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The soft-left UK Labour mayor destroying his own PM · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, June nine, twenty twenty six. A crippled submarine
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: stuck deep under the Indian Ocean's surface. A sailor drowning
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: in a torrent of seawater rushing into the boat. Sixty
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  Speaker 1: Australians fighting for their lives and the fear they'll never
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: see their families again. Today we release a new episode
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  Speaker 1: of our video and audio documentary series The Flood, revealing
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the least known adventure story in Australia's maritime history. You
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: can listen and watch right now at the floodpodcast dot
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: com and by searching the Flood in Apple Podcasts. As
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  Speaker 1: Pauline Hanson ponders.
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  Speaker 2: The Prime Ministership, a big part of her momentum is
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: immigration and its connection to the housing market. Today, The
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Australian's revealing just how high migration levels have risen under
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  Speaker 2: Anthony Albanesi's Prime ministership. That stories live now at the
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  Speaker 2: Australian dot com dot au. Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer
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  Speaker 2: is fighting for his political life as a rival labor
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  Speaker 2: superstar comes for his job and the PM's latest move
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  Speaker 2: is to announce an Australian style social media band for
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  Speaker 2: under sixteens. Today we look at Andy Burnham, the so
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  Speaker 2: called King of the North, who's lining himself up to
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  Speaker 2: destroy Starma and remake the United Kingdom. Richard Ferguson's here
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  Speaker 2: in just a moment. Richard Ferguson is the Australian's Canra
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  Speaker 2: bureau chief and he's also one of our in house
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  Speaker 2: experts on UK politics. Richard, you and I have been
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  Speaker 2: talking about Andy Burnham quite a lot lately. I hear
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  Speaker 2: his name all the time, and in preparation for this interview,
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  Speaker 2: I decided to google Andy Burnham and say if I
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  Speaker 2: could watch a video about him. I was mainly curious
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  Speaker 2: about his accent because he was born in Liverpool but
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  Speaker 2: now lives in Madchester. I just want to play you
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  Speaker 2: something that he said, we.
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  Speaker 3: Need a different path completely.
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  Speaker 4: What is that path?
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  Speaker 3: Put more things back on the public, stronger public control, energy, housing, water, transport.
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  Speaker 3: I've done that with the buses in Greater Manchester. So
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  Speaker 3: I was the first to do it, you know, Margaret,
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  Speaker 3: Margaret regulated country. No, but it's just I'm just giving
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  Speaker 3: you an example. You know she deregulated them. I put
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  Speaker 3: them and then they just worked for the private shareholders
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  Speaker 3: and not for the paying public. I put them back
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  Speaker 3: on the public control. We've got two pound fares. So
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  Speaker 3: you take that principle and you apply it to energy
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  Speaker 3: and you apply it to water.
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  Speaker 4: That's why.
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  Speaker 2: And that made me feel a little bit alarmed. This
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  Speaker 2: guy has brought into public control the buses in Manchester
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  Speaker 2: and now he wants to be prime minister. To me,
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  Speaker 2: it seems like the mayor of Woggle Walgart announcing that
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  Speaker 2: he's now ready to run the country. That might be
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  Speaker 2: a little bit unfair, though. What's your take on Andy Burnham?
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  Speaker 4: So Andy Burnham's actually a fascinating figure and he's a chameleon.
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  Speaker 4: He's a political chameleon. So the jalk about Andy Burnham
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  Speaker 4: as a Blair eye, a Brown eye and a Corbinite
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  Speaker 4: all walked into a bar and the bartender said, oh, hello,
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  Speaker 4: mister Burnham, do you want your usual? So he was
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  Speaker 4: the health minister for Gordon Brown. He was also a
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  Speaker 4: minister in Tony Blair's government, and then he ran for
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  Speaker 4: the leadership two times after Gordon Brown lost the twenty
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  Speaker 4: ten election, and then after Ed Millerban lost the twenty
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  Speaker 4: fifteen election where he famously was the front runner and
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  Speaker 4: everybody went, oh, the party's going to go a bit
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  Speaker 4: left wing if it Andy Burnham wins, and then they
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  Speaker 4: ended up with Jeremy Corbyn and they didn't even know
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  Speaker 4: what universe they had entered into. But he decided when
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  Speaker 4: Jeremy Corbyn was at his absolute political in the dare
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  Speaker 4: damn this, all of the Metro councils under the Tories
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  Speaker 4: became a lot more powerful, kind of like chief ministers
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  Speaker 4: of territories, really kind of like premiers. Maybe not quite
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  Speaker 4: as powerful as like the Scottish government in the Welsh governments,
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  Speaker 4: but pretty close. And he has made a great goal
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  Speaker 4: of being Mayor of Greater Manchester. He is very popular.
