Potential Challenges as Prime Minister

Subscribe to The Spectator and get twelve weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage, unrivalled books and arts reviews, and so much more. All for just twelve pounds. Not only that, but we'll also send you a twenty pounds Amazon gift card absolutely free. Go to www. spect ator.com forward slash voucher to claim this offer now Hello, welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Heal and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman, the Political Edge and the Spectator, and Yoshi Herriman, who writes for The Manchester Mill. Now Tim, you've written for this week's magazine where you've talked about who the real Andy Burnham is. Uh how did you get on? I went back and talked to a lot of the people who knew him when he was younger in Westminster to try and find out how much of the the Burnham kind of that we know, read about and see today is someone who was formed in Westminster or was formed in kind of pushing against Westminster. And I think the interesting thing to me was we've got this view of Burnham as this sort of slightly moany character who came to London, didn't enjoy himself very much, thought the establishment, Westminster, the game, was all a terrible thing, and then sort of went off to Manchester to find himself. A lot of the people who were special advisors, cabinet ministers with him at the time, remember a guy who was still quite focused on his family, where he'd come from, in the northwest, and didn't really kind of embrace that whole sort of Blairite Bright Young Things world that a lot of them kind of fell into. That generation of people, Ed Balls, James Pinnell, the Milibaum brothers, they all became this kind of, you know, bright young intellectual powerhouses. And I think to a degree Burnham always felt a little bit detached from that. He was part of that gang. They all played football together. Demonized, wasn't it? Yeah, they all played for the demonised football team. And I'm told that, you know, contra Andy Burnham's sort of self-image of this sort of working class lad, there were a couple of overseas trips, including one that involved them all donning black tie. It's a bit like that uh picture of David Cameron at Oxford, which he was trying to suppress ever after from the Bullingdon Club, trying to suppress it ever after. Well there's a there's a demonized black tie picture as well which I've seen that. Uh it's it's not as prevalent, but it's you know it's not been banned and I mean David Cameron literally got a friend to try and buy that picture up so nobody else could ever see it. That's not the case with Burnham. But even while he was part of that group, I think he was always sort of pushing against that kind of Westminster thing, the SW1 world, uh, the culture of the political game. And I think what people looking back say is that he was quicker to the politics of place than they were. He was quicker to understand that there was some virtue in going back to the regions. There's a great anecdote of from someone who was at a candidate sort of prep meeting in 2017. We're talking, you know, that first Corbyn election against Theresa May, the first one where they were going to have these elec ted mayors in Manchester and Liverpool. And you had a room full of fairly depressed Labour parliamentary candidates, and then there was Burnham and Steve Rotherham who went off to run Liverpool, who were sort of pigs in muck, you know, they were very happy to be there. They'd figured out that West the Westminster game was a bit rubbish and they were gonna go off and do their own thing in their cities, and that's worked out pretty well for both of those guys. Um and now it's put Burnham in a position where he can come back , perhaps do things differently in Westminster, but at least sort of take over, you know, bring the sort of uh the provincial Manchesterism virtues to London. But the challenge in doing all this is that I was talking to Westminster people, primarily, because those are the people I know and those were the memories I was sort of uh casting and I wrote what I hope was a fair balanced and interesting piece. But then along came this other piece. And it's fair to say my piece has not been the most read piece on Andy Burnham this week. That has been by our special guest today. Yeah, Yoshi. I mean, tell us about the man in Manchester. You've been covering him as a reporter. What's been the story of Burnham when he goes to Manchester? And just for the reader, this is Yoshi Herman from the Mill, which is this great Manchester Independent outlet. And it's a long read, it's a personal read, but it's a hugely insightful one. And when you finish watching this and listening to this you should definitely go and read every word of it because it is worth its weight in gold. Welcome Yoshi. Thank you very much guys thanks for having me. So tell us about the peace and um how Manchester and being the mayoralty of that region has changed uh Burnham. Yeah so when Burnham came to be mayor in 201 7, I don't think he was a particularly well-defined politician. He'd had two goes at the Labour leadership, neither of them were successful. He had sort of moved, I think, around on the political map a little bit, maybe not as much as people