rest is jam. What is our listeners and viewers' favorite flavor of jam? I mean, I'm sorry you, lot. This is pathetic. Strawberry and raspberry and apricot.

Oh, brilliant. I won. Go on then. Go on. So next week, I want to poll on whether people agree with me that the Labrador is the best dog. Because my mother was furious. I literally came back and she was boiling. Because she has these Pekingese.

Right. And she was like, not only was she furious, her Picanese were absolutely furious. were absolutely furious. She said to me... Yeah, yeah. She was saying, what on earth you doing? My mother said,

supporting a fat, greedy thing that lolloped off a cod boat. Okay, well, I'm happy for our listeners and viewers to be polled as to what is the best dog breed as long as they all say cavalier key, Charles. Okay, that's it.

Let's see. That's it. Very good. Thank you. Great to talk you. Great to talk you. Bye-bye. Bye.

Hello, everybody. We've got some exciting news to share with you. We do. Indeed, as you all know, the Restis Politics Plus members get early access to question time. They get at free listing. They get exclusive series and a host of other benefits. And probably for me, the most exciting thing is these exclusive mini-series we're doing.

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