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  Speaker 4: As you say, he has taken a lot of things
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  Speaker 4: not under when we're talking about public control, not under
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  Speaker 4: centralized Westminster control, but under the control of the local authorities,
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  Speaker 4: which is what he says is different to just plain
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  Speaker 4: old nationalization going back to the nineteen seventies. So that
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  Speaker 4: is his argument is that he would get all the
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  Speaker 4: local councils to own the buses in the water and
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  Speaker 4: not just Westminster.
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  Speaker 2: One of his nicknames is King of the North, which
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  Speaker 2: I think both his enemies and his fans used to
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  Speaker 2: describe him. And of course the North of England was
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  Speaker 2: devastated by the Thatcher aright and subsequent policies of privatization
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  Speaker 2: of national assets in Britain. What is different about the
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  Speaker 2: North and why do you think that northern kind of
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  Speaker 2: spirit might be something that the rest of the country
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  Speaker 2: wants to get in on.
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  Speaker 4: So I think the two elements to this. So first
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  Speaker 4: in terms of the North absolutely devastated by closure of
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  Speaker 4: coal mines under the Thatchuy years privatization. But I think
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  Speaker 4: there was definitely a sense even in the Blair years
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  Speaker 4: that the benefits that were trickling down to London kind
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  Speaker 4: of in the later Thatchy years, the major years, and
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  Speaker 4: then going into the kind of the boom under Blair
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  Speaker 4: that never trickled into the North. You definitely get this
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  Speaker 4: sense of people, especially from when I was growing up
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  Speaker 4: it was Scotland versus England, but really it's Northern England
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  Speaker 4: versus London. There is this London is almost its own country,
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  Speaker 4: its own sphere, and it's very disconnected from the North.
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  Speaker 4: So that has led to Obviously the North were big
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  Speaker 4: voters of Brexit. They abandoned Labor for Boris Johnson's Tories,
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  Speaker 4: which was kind considered incredible. You know, the breaking of
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  Speaker 4: the red walls.
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  Speaker 1: Called red wall of rock, solid headlines crumbled into dust,
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  Speaker 1: a foam.
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  Speaker 5: Of mind, community turning to the Tories, leaving Caroline Flint
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  Speaker 5: and p for two decades tearful and angry saying Jeremy
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  Speaker 5: Corbyn hadn't spoken to working class voters.
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  Speaker 6: What is the point of the Labor Party if we
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  Speaker 6: don't respect and represent those voices people we have not
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  Speaker 6: listened to or respected enough.
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  Speaker 4: And then of course the Tories collapsed. Those seats went
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  Speaker 4: back to Kir Starmer and now they're voting very heavily
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  Speaker 4: for reform. What Andy Burnham has done, though, is he's
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  Speaker 4: used his position in Manchester to improve public services. A
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  Speaker 4: lot of people would say that. Critics and allies of
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  Speaker 4: Burnham would say he's done a very good job of that,
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  Speaker 4: and he has been able to so perfectly create this
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  Speaker 4: image that he is a great champion of the North
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  Speaker 4: against the London establishment, whether that be Keir Starmer or
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  Speaker 4: the Tories.
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  Speaker 2: It's quite a remarkable assault on Downing Street, isn't it
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  Speaker 2: that he's making He's like a sort of medieval night.
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  Speaker 2: You can see him coming from several hundred miles away. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: he's standing in a by election. He's not in, of course,
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  Speaker 2: the National Parliament yet, which he needs to be if
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  Speaker 2: he wants to be Prime minister. But he is now saying,
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  Speaker 2: if I am elected at this by election, I will
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  Speaker 2: challenge the case Talma for the leadership. Will he win
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  Speaker 2: the by election? Will he then challenge if he does win,
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  Speaker 2: for the prime ministership? Do you think and will he win?
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  Speaker 4: Well, we know that if he does. When he has
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  Speaker 4: now said it's only it's taken him weeks to say this, Claire.
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  Speaker 4: But now Burnham has said on the BBC in the
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  Speaker 4: past couple of days, yes, I will be challenging for
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  Speaker 4: the Labor leadership. Now what he is saying is that
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  Speaker 4: the former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who have also talked
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  Speaker 4: about a Blairite young would be the first openly gay
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  Speaker 4: prime minister and as a acolyte of Peter Mandelson, the shadowy, corrupt,
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  Speaker 4: former best mate of Epstein and former Labor minister, he
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  Speaker 4: has basically said Wes Streeting has started the contest, not me,
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  Speaker 4: and there for I will challenge to which ker Starmer
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  Speaker 4: has said still I'm not going anywhere. But every time
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  Speaker 4: Kier Starmer said I'm not going anywhere, I think people
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  Speaker 4: have just less and less interest. The power draining from
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  Speaker 4: ker Starmer is incredible. I think he will probably win
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  Speaker 4: the by election Claier. I mean now that I've said
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  Speaker 4: that he won't.