said, just as as Tim pointed out, but he wasn't a particularly well-defined guy. And I think he was probably looking for something, he was looking for a bit of direction. And I think what the Manchester, the greater Manchester Mayoralty has given Burnham is first and foremost space, right? In in Westminster politics, you get no space , you get no breathing room. You're constantly being boxed in by um you know live TV interviews, by briefings against you, by huge social media backlash. And I think what he's had in Greater Manchester is space to work out what is it that he likes doing? How do you communicate? I mean, I remember very well that moment in 2020 where he was giving this outdoor press conference. He's standing outside Bridgewater Hall in in the city centre of Manchester, and he's got the council leaders all around him. And then, you know, two people step forward to show them their phones. First of all, Kevin Lee, who is his longtime political advisor, you guys must know Kevin pretty well. And then about a minute later, Sir Richard Lee stepped forward. He's the leader of Manchester City Council, probably the man who has sort of uh developed the city or who has kind of um shaped the city more than anyone else along with his sidekick, Sir Howard Bernstein. And when Lees steps forward and shows Burnham his phone, it confirms that effectively bro talks have broken down over this sort of tier three negotiation that was going on at the time you remember the different tiers. And um Burnham is clearly kind of enraged by the settlement they've got. It's like 22 million pounds. It confirms that tier three restrictions are about to be dropped on the greater manchester. And there's something in that moment. I rewatched it on video when I was writing this piece. There's something so kind of instinctive about it, such a kind of emotional form of politics. He he grabs hold of the moment. He says, you know, the government's trying to grind us down. And I remember thinking at the time, like, wow, he's articulated the kind of anxiety that a lot of people in the city are feeling about the loss of control, the fact that we're being told to do things but we don't really know , you know, when this is gonna end, et cetera. There were lots of kind of freelancers, et cetera, who were working in the economy who weren't getting the the financial backing, et cetera. And I just think that was a key moment for Burnham. He he found his voice in a way that he hadn't in Westminster. And he found a way of doing politics which I think is very emotional. I think he's quite he's almost religious in the way he operates. He's kind of got this emotional politics I think it's quite unusual. And that moment kind of forged it. And from ever from then on, the skepticism about Burnham, the early skepticism had been Andy Burnham's a scouse there, which isn't quite true. That's a lot of what a lot of Manck said. He's using us to for his career. You know, a year after that speech, he wins a landslide in the 2021 mayoral election, the re-election. And from ever since then, he's just had this incredible personal mandate from the voters. You are the guy who represents us. I think it's quite a unique relationship he's got with voters. I'm not sure how that maps onto kind of national politics if he becomes prime minister, but I do think there are some real qualities to Burnham. We'll we'll probably also get on to the the to to the weaknesses. Yeah, and the other moment I think that you write about and certainly penetrated well outside the realm of Manchester was the aftermath of the the Ariana Grande attacker Manchester Arena. And he really kind of captured an emotional moment there for the city, I think, as well, didn't he? And I think there was a uh the synagogue attack more recently. He was about the only politician not being booed on the stand. He just seems to have that quite sort of intuitive ability to to get where people are coming from. Lucy Powell in my piece sort of said it was almost a Princess Diana moment, which is kind of probably not that helpful to attach to uh uh someone you're trying to to big up but it feels like as a sort of empathetic politician he's streets ahead of probably anybody apart from Boris Johnson in the last 10 years and in terms of the sort of warmth which he's held in probably outstrips Johnson as well. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean that there's a there's an anecdote in one of the old documentaries about New Labour. You'll probably be able to tell me which one. I think it might be the Andrew Rawnsley documentary from long ago, in which Tony Blair is speaking, is is asked to speak about Princess Diana, but you know, very soon after her death, and he's in his Sedgley constituency, I think. And he gives this speech where he says, you know, she was the the people's princess. And that becomes the phrase, you know, from the from the newspapers after that. And one of his advisors, I think it's m Tim Allen, you'll correct me if I'm wrong because you know you guys know this stuff, is in the kind of local, you know, in his local news agent, is Tim Allen. And Tim Allen says, you know, I watched the speech on the TV in the news agent and I thought that's way too soppy. It's way too emotional. He's gone way