Are Farage and Polanski already yesterday's men? | The News Agents

Addy Burnham has been setting out his latest policies, this time to help publicans and club owners.Kemi Badenock has been on the attack.

I can just see this summer when we get to September and it's going to be dogged by paedophiles being released early and by rapists being released early and by violent offenders being released early.The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity.

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Every day, Andy Burnham seems to float a new expensive idea.A national care service that costs £18 billion, building as many council houses in the 1970s, costing £13 billion.On Monday, he said he was thinking about increasing the personal allowance.On Tuesday, he was against it.On Wednesday, he was for it again.Does anyone know what he's thinking today?

Because I don't.He doesn't actually know what he wants to do.He is thinking out loud.All we know is that it is going to cost a lot of money.So I want to be very clear.Andy Burnham needs to rule out tax rises to pay for his spending spree.

That is Kemi Badenoch clearly sharpening her attack on Andy Burnham into his fourth day as Prime Minister.She's doing it well, but so too is Andy Burnham.

Whisper it.But Andy Burnham, the leader of the Labour Party, and Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, are now, according to the latest polling, the most popular political leaders in the country.Is it just possible that we are witnessing the strange return of two -party politics?Welcome to The News Agents.

The News Agents.

It's John.It's Lewis.And as we were saying there, we are now goingthe first polling of the Burnham era and of course this is just very early days but we make no apology for focusing on it for one simple reason which is we've got to remember that Andy Burnham is Prime Minister to arrest and reverse a political problem for the Labour Party which was basically it's appalling polling and appalling election results under Keir Starmer after the 2024 general election.That is why he is there so even more than usual midterm these polls, these early polls, will be being pored over by Labour MPs, people within the Labour Party and across, of course, the wider political spectrum.More income polling out today has Labour the closest to reform since April 2025, with reform on 26 % and Labour on 24%, the Conservatives around the same as well.

And intriguingly, and this is where the big transformation has taken place, because that's not such a big difference to the headline voting intention that we saw under Keir Starmer, But Burnham's personal approval rating has jumped to plus 13.Now, bear in mind that Starmer's personal approval rating was way, way into negative territory.I mean, seriously, at one point he was about as popular as Andrew Mountbatten -Windsor, according to the polling.I mean, seriously.Starmer's post -election high even was plus 11 back in early to mid -2024, July 2024.So Burnham is now more popular, personally, than Starmer was at the height of his election success.

So for the first time as well, intriguingly, we've both got the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition in positive net approval territory, with Kemi Bainock at plus three.Meanwhile, Ed Davey, the leader of the Lib Dems, is minus five, and Nigel Farage and Zak Polanski, the great insurgents of British politics are down skimming the bottom at minus 22.

the July 2024 general election, when the two main parties sort of commanded, what was it, 55 percent of the national share of the vote, and people are thinking, God, is that it?Is two -party politics dead now?Is it really kind of over?Are we now looking at multi -party politics in a system that was designed for two parties?And it just feels as though that over the past few weeks, Kemi Badenoch's performance in the Commons has improved massively, some of the messaging is becoming much clearer about the economy, about lower taxation, about the need to cut welfare spending, increased defence, all of those things she seems to be much more clear about where she's taking the Conservative Party.At the same time you've got Andy Burnham who is clearly enjoying a bounce compared to where Keir Starmer was and this kind of overriding sense that Keir Starmer was hopeless, he had to go, there had to be someone new in place.

at the same time as you have had Nigel Farage and Zak Polanski really struggling out there for differing reasons, but both struggling.

Yeah, and look, obviously, so many caveats with this.I mean, Burnham isn't even there for a week, and he has to weather his first crisis, his first big mistake.That will come.It's absolutely inevitable.Both things are inevitable, and there'll be loads of mistakes that will come.They've done a good job early on.

I suppose there's therefore It seems to me that there are two big questions about a potential return to a Labour -Conservative duopoly, or something closer to it than we've been experiencing.One is, is that whether Burnham can sustain that, can overcome those crises that will come, or will he experience what Starmer did, which is, you know, these things come, you're notto respond to them terribly well, you're not really being seen to arrest the problems of the country, and you just go one long dip, and that's obviously going to be a big problem for the Labour Party.The more intriguing possibility as well, it seems to me, is, can, let's imagine for a moment that Burnham and Bainock do manage to maintain their personal popularity, at least for a while, and, you know, there's reasonable grounds to believe that could be the case.Bainock's been in an intriguing position that she has been much more popular than the Conservative Party for some time now and yet it hasn't affected terribly the Conservative Party's overall polling position.So it is possible that you might end up having two parties being led by quite popular political figures, but their respective brands are still very poor.

