‘Quite interesting… I’m more encouraged!’ Andrew Neil RANKS Andy Burnham’s Cabinet

It's been a bloodbath of the Starmer loyalists, perhaps bigger than people expected, but none of them will really be missed from Rachel Reeves' down.Welcome back to the show.I'm Andrew Neil.Now, yesterday, that was Monday, I brought you a reaction to Andy Burnham's first speech as our new prime minister, which he made outside Downing Street just before he went through that famous door for the first time as British prime minister.But when I did that analysis, we didn't yet know any of his cabinet.Not one post had yet been made public.

The top team that will form his government and gives us an idea of the direction he wants to go in.Well, now we do know who's in his cabinet, and this is what I make of it.I would say at the outset that I'm actually more encouraged by some key cabinet appointments than I was by his first speech as PM, which I found pretty underwhelming and full of the usual cliches and stuff we'd heard in the Makerfield by -election and in his bid to be a Labour leader.There's really nothing that much new in it.But some of the key appointments are quite interesting.and encouraging even.

John Healey as Chancellor, that was the big surprise, and a big surprise in a good way.John Healey, of course, famously resigned in the dying days of Keir Starmer's government because Mr. Starmer wouldn't come up with enough money for defence, nor would Rachel Reeves, then the Chancellor.She's, of course, now gone.Now, John Healey is the portrait -turned -gamekeeper.He is now the Chancellor, and if he still thinks, as I hope he does, that defence is underfunded, well, he's now in a position to put that into action.right.

It could be, of course, that Mr Healey was just a compromise between Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood, who is the Home Secretary, and that both making either of them would have been controversial inside the Labour Party, and so John Healey may well be the compromise for it.But even so, It's a good compromise.We don't know much about his views on economic policy, though he did spend five years in the Treasury in the Blair government, so he's got some experience there.And he's a grown -up.He's a safe pair of hands.He's a reassurance to the bond markets where we go to borrow money.

I'm pretty sure he's a believer in fiscal discipline.So all around, Chancellor, most important position in any British government after the Prime Minister, John Healey is an encouraging figure.appointment.And of course, he will have an ally in Pat McFadden, that Dewar Scott, who stays at work and pensions.They both have a similar mindset.They both come from the right wing of the Labour Party, slightly old -fashioned right wing of the Labour Party.

Nothing wrong with that.And they'll be a formidable duo at the heart of government.Who knows?Maybe we'll get some welfare reform after all.not ruling it out, may not be on the cards, but with these two there, it's possible.Now, of course, as I mentioned, John Healey is also good for defence, and I would hope that we will now see a clear path to Britain spending at least 3 % of his GDP on defence by 2030.

If John Healey's resignation was a matter of principle andsomething that he felt so strongly about that he did resign, then I can't see any reason why he wouldn't now be insisting that defence spending rise to at least 3 % and have a pathway to 3 .5 % in the early 2030s.Now, more good news, reappointing Shabana Mahmood as Home Secretary.That was also wise.Nigel Farage's Reform Party, for all its internal difficulties at the moment, is still a threat to Labour.She thwarts them by her hard line as perhaps only a daughter of immigrant parents herself.

Her hard line with immigration makes life more difficult for reform.And although what she says in the position she takes on immigration aren't always popular in the Labour Party, I can assure you they are popular in the country.And that will not have escaped Andy Burnham's attention there.She's also built a reputation of being the home office is a mess, unfit for purpose.One previous Labour Home Secretary way back in the Blair years called it.She has built a reputation as an effective executive, as someone who does get things done and delivers.

So good news that Shabana Mahmood is staying as Home Secretary.Then defence.West Streeting has become Secretary of State for Defence.Now, He was the health secretary.He resigned because he was going to mount a campaign against Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.That never kind of materialized.

He was overtaken by Andy Burnham.And of course, he has no expertise on defence.He has no background in defence.To be blunt, he doesn't know anything about defence.And he's been put in there after the removal of Mr Jarvis, who was a former soldier and had only been Defence Secretary for a short period of time.And it was almost as if Andy Burnham felt, look, West Street is a big figure in the Labour Party.