too far. And then Tim Allen says, oh, I looked up at the news agent and you know, tears in her eyes, or something like that. That these politicians who just have the ability to grab a moment. You know, a lot of people are good when they prepare, you know, prepare for months for something. The people who can grab a moment, who can just see a little opening, and that press conference in Manchester that Burnham did, he didn't know that he would get a moment like that. Um, and and and you could just see that something tweaked in him. And I think that kind of instinctive emotional leadership is something that people really like. And I think in an era in which we are questioning the authenticity of everything . It's harder to question the authentic authenticity of like real emotional kind of instinctive leadership. And therefore I think it's really attractive to people. It certainly worked really well for him. Um here. Josh, yeah, I would say I agree with you and, I'd say the Clinton classic example in ninety-two, I feel your pain. Definitely there's a point there about having that bond between the governed and the governing. But what about policy? Because it's one thing being a commons guy, it's one person improvising, but as we've seen perhaps with Boris Johnson as the he was good as a mayor in many ways, but maybe less so across the detail as Prime Minister. What's been Burnham's record on policy and who were the people who are advising him? Well I mean i it's hard to answer a question straight on policy when it comes to Manchester because the Greater Manchester mayoralty doesn't have a lot of hard powers. He is the figurehead of Greater Manchester, but in effect, his job is to chair a regular meeting of the ten coun cil leaders leaders of Greater Manchester, including Manchester, Salford, Stockport, et cetera, et cetera. And so he's supposed to be a kind of first among equals, but really you can only get things done if you get the consent of the council leaders to do things together. There are some areas where he's been able to do things on his own. For example, in the devolution settlement that was uh that was agreed before he got in, there was this idea that we could re-regulate the buses, but that that the Thatcherite sort of deregulation of the buses had been a disaster. There was actually a Manchester Evening News campaign about it in 2007-7 saying we have to fix this nightmarish bus situation. There had been prosecutions of people who ran bus companies. So 10 years before Burnham comes in, there's this big kind of row about the buses. He comes in and he has the ability to regulate them and he pushes it through. And there was a big legal battle with some of the bo bus operators. And and don't get me wrong, like this is not like a kind of like municipalised system. It's much more like a London system of franchising, right? But the point is that the fares and the routes are are chosen by the Transport for Greater Manchester Authority, which is under Burnham. So I think that's the big policy achievement. Now, I think the key thing with that one to recognize is it wasn't his idea. And actually, with in the early years, he was kind of teased and Josh by Sir Richard Lees, who I mentioned earlier, saying, like, the only reason you've got this job is because of the buses. We only agreed to have a directly elected mayor of Greater Manchester because of the buses. Nevertheless, he sells it very well, he pushes it through, and that's been a real achievement. And it's early days on the success of it, but it's very popular. Well, I guess what you might say about that policy there is it was technically difficult to push through because of all the legal cases and the and and and and all the proposals that had to be made, and there were various like like kind of asking the public what they thought, et cetera. But you would have to say politically, it's not particularly difficult to say to Manc Unions, um, you know, these bus companies that you don't like are going to get a bit less money and, you know we are going to be able to get your fares down. I mean that's not a politically difficult thing to do. I think where things have become politically difficult, like the clean air zone, which is a proposal to have a a kind of charging zone all over Greater Manchester, that caused a huge fuss, interestingly, in places like Makerfield and Stockport and places on the edge of Grace Manchester. And in that instance, uh Burnham back down. And so I think there's a question here about does Burnham have the kind of metal, that inner core to keep on pushing with policies that he believes in in the face of opposition. I think that's one of the question question marks about Burnham. And then also, I mean I guess the question is how much of this is his idea, how much of it is him pushing it through I mean Andrew Gilligan in our magazine who was Boris Johnson's uh transport advisor at the time will claim well Boris Johnson gave him the powers to do that and I helped shove those through as well at me, Andrew Gilligan. In essence, they were giving Burnham the weapons. Now, the the the creed he's kind of adapted in recent months is this idea of Manchesterism, which is kind of vague. To a degree, as you've already alluded, a lot of the benefits