Labour and Conservative brands, party brands.How long does it take before one sort of affects the other?And then the other question, of course, is as well is, I mean, if we're talking about Polanski and Farage, one of the reasons it feels to me that that has happened is that there has been a pretty concerted media effort to go for both men and both parties over the past six months or so.I mean Polanski would never enjoyed much favourable press but managed to seem to overcome it via social media activity.Burnham and the Labour Party being much better on that than they used to be, certainly under Keir Starmer, and Polanski therefore sort of falls back, not entirely sure how to deal with it.And Farage meanwhile, one of the intriguing things about recent politics has been the extent to which the Conservative press, which were really toying with Farage in the sense of flirting with the idea of backing him, giving him really favourable coverage.

One of the things that has undoubtedly happened over the last three months is the extent to which the Murdoch press in particular and the wider right -wing press have started to go for coverage and go for stories, not least around his finances, which have not been favourable to him, and it's had an impact.

I think that's the wrong way of looking at it.I think that what's happened...Not for the first time.Well, I think that what's happened is..you've got a story which you just look at and think, oh bloody hell, why have you got a five million pound present from somebody?That is epic.

And I don't think you would be really struggling either to say, you know, one, that's not a story, nothing to see here, let's move on.But if you are going to say it's a story and you've listened to the explanations that have been forthcoming, I mean, Nigel Farage, who I have said umpteen times on this podcast is a brilliant communicator, has been absolutely woeful in seeking to explain where that's come from.And so, surprise, surprise, You've got a guy who could be the next prime minister of this country whenever the general election comes.And the scrutiny is coming his way, as befits any future prime minister.And I think it's the newspapers responding to events rather than just the kind of abstract decision, OK, let's give Farage a bit of a kicking.

Yeah, I agree.Look, there's no doubt Farage has reformed political strategy in all sorts of ways over the past 12 months has been poor.We've talked about it.before, but they've leaned way too hard into kind of their sort of online political life.They focus on eccentric, esoteric, weird things.They've been too concerned about their right flank.

They've not appealed enough to exactly those sorts of slightly more kind of moderate conservative voters, you know, all sorts of things.And the way that Farage has responded to these questions has been baleful, like genuinely appallingly bad.I mean, I can't actually think for a guy who has such political flair and such political acumen, you know, the unbelievably thin -skinned nature of it for a guy who says he wants to be Prime Minister.Genuinely, apparently, completely pissed off that anybody might dare to ask him a question.You know, you're in the wrong job, pal.You know, you just really are.

If that's what you want to be, you want to be Prime Minister, you don't like questions about your personal life, tough luck, right?You don't have to be Prime Minister.But I do think it's nonetheless interesting.You know, I both know, John, that sometimes where stories appear in the media,that the papers that they're in does tell us something about the shifting political sands, right?And, you know, we could have, I mean, this is a as Emily often talks about, you know, peek behind the curtain.

Let's imagine we'd done the story about Farage and the five million, which we had.Wish we'd had that story.Great story.Initially from the Guardian.It was initially a Guardian story, right?Got a lot of traction.

We did it.Not a lot of other people were talking about it.Took some time for this stuff to percolate through.And then it appears Norse stuff on the front page of the Sunday Times.Different story but sort of connected.Brilliant work by Gabriel Pogron and the Insight team.

But it is interesting nonetheless that those papers, and not just the papers but if you look at their columnists, their editorials, the Times, the Sunday Times, the Telegraph, even the Express to some extent, the Mail, where they're carrying those stories, where they're putting them, often on the front page, the tone in which they're talking about it.You and I both know that, yeah, sometimes these things might appear and the way that they talk about it and where they put them on the papers does reflect where their heads are at about their particular story.And I think if this had happened six, nine months ago, they would have handled it in a somewhat different way.And I think it is reflective of, and we kind of know this from some reporting that's out there, things that, you know, we hear and so on.I think what is definitely clear is that among the more traditional conservative supporting press, there has been a swing back to the Conservative Party and much more interest in Kemi Badenoch as a political, potential political leader and Prime Minister than there was six to twelve months ago, when all of the mood music and all of the coverage around her was she won't even survive.And it feels to me that the Murdochs of the world, the Vladimirs of the world, you know, Daily Mail and so on, Telegraph as well, are much more interested in the idea of a conservative revivification than they were 12 months ago, which is affecting