He represents the moderate, Blairite wing of the Labour Party, what's left of it.I need to find him a big job.OK, let's give him defence.Not a great reason for doing it, but he's there.And I'm not in too much despair about this.As I say, he's on the moderate centre -left wing of the Labour Party.

He believes in defence as well.He's smart, so he can quickly get up to speed on defence matters.He'll have John Healy at the Treasury to help guide him and help on the spending front.And I do feel that with John Healey as Chancellor and West Streeting at the Ministry of Defence, yeah, well, the country would seem to me to be in quite safe hands.And indeed, if you look at John Healey, Shabana Mahmood, West Streeting, that's three of the top four cabinet posts under the Prime Minister.And for all Andy Burnham's talk of moving left and recreating, going back to before the Thatcher age and so on.

When you look at these three people in these three pivotal positions, well, it's not such a left government, is it?And none of these three, Healy, Mahmood, Streeting, is really that interested in rolling back 40 years of neoliberalism, as Andy Burnham has been calling it.So, on the one hand, We've still got the Burnham rhetoric, which we got again outside Downing Street before he went in.But then we look at who he's actually appointing to these key positions.And they didn't come into politics to roll back neoliberalism.I mean, John Healey was a minister in the Blair -Brown governments.

He was part of what Andy Burnham is calling neoliberalism.So I think already you can see some of that rhetoric from Burnham, the candidate being chipped away with Burnham, the Prime Minister.Now, there's some more good news.Good news is that Ed Miliband is not the Chancellor.But there's bad news.He's the Foreign Secretary.

But don't despair.It's not all that much bad news, really, because the harsh truth is that in this modern world, in the 21st century, the Foreign Secretary actually doesn't matter that much.Why do I say that?I mean, it is still regarded as one of the great offices of state, along with the Chancellor.and the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary.But the fact is, for quite some time now, basically almost going back to the Blair years, foreign policy is now effectively run out of 10 Downing Street.

It's run by the Prime Minister and by those around the Prime Minister, including his national security advisors and his defence team.inside 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office.And this is made possible now by modern communications.If you want to speak to the President of France, never mind President Le Maire, you want to speak to President Macron, you don't send a message to our ambassador in Paris to fix up a meeting or to go and see the President with a message from the British Prime Minister.You pick up the phone, you get on to Zoom, you have a secure link, and you speak direct now to the President.of France, or the team in Downing Street speaks direct to President Macron.

So the Foreign Office is much diminished from the old days, but it was a department of huge importance.And even though Andy Burnham says he wants to spend a lot more time on domestic matters compared to Never Hear Keir, that was the nickname of Keir Starmer, The truth is that when you are Prime Minister, you don't have a choice in that.And if events demand it, international events, which are huge these days, Andy Burnham will be sucked into foreign policy too.And foreign policy will be run out of 10 Downing Street.So Ed Miliband gets the big title.He just doesn't get such a big job.

Now, the left has not been neglected.in the Burnham cabinet.The left still has a voice, still has a formidable presence, and you see that most of all in the phalanx of Andy Burnham's northern queens.These are the powerful women that he's put into important positions.I wrote them down just before we decided to record this.Angela Rayner, who's got housing.

Lucy Powell, education.Lisa Nandy, she stays at culture.Louise Haig, she is effectively, she's got a fancy title about the Duchy of Lancaster.She's effectively, even if she hasn't necessarily got the title, the Deputy Prime Minister.But above all, as someone who's close to the Prime Minister, she is going to be the enforcer.of Andy Burnham's will across the government.

And Bridget Philipson, she's basically been demoted.She was Education.She's been moved to Women and Equalities.And some and few outside Labour have heard of Annalise Midgley.She's the Chief Whip.So there we have one, two, three, four, five, six Northern Queens, all leaning to the soft left, all

part of the soft left in government.And they were powerful voices, probably trying to keep Andy Burnham to many of the positions and the promises he made when he was running to become Labour leader and then Prime Minister.But they're not as powerful as the other positions in the Treasury, in Defence, and in the Home Office.So their influence, if they speak with one voice, could be quite important.It will be limited.Angela Rayner will have her hands full trying to get anywhere near Labour's housing target of building 1 .5 million homes by the end of this Parliament.