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  Speaker 2: But we're going to reply that when he loses.
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  Speaker 4: The staff of The Australian will love this. But what
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  Speaker 4: has happened in particular is his popularity has held up
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  Speaker 4: throughout the pose of Makerfield, which is the seat he's
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  Speaker 4: running for, but two, even though they've had a strong
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  Speaker 4: reform vote both at the last election and during the
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  Speaker 4: recent council elections which kind of started all this movement
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  Speaker 4: against ker Starmer. Is that the reform vote has split,
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  Speaker 4: which it didn't expect to. But there is a party
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  Speaker 4: that's even further to the right of Reform called Restore,
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  Speaker 4: which is led by a former Tory called Rupert Lowe,
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  Speaker 4: and he's even more extreme on immigration and race than Reform,
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  Speaker 4: and he is getting a lot of backing from MAGA types,
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  Speaker 4: including Elon Musk. So the Restore campaign has grown and
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  Speaker 4: it's taken about five to eight percent off of the
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  Speaker 4: vote of reform. Reform has also ran a very bad
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  Speaker 4: candidate whose name is Robert Kenyan, and he's had all
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  Speaker 4: sort of dodgy tweets, sexist things, pornography, all that kind
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  Speaker 4: of stuff has kind of come back to haunt him.
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  Speaker 4: He's made lots of kind of verbal errors. He is
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  Speaker 4: not a very good candidate. He is not the top
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  Speaker 4: tier that Reform which has been attracting a lot of
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  Speaker 4: former cabinet ministers to it. This is not the best
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  Speaker 4: person they could have run. So Andy Burnham's seems to
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  Speaker 4: have made somebody very happy upstairs. Maybe you know, Jim
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  Speaker 4: Callahan and Harold Wilson are looking down at him from
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  Speaker 4: heaven and they're lighting his way towards number ten, and
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  Speaker 4: it seems that nothing can really stop him.
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  Speaker 2: Well with strating the former Health secretary who and from
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  Speaker 2: keystam as Kebnet and then it seemed like it was
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  Speaker 2: all going to be on a few weeks ago. Then
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  Speaker 2: that kind of feezled out, did wiz strading kind of
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  Speaker 2: Missi's moment before Andy Burnham actually makes it to Westminster.
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  Speaker 4: I think wiz Treading has two problems. He's a Blair
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  Speaker 4: right right politician in a party that's completely dominated by
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  Speaker 4: the left, so he never appeared to actually have the
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  Speaker 4: numbers to trigger a challenge. But he was under so
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  Speaker 4: much pressure from his allies to do something that he
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  Speaker 4: simply had to resign. But number two, it has become
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  Speaker 4: clear that the Labor Party is so on the nose
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  Speaker 4: in Britain that almost none of the people in Westminster
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  Speaker 4: are considered credible candidates to reviving it. Now a lot
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  Speaker 4: of people say, who've worked with Andy Burnham, it's not
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  Speaker 4: really clear what he stands for. He was an okay
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  Speaker 4: minister under Blair and Brown. He wasn't spectacular. And whether
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  Speaker 4: people are projecting a fantasy on Andy Burnham because they
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  Speaker 4: are so desperate because they fear that the British Labor
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  Speaker 4: Party is about to go extinct.
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  Speaker 2: He's in a faction that's known as the soft left
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  Speaker 2: of Labor, which seems like an unusual proposition in a
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  Speaker 2: country which seems to be drifting ever further to the
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  Speaker 2: far right. The murder of Henry Novak, the eighteen year
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  Speaker 2: old boy who was killed by a young Sikh man
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  Speaker 2: using a ceremonial knife has been this prism in which
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  Speaker 2: all these politicians have kind of got a chance to
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  Speaker 2: show who they are and what they're made of, hasn't it.
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  Speaker 2: We're streeting accused Reform of sounding like Germany in the
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  Speaker 2: nineteen thirties. Kirstarma didn't really seem to know what to
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  Speaker 2: say at all. Kemibad, not from the Conservatives, seemed quite tough.
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  Speaker 2: Andy Burnham said that he thought that ceremonial knives held
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  Speaker 2: by Sikh people should be looked at, That should be reviewed.