of that, what you might determine to be Manchesterism, which is basically a renovation of a city, and a lot of actually private investment that's gone in to the city centre is down to Richard Lees, down to Howard Bernstein, the former chief executive. Now that's not a bad thing as a leader. That's not really something I'm necessarily criticising. But to sort of claim it's all Burnham is not correct. That's right, isn't it? It's uh he's sort of almost the figurehead for something that was already happening. He's maybe given it extra wings, and that's no bad thing as a leader . I think the skills we've already identified. Um blessed that we had a leader who had those skills, because we certainly haven't had one, uh certainly not since 2022, and and and arguably for longer. Yeah, I mean I I agree that that it's not a criticism in itself to say that you are improving and and building on someone else's legacy. You look you could make an argument that there is a burnamism. I think it's a very difficult to define political programme, but I think you could argue that like there's a kind of the place-based stuff, the devolution stuff, the ability to communicate it in a non-partisan way. You could maybe argue there is a burnamism. I think you have to look quite hard with a microscope to find it. What I don't think you can argue is that there is a Manchesterism as embodied by Andy Burnham, right? I mean Andy Burnham does not really embody the kind of economic tough choices that Manchester had to make to achieve the current success. So when an interviewer comes up to to Manchester and says, Andy, what's Burnhamism or what's Manchesterism? And then he walks them out of the door like he did with the BBC and shows them that, you know, the the skyscrapers on the horizon and says, look at these amazing build ings. That didn't come from his kind of politics. The kind of politics that he's trying to articulate at the moment since that New Statesman interview last year and in recent interviews is more of a kind of soft-left sort of municipal social ism, or I think like business friendly socialism, he said in one interview last week. That's not really what made Manchester successful. I mean, Manchester made incredibly long-term choices a long time ago in the early 2000s, Howard Bernstein, Richard Lees, lots of people around them. It stuck to them for a long time. But crucially, it was willing to make incredibly pragmatic choices with it with that frankly get a lot of criticism from the left in particular, like effectively giving away public land. Developer comes in and wants to spend 50 million, 100 million, even if they're from the Gulf, even if they don't have the bona fides that you might want as a labor politician, you let them in and you make them build. I mean Manchester has just been getting the the roadblocks out of the way to build things. And frankly that's not really Burnham. I mean Burnham has always been more interested in the peripheries of Greater Manchester rather than the kind of centre of it. He according to advisors I've spoken to, he in meetings, he didn't have a particular interest in these hard kind of investment choices. And if you look at an interview he gave last week, I think to the M E N as like a long um YouTube version of it . He talks about Manchesterism and then he says he wants he's got um objections to some housing schemes that are going ahead in the Makerfield constituency and he'd like to have more house you know housing in the kind of denser kind of towns rather than in the suburbs. I mean anything that's like anti-housing or anything that's saying we should you know be concerned about a particular housing development, that's not Manchester If you could build an argument that there is a Manchesterism that you could try and promote in other cities. I think there's definitely an argument for that. Andy Burnham wouldn't be the wouldn't be the right person to kind of embody that or to lead that because he has a different value set and I think a different set of ideas. And you the other point you make brilliantly in this piece, the most quoted part of this uh uh of this piece you wrote, Yoshi, um I mean asking Andy Burnham what his creed is is almost not the point. I mean you made this famous reference to your cat. Um just uh for those who've not had the benefit of reading this, just tell our tell our viewers what it's like and and a little reflect a little bit on your own interactions with it. Yeah, I think I think the it was a I was rushing to deadline and I was trying to bang out the last sort of bit of the piece and I must have been a slightly delirious state because I wrote that um you know expecting Andy Burnham to delineate a sort of cogent political programme is like asking my cat who was you know came from a shelter near the Esteh Stadium whether she supports Man City. Because like on the face of it, the question makes sense. Andy Burnham, what's your program? My cat, does she support Man City? But it really doesn't. And like she wouldn't understand the question. Like it does it doesn't make no sense to her life. And I don't think it makes very much sense in the context of Andy Bernon to be like, what's your program? I don't think he's a program-led guy. I don't think he's an Ed Miliband. I don