Breaking news, ain't going to happen, but she'll at least try maybe to get close to it.Lucy Powell will be on a steep learning curve in education.Lisa Nandy is stuck with culture and pretty marginal player in politics.Louise Haig, though, is formidable.She will be, in many ways, perhaps the most important left -wing voice, along with Ed Miliband in the cabinet.Bridget Philipson, diminished in a less important department.

Annalisa Midgley, chief whip.She's got to be all things to all people and keep the party in line.So the left is there.The left is there in the Northern Queens, but perhaps not as important as the left of the Labour Party would have liked, given that they lost out on the really big positions.Nor is Net Zero's zealotry dead with the departure of Ed Miliband from energy to the Foreign Office.Mieta Fanbula is now going to take the energy job.

She's a Miliband -style fanatic on Net Zero.just like Mr. Miliband, and no doubt she will continue to carry that expensive torch costing us tens of millions.billions a year, making very little difference to Britain's CO2 emissions.Maybe John Healey, who could do with some of that money, or defends other things, maybe he'll have to have a ward with her at some stage.Now, it's been a bloodbath of the Starmer loyalists, perhaps bigger than people expected.but none of them will really be missed from Rachel Reeves' done.

Nobody is really mourning her departure from the Treasury.But you do pay a price when you cull to that extent in a cabinet reshuffle.The government has today come out with this first small but substantive policy that is it's going to abolish the 5 % VAT on fuel bills, just in the winter months, we'll start to October the 1st to help the cost of living.It's a pretty minor measure, better to have than not, I guess.It's worth to the average family only about 45 pounds a year.45, I said.

45 pounds a year, not a lot, which itself will be wiped out by the rise in the energy price cap on October the 1st.of about 50 cards a year.So in the end, he ain't going to be better off.But as I say, probably better to have than not.Interestingly, for someone as pro -Europe as Andy Burnham, it can only be done because we're not in the EU anymore.Otherwise, we couldn't have touched that 5 % VAT on fuel under European rules.

And the government announced, how are you going to pay for this?It's not a huge amount of money, but 850 million pounds.Well, we're scrapping the ID card proposal, which seems fair enough.But one of the victims of the Burnham bloodbath.piped up quite quickly.The ID card program was unfunded, so you can't make any savings from that, and that's how you can pay for the 5 % cut.

So I'm sure the blood bath was necessary.You want to have a new government, something of a fresh start.But of course, when you do, You make plenty of enemies, and there'll be plenty of enemies on the back benches now, just waiting for more mistakes like that from Andy Burnham, who will need to watch his back.Now, one final thing, and that is, we've got the latest YouGov poll, which again, I was just looking at, which was taken very recently, on the 19th and the 20th of July, so therefore, just on the days as Keir Starmer was on his way out and Andy Burnham in, so people knew what was happening.And the result's very interesting.It puts reform still ahead on 23, the Tories on 21, and Labour on 20.

Now, the significance of this is twofold.One is that reform leaked, which was closer to 30%, not that long ago.is down now, their polling is down to 23.They used to be six, seven, eight points ahead of any other party.Now they're only two ahead of the Tories, three ahead of Labour, and it would seem that Nigel Farage's troubles and related matters has taken something of a toll.But more significantly, with the three major parties bunching, 23, 21, 20, all therefore within the margin of error for polling, all basically bunched round 21%, then it means that all three have all to play for.

Victory, or becoming the largest party, come the next election, whenever that is, is a possibility for all three, depending on how the cards fall.The British politics has been very interesting, if not somewhat exhausting, for quite a few years now.This poll, leaving the future wide open to one of the three major parties, means It's even more interesting than it was, and no doubt, even more exhausting.Well, that's it for today.Make sure you come back on Thursday if that's when you get the full podcast.Follow and subscribe now so you never miss an episode.

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