how they attack these stories and how Farage is coming across.Because you and I both know all that stuff matters, not just about those papers, but about how the BBC, broadcasters cover it, because if something's on the front page of the Sunday Times or the Times, it's treated very seriously in a way that perhaps, say, for example, if we'd done that story, not that they shouldn't be taking us seriously, but, you know, if we'd done that story or the Guardian did that story or wherever, New Statesman did it, it wouldn't be received in the same way.

we tend to look at politics, probably rightly for the most part, as a zero -sum game.If one is up the other must be down and that you can't have win -wins in politics.I'm just to think we are sort of entering a territory now where it's a win -win for Burnham and it's a win for KB Badenock as well, in the sense that they are kind of looking like the grown -ups in the room and they're attacking each other respectfully and setting out their own visions.But it's leaving behind the Greens and leaving behind reform in this conversation.And I always thought that there was a degree to which when, you know, Labour were attacking the Tories when they were in government over, you know, did someone take a private helicopter?Did Rishi Sunak get on a private helicopter?

I thought it was pathetic that Labour were attacking that.And then I hear the Tories attacking Labour over did Keir Starmer do something in first class or whatever.You think, oh, bloody hell, he's the frigging Prime Minister.This is pathetic stuff.Stop the silly attacks.You're just you know, you are playing into the hands of parties on the populist right and the populist left who say, look at how terrible the Labour and Conservatives are.

I think we're into a period of slightly more grown -up politics, which I think is a win for Kemi Badenoch.I think it's a win for Andy Burnham.

Well, I think that, look, this could all, we've been living through, the received wisdom in the commentary in British politics has been that two -party politics is dead and that we're heading into a multi -party democracy in a way that we haven't seen for a long time or ever before.And that'sstill be true, you know, it may still be true and it's certainly, you know, recent electoral results, local elections and so on would definitely point in that direction.But there have always been, I think there still are, reasons to be sceptical about that idea.One is, is that First Past the Post still, ultimately, the logic of First Past the Post does draw you, inevitably, inexorably, the voter and indeed the parties themselves towards either cooperation or killing the other, or the voters to just decide and pick the lesser of two evils, the one that is guaranteed or more likely to win in the seat that you're in.And even if you don't like them, you sort of hold your nose and do it.

And I think that is a big structural thing.It's one of the things that's kept Labour and Tory as hegemonic as they have been for a century.And it's still there.It's still there.And the reason why this polling is increasingly important is that it feels like we are on the verge of a crossover.right?

Certainly on the right, that, you know, it is totally credible to see that maybe in a month or so, if this trend continues and reform, remember, they were used to be, you know, this time last year, they were up at 30 and it's been like one gradual, gradual, and it's been a little bit of up and down, but the trend has been cleared down to the low 20s, basically where Labour and Tories are.And if the Tories can show in a sustained way that there's crossover and that suddenly they are polling ahead of reform, then the first past the post logic benefits them.It goes back to them.The parcel goes back to them because they can say, well, a vote for them is a wasted vote in every constituency, which is the argument reform has been able to deploy up to now.So there's that logic to it.And Labour will obviously be able to do the same thing with the Greens in a general election.

But also, like, it's always been a bit In our discourse at the moment, we're so used to the idea of precedents always being smashed and history being upended and everything being new, but history does have a weird way of just saying, no, actually come back this way.You know, there's a real gravity to history.And history in this sense means that like, you know, whether we like them or loathe them, the Labour and Tory parties have got bloody deep roots in this country.I always thought, you know, when we were talking in the run -up to the 24 election, it's like, is the Tory party going to die?I think I said at the time, always very sceptical of that idea.You know, they have got deep, like Labour too, deep, deep roots that these new challengers just do not have.

And that's both their virtue, but it's also their vice, because it allows them to be nimble.It allows them to come along.It allows them to be really exciting, but it also allows, it does also mean that when that gust of, when the wind changes direction and it starts blowing at you, you don't have the forbearance and the strength and those routes that those routes provide to the other two parties.So there is a reason why, you know, in the last hundred years, 120 years of modern British democracy, one of the main parties has only been killed off and replaced once.Yeah.