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  Speaker 3: It's a case to look at that.
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  Speaker 6: Again.
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  Speaker 3: There was an exemption, wasn't there for the Sikh religion
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  Speaker 3: because it is a very important part part of that faith.
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  Speaker 3: But in a world where you know, we do have
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  Speaker 3: serious challenges with knife prime, I think it needs to
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  Speaker 3: be looked at.
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  Speaker 2: Although it's and Nigel Farage absolutely expressed what he called
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: the cold fury that Britain's a feeling right now. What
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  Speaker 2: was your sense in the reaction to that very devastating
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  Speaker 2: murder of who actually understands Britain's and has a chance
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  Speaker 2: of leading the country into the future.
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  Speaker 4: I definitely think that Kemmy Badenock, the Tory leader had
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: the best response because she was able to say clearly
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: the anti racism training, the Black Lives Matter stuff had
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: all gone too far. But she made the point that
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  Speaker 4: the important thing here is that all lives matter. What
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  Speaker 4: we need to do is stop separating people by groups.
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  Speaker 4: While as Nigel Farage, who as we say, is under
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: pressure from his right flank, not a center flank, not
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: a push to go more towards a more traditional Tory position,
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: he is under pressure from Maga, from Elon must to
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: go further and further to the right. He has now
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: started talking in the language that he's actually avoided when
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: it comes to things like race for a long time.
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  Speaker 4: He went very far, and he was not listening to
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  Speaker 4: what Henry Novak's parents have actually said repeatedly, which is
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: we do not want race brought into this. And I
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  Speaker 4: think you're right about kir Starmer. He didn't know what
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  Speaker 4: to say because he was the one who was taking
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  Speaker 4: the knee and all this kind of nonsense during Black
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  Speaker 4: Lives Matter that even Anthony Albanizi didn't do. You're absolutely right, Claire.
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  Speaker 4: It showed everybody for who they were, and I think
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  Speaker 4: Andy Burnham has dealt with it as well as he can.
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  Speaker 4: But this is because Andy Burnham, as we go back to,
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  Speaker 4: he is a chameleon. So, for example, everybody on the
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  Speaker 4: soft left wants Andy Burnham to get rid of shabanam Mamod,
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  Speaker 4: the Home Secretary, who has pushed a very tough immigration policy,
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  Speaker 4: a very Australia like immigration policy, which is very unpopular
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: with the Labor Party. And he has said no, I
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: agree with the frust of Shabanama Mood's immigration policies. So
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: he's upset people in his own faction by doing that,
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: very similar to Anthony Albanesi changing his mind on boat
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  Speaker 4: term acts. He is very pragmatic. That may hurt him
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  Speaker 4: in the long run. Questions about whether he has any convictions,
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: but he is pragmatic, he knows how to shift and
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  Speaker 4: my goodness, he's a better communicator than Cirqua Starmer.
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  Speaker 2: There's not another election due until August twenty twenty nine.
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  Speaker 2: If Burnham does make it to Downing straight, is there
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  Speaker 2: time to turn things around or do you think it
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  Speaker 2: would just be about trying to be Prime Minister for
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  Speaker 2: as long as he possibly can.
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  Speaker 4: Well, he has said that he will not go to
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: an early election. Now there are people who would say
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: that he would need a new mandate. But to be honest, Claire,
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: they've changed prime ministers so many times in Britain. I
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: think people are used to it, and quite frankly, they
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: have a parliamentary system like ours, which you do not
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: vote for the prime minister. You vote for the party,
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: you vote for the government. But that's what makes this
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: by election so weird is that the people are of
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: Makerfield are voting for a prime minister. That has never
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: happened before in Britain. So we'll see if he sticks
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: to this idea that he'll keep in for the three years,
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: keep that huge Labor majority. But I think the other
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: thing they'll have to watch out for is does he
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: change the electoral system to proportional representation from first past
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  Speaker 4: the post to hobble for Age's chances of getting a
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: majority government. Right now, Foragin for Reform could win a
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: pretty low percentage of the vote but still be ahead
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: enough that they win so many seats and win a
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: big majority if they're in proportional representation. Even though I
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: think there would be a backlash against Labor for changing
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: the rules, at least they would be forced to cobble
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: together a coalition and maybe Labor would have a chance
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: of cobbling together a coalition with the Greens, the lib
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: Dems in the SNP.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Richard Ferguson, thank you very much, Thank you. Richard Ferguson
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: is the Australian's kenber Bua. You can check out all
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: our political journalism on Britain and the rest of the
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: world right now at the Australian dot com dot au