And I think you're picking up a degree of rediscovered self -confidence on the Labour benches.They've commanded the conversation this week.I know we're only four days into the Burnham premiership, but they've been pretty adroit.Little messages every day that shows which side they're on and where their priorities are.You've got Kemi Bainock out there because Nigel Farage can't be out there because he's a parliamentary candidate at the moment and so he's keeping quiet and god knows where Zak Polanski is and so you do feel that the conversation is back between Labour and Conservative and that is a reversion to the meme that we hadn't anticipated after the 2024 election when people are saying oh my god this is it you know the the the old the old ways are done.

Well I think that one of the things that Burnham has been very keen to do and I'm listening to him reading his stuff and interviews and so on and even when we've interviewed him in in the past I think one of the things he has been keenest to impress and he and one of thethings that he thinks has gone wrong with Labour politics, is that he's keen to show that the state and government can still do stuff, and it can make a difference, and do it quickly.And we've sort of seen a bit of that this week.Okay, relatively small things, but you know, good retail politics stuff.And even as we've just been sat here as part of that kind of like churn of activity, he's just announced, or Number 10 have announced, that no new prisoners will be let out as part of the early release scheme until an urgent review is carried out, saying that keeping the public safe will always be my top priority.I'm working closely with the new Justice Secretary.

I've instructed my team to put a pause on the changes that were due to start in September.Two things I think to say about that.One is, like I just said, I think he is keen in these early weeks to just keep showing the difference and the change and the fact that he's on it.And secondly, I suspect, I mean, look, it's going to cause all sorts of problems, potentially, with those, what's going to happen in terms of where these prisoners go, because, you know, the Tories did leave such a, the prison estate in a terrible condition.but I suppose he's also just thinking his political sense is just his antennae are just tingling and just thinking I can just see this summer when we get to September and it's going to be dogged by paedophiles being released early and by rapists being released early and by violent offenders being released early and that could just dog me in those early days so another interesting move.

Well I think it just shows that the political antennae that we used to talk about with Starmer as being absent.How could they do that?How could they be so tone deaf?Why aren't they listening to the public?Now, you can't just respond to one day's headline of something and just change government policy like that, because then you are just blowing in the wind endlessly.But to have a popular sense of where the mood of the people are and how a government can respond to it effectively, again, it just looks like there is a certain surety of touch that has been missing these past two years.

We are joined in the studio by Chris Curtis, Labour MP for Milton Keynes North.former chair of the Labour Growth Group, supported West Streeting to take over from Keir Starmer, and it's good to have you with us Chris.How's week one been?

I think it's good.I think it's positive.I'm really quite happy with a lot of the appointments to governments.going in as AI in the cabinet, I think is fantastic.Matt, being able to continue the work he's doing in housing, really important.We get as many homes built as we possibly can is really important.

And also some of these policies, it's not the be all and end all.We're going to have to really push harder on growth policies in the medium term and long term.But those small policies that we've come up with in the first week in order to start giving people a bit of breathing space on bus fares, on energy bills in particular, I think is a good positive step.And when I've spoken a little bit to some of the voters on the doorstep up in Milton Keynes, it's noticeable how there's a bit more of a positive vibe towards the government.You've sensed that already?Yeah, towards the government and the Labour Party.

You've seen it in the polls as well.

I mean, I notice very much that you are using the talking point language of, you know, it's a bit of breathing space, which will get you a tick, I'm sure, in Downing Street.Do you think it will make a difference?I mean, is it more about the symbolic, this is direction of travel?

Well, it's not nothing, is it?It's still some money off people's energy bills and it's a bit cheaper for people to get around on the buses.If you look at the Alan Milburn review, for example, on challenges with young people not being able to get to work and training, he says cost of transport is a big reason for that.So it has these other positive effects as well.But is it be all and end all.No, of course it's not.

We still need to do much, much more to focus on getting the British economy growing again after nearly two decades of stagnation.And while there's little things we can do in the meantime, it's only by solving that growth problem that we can start to get significantly more money into people's pockets, really fix the challenges, the economic challenges that this country faces.

Chris, you've been one of the, I'd say, thethe few Labour MPs, or the few MPs, over the course of the last two years, who I think has really seriously thought about growth.And of course, you'll...Others have as well.Well, the report that you wrote in Honest Day with Mark McVitie, I think that was, you know, one of the pieces of work which has been done to actually really sort of think about that.Do you think that Burnham and this new government, is it growth that is driving them?

Or is it actually a sense of equity, fairness, equality, because these opening things, a focus on cost of living is not necessarily a focus on growth, they're not necessarily the same thing.

That's an interesting way of framing the question actually.I think growth is definitely on their mind, and look, it is hard to look at any graph of the British economy over the next 20 years and for it not to be keeping you up at night, and I'm sure it is keeping Andy up the same.Regardless of what his key driver is, I do strongly believe, particularly on devolution, which we can talk about in a bit, it is one of those things that will help us achieve growth.And when it comes to fixing some of our problems with the economic geography of this country, I think that one of the reasons we're leaning back on growth is because we are too dependent on London in particular, and how can we ensure that we maximise the potentials of all of the bits of the country.So I don't want to deep dive into Andy Burnham's psychology, but regardless of it, I think a lot of his...I'm not Patrick Maguire, nor would I ever want to be, nor ever could I be.

He added quickly.A very talented member of the lobby that is Patrick.He says trying to win brownie points with Patrick Maguire is well important in the Labour Party.But I think a lot of the policy things he's pushing on, I believe, will start to achieve economic growth.And you spoke very kindly about our report.A lot of that stuff was in there as well.

But is devolution necessarily, doesn't necessarily lead to growth, does it?I mean, it's not a growth plan in itself.I mean, Scotland has had devolution for 30 years.Wales has had devolution for 30 years.There's no particular strong evidence to suggest that their economic growth or productivity has been boosted.by the fact that they've got devolved governments.

And you can make a separate argument, can't you, which is to say that sometimes, and if we'd been having this conversation 30, 40 years ago, your median Labour MP would have thought the way you get growth is a strong central state which can do stuff very quickly.

Well, I think it's strong mayoral authorities that can do stuff.The doing stuff is important.I believe that it's by creating these authorities that you create the capacity to do stuff.I wrote a sub -stack recently, which people are more than welcome to subscribe to if they google my sub -stack, it's great.But I wrote this sub -stack recently where I touched on some of these points.My diagnosis and the diagnosis in our report of why the British economy has been struggling is effectively the state has made it too difficult for businesses, for people, for communities, for people right across the country to do things.

And the analogy I use in that is to do with Parliament.So there's a tour that the Restoration and Renewal Team in Parliament, these are the people that want us to spend billions of pounds doing our Parliament.They take you on a tour around Parliament.You go down to the basement and what they show you is wires on top of wires on top of wires with cables and plumbing.All of it's been put in over the hundreds and hundreds of years of Parliament's history.they basically go, we don't really know what we can unplug or plug in because we just don't necessarily know what it all does anymore.

And I think that's quite a good analogy for the British state because ultimately we haven't had a revolution or lost a war in ages.So all of the British state, Bank of England's the oldest regulator in the world, a lot of the British state is just putting all of those infrastructure on top of infrastructure and it's created this mess which is quite complicated for the government in order to be able to do things effectively.Now one of the hacks I think for that is the way devolution can start to create these new institutions that can solve these problems and I'd say if we look at Greater Manchester for example, we've now seen evidence of where that could happen.

But you say, which seems right to me, which is that devolution in your superb sub -stack, if you'd like to mention it again, devolution cannot simply mean adding another layer of wires and pipes on top of the system we already have.If we're going to push responsibility down, we also need to push down the freedom to act.I mean, which is another way of saying that devolution in and of itself is neither a non -allowed good or certainly does not guarantee growth.If you do it badly, then actually you could make growth worse because you're just entering another layer of bureaucracy.

I think that's true.I think getting devolution right is the challenge.the point that you made there that I originally made is correct.And I think the other thing as well is thinking about incentives.I only ever repeat your points, to be honest.Will you two stop flirting with each other, for God's sake?

It's what makes you the most listened to political podcaster.That's correct.Let's keep flirting.The other element of this as well is about incentives, and this is why fiscal devolution is important.And there is evidence behind this.The Central Cities has plotted this.

your x -axis on the bottom you can look at the percentage of tax revenue that's gathered at sub -national level and your y -axis you look at average wages and there's a correlation.So the more tax revenue that's raised at local level rather than just by central government the higher wages are in a country and that is because those local areas then have an incentive to think about how they can grow their local economies, get new businesses, get new investments in because then they get to keep some of that revenue and that is one of the things that we need to push on.

What about the role that regulation plays in economic growth because you seem to be arguing in your even more brilliant substack than Lewis has already acknowledged.Chris Curtis' substack, you can Google it.Yeah, thank you.We're becoming a world leader in pilot schemes for technology that other countries are already putting into everyday use.We can build the drone capable of delivering emergency medicine across the country, but we're still developing the rules that allow it to fly beyond the end of the operator's garden.I mean, are we overregulated in the sense that that is actually, whether it be in house building, whether it be in anything, that there are so many ways to block economic growth by saying, well, let's go to judicial review over this and let's have this, you know, held up by something else.

I think over -regulation is sort of quite a simplistic way of putting it, but are weand our regulators don't work for that sort of parliamentary wire analogy that I just used.We put all of these these regulatory wires in place and then we've set up these regulators and we've basically told them to be as risk -averse as possible and we've created a legal system that will take them to court if they're not risk -averse and that has just made it too difficult to do things.I think devolution is part of the answer to that but as I say we've also got to ensure that we're giving these new bodies freedom to act and not getting it caught up in this sort of difficult regulatory environment that we have.

And when you look at some of the other things that are being spoken about and Andy Burnham has been commendably candid in, you know, some of what he's thinking, you know, whether there needs to be a wealth tax, whether there needs to be a 50 pence top rate tax.Do you think that that is the sort of areas where there is support?And do you think that Labour could do this sort of thing without having a general election?

Well, part of the answer on taxes, less of it should be our decision.I always feel Dan Tomlinson, he's just got back in, brilliant government minister who's responsible for tax policy.He's sitting there in an office trying to write up tax policies on business rates that decides how much a warehouse in Milton Keynes and a pub in John O 'Groats gets taxed at the same time.Part of the answer to this question is moving those powers downwards and giving local areas a bit more of a decision about how they set and interpret and put in place these tax rates.But there is clearly a wider tax reform question which I believe the government should grapple with at some point.It is bonkers that a small house in Andy Burnham's constituency in Makefield, where most people in the Labour Party have been knocking a lot of doors recently, is paying more in council tax than Buckingham Palace.

So reforming things like council tax and stamp duty and those property taxes, thinking about how we can tax wealth more and tax income a bit less, I think they're important questions.We need to think about how we do that, because they're all pro -growth.Not in a sort of Gary Stevenson style, but I think there's a more important question, which is how can we shift that burden more towards taxing wealth and away from taxing income.But let's not pretend that this is cost free and it has to be well thought through.But we can get obsessed with these tax questions.The more important thing is growth because you can shift your tax rates here a little bit, you can shift your tax rates there a little bit.

All of this needs to be in the service of economic growth because that is really the only way we're going to get out of this kind of fiscally challenging situation that Britain currently finds itself in.

Post -reshuffle, how would you say, what would you say the mood of the PLP is?I think it's positive.

Yeah, I think it's really positive.Look, I obviously...I bet it's not if you're Steve Reid.I think obviously I was in favour of changing prime ministers.I think it was a necessary and important thing to do.Even if it didn't quite get my first choice, I'm still happy with where we've ended up.

It really worried me going through that process and coming to that decision, thinking about whether you could get back to a Labour party that could hold itself together at the other end.And I think we can and I think we will.Obviously, there'll be some people who are upset.for a variety of reasons, but I think the vast majority of people in the Labour Party want to get behind Andy, are getting behind Andy, and really understand the size of the challenge the country, the government faces and wants to get on board with helping to fix it.

Do you think there's any legitimacy in the criticism that the reshuffle rewarded disloyalty?and was too factional.This was supposed to be the end of factionalism in the Labour Party, probably doesn't feel like that.

I guess people in the cabinet from, you know, right across the political spectrum.The criticism is it's just Andy's mates, people he knows.I don't think it is just Andy's mates, I mean, I don't know what Andy's relationship was like with Kanishka necessarily, you know, people he knows.a new 2024 MP that's gone into the Cabinet.There's people from right across the political spectrum in the Cabinet but also in those junior ministerial ranks.It's not about rewarding disloyalty, it's about bringing the best talents from right across the Labour Party in to make sure that we fix the pretty big challenges this country faces.

And what did you think of Darren Jones's intervention when he kind of after day one and they have announced that there's going to be this help for people's domestic electricity bills and he says yeah well this is unfunded where's the money coming from Well, I'm not sure it's massively helpful intervention.

Are you using understatement there?Are you using British understatement?Well, the point is the government was going to do something, so it was going to have to find the money for it.Now it is not going to do it, so it doesn't have to find the money for it.And therefore, that money that we'd otherwise have to find for this, we can find for that instead.So it doesn't actually change the kind of net fiscal outlook.

So I'm not sure I agree.agree with his point.

So what would your advice be to those people who are obviously pissed off and they feel that they've bruised after a week where they've seen their cabinet positions disappear?Can we say pissed off?That's great isn't it?I can, I just did it.Interfered with by our film.

I just think everybody needs to get on board.We need to come together, we need to work out how we can do it.You're not going to get everything you want in politics.It's going to feel challenging but there's a greater challenge here, which is fixing some of the challenges this country faces after pretty disastrous 14 years of Tory government, but probably more importantly than that is making sure that Nigel Farage never steps foot in Downing Street.I don't care how upset you are, I don't care where you sit on the political spectrum, we all need to work out and do everything we can to stop that from happening.

Is Andy Burnham, Keir Starmer, a better communicator?

No, I think there's lots of kind of different prioritisationand directions that he wants to take the country in, most notably on pushing further on devolution, starting to move more power out of Westminster, which I think is important.And there's certainly, Keir wouldn't necessarily have disagreed with that, but more of a prioritisation that we'll see under Andy.

Just one final thing, you're an MP in the south -east of England, you're one of those MPs who are elected in 2024, a whole clutch slew of MPs in the south -east and the wider south for Labour, some of which have never been held by Labour before.Is there a bit of a danger of the whole Mr Northern thing?the whole Mr Manchester thing.It just pisses people off.I'm going to use John's phrase.It pisses people off in the end, right?

It's fine for a bit, but there's a danger that in the end that's a bit alienating because you've got 30 million people living in the southeast.London is the dynamo of this country's economy and sometimes it felt a little bit like it's just a bit anti -London.

I don't think that's true.I mean I think people from the south -east of England can like people from the north.I'm quite a big Oasis fan as somebody who was born and grew up in Milton Keynes and I think that's true of Andy Burnham as well.Joe White, who's another brilliant Member of Parliament for Bassetlaw, who's just gone in as a government minister in the Home Office I think, She is from Bassetlaw, I'm from Milton Keynes.Last year we did a paper together and we wrote a joint foreword pushing on a lot of this devolution agenda.And the argument we made was, you know, we've both got very, very different constituencies and they face very, very different challenges.

In hers, there wasn't necessarily the private sector investment, the government has not really cared about it so much.In mine, you know, the economy's doing all right, but House prices are prohibitively expensive for a lot of young people, making it a real challenge to stay locally, and that creates problems.So there are ways that you can rebalance this country, that there's a win for places where the economy is doing well, like my area, like London, and a win for places like Basset -le -Makerfield, Leeds as well.And what we argued in the paper was, yes, it is shifting some of that government funding so it is more evenly distributed across the country, and we're not always trying to find ways to put all of our extra rail infrastructure into London, for example.Yes, it's rebalancing that, but on the flip side it is also continuing to push on devolution and giving local areas, particularly in the south that are doing well, the levers and ability to maximise that private sector investment that's coming in.

You don't think there's any danger with the Prime Minister talking about number 10 north, working from Manchester half the week, all this stuff, that people in your constituency think this is a guy who cares more about the north of England than he does me?

Andy Burnham will be coming through the constituency of Milton Keynes on the West Coast Main Line on a very regular basis as he heads from...Will he be stopping or just waving out the window?Well, he's welcome to stop by as often as he likes and I'm sure he will do so.So he cares about Stoke, Stafford, Milton Keynes.Oh, here we go.

Here's a test.How many stops can you name?And all the stops on the way to Manchester.Macclesfield, Stockport, Wilmslow...

Are you going through a job as the Advancing Press Officer?

I tell you what, I'd have a lot of work, wouldn't I?

Yes, he's going to be the Prime Minister for the North, East, South and West.And it is about just, look, we know that too much government investment, too much government energy has been focused on small pockets of the country.Ultimately, and this isn't shade on Oxford or Cambridge graduates or people who live in London, but civil servants have all been mostly Oxbridge gadgets who live in London, and they've cared about Cambridge and London.And we just need to push back against that bias in order to unlock the potential of everywhere.Chris Curtis, grateful to you.Thanks so much for coming in.

Thanks so much.

You had a few meetings with him as Energy Secretary?Just one.How did that go?Well, it was as you would expect.We disagreed.And do you think you can now work together?

You'll have to deal with him a lot.

Oh, for sure.I mean, that's my job, is to work with him.So he's the Foreign Secretary, and we will work with Mr Miliband.

Obviously, as you said, you disagreed with him on energy policy.I imagine you disagree with him on his views towards your boss, President Trump.He said, the idea is that we have shared values with a racist, misogynistic, self -confessed groper beggars belief.

Yeah, I've read those.Those were some time ago, I think.And hopefully his views have changed, I think.

Those were 2016.Two years later, he said Donald Trump has lowered the bar for idiocy.He said Donald Trump has a peculiar relationship with Russia.Can he really be our top diplomat dealing with America?

People's view of President Trump in 2016 is probably a lot different than it is in now 2016.25 and going forward.So 26 even.I'm sorry.Wrong year.And we're you know, I would suspect his views have changed on on President Trump.

That is the U .S.ambassador to London, Warren Stevens, who has kept an incredibly low profile.And I can't recall any other interviews that he's done.I think one when he got here, but it was just about, I'm delighted to be in London.And that was it.

Has he not been returning our calls?

No.I mean, he has been a submarine sitting at the bottom of the ocean for a very, very long time.And he's chosen to surface now with this kind of, we're watching you, Ed Miliband.We know what you said before.We hope you've changed your mind.I thought it was a bit of a warning shot.

I thought it was very surprising.you're wrong about oil and gas.If you continue to try and tax our tech companies, that could lead to tariffs.I think it was a real, we're here, we're watching and we're very suspicious of you.

And one striking thing about Ed Miliband, which is again, maybe one of the surprising things about his becoming Foreign Secretary, or maybe it's not, but you know, for a British politician who has not been Prime Minister, he has an unusual salience and purchase across American politics, right?Because, I mean, Trump's obsessed with him and his policy.We heard it there from the ambassador, but, you know, others have spoken about him as well before.That actually gets him some purchase on the Democratic side in some ways.I mean, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, was praising him.Again, very similar kind of views on energy and net zero.

They've known each other, I think, during the energy brief that Wendell about had that.But of course, also on the sort of foreign policy democratic side, as we were talking about earlier in the week, you know, he was utterly pivotal in basically torpedoing at that time what was, you know, central Obama administration policy, which was to attack the Assad regime.And he led the charge against that in the British Parliament and Parliament voted against it.And that reversed the Obama decision and, you know, and so on.So he's quite unusually well known.as an incoming foreign secretary in American politics.

But, you know, earlier on in the week when we were talking about it, we were kind of speculating on the extent to which the US administration was bothered one way or the other about Ed Miliband.They seem bothered.Yeah, they seem bothered.They seem bothered.The idea that this, of all times, when the US ambassador could have come out and done an interview, and I saw the reports of this, I think I read it on the Times, and I thought, wow, where has he said this?Because I can't remember any occasions where he's Entered the political fray to talk about British

and their relationship with Donald Trump and what their role should be and how Britain should measure up.And here he was, the US ambassador.

I think it was a little muscle flex going on at Winfield House.Well, it's quite reminds us again of Burnham's gutsiness in a way.I mean, in the sense that it's quite a It's quite a ballsy move.He would have known that this would be the reaction, and he's done it anyway.But it is a reminder, I mean, you know, for all they can huff and puff all they like about Miliband, but of course, in foreign policy terms, Miliband is not their problem.You know, their problem right now is that, you know, the war in Iran, it's not really over, and he still can't properly end it.

And, you know, just as we're sat here, and it's also a reminder of the potential problems for Burnham as well, oil, the oil price has passed $100 a barrel again, as once again, the war and the wider conflicts looks like it's going to escalate again.So, you know, of course, the ambassador can have his views, Trump can have his views about Miliband, but Miliband right now in terms of Trump foreign policy is the least of his problems.We'll be back tomorrow.We'll see you then.Bye bye.Bye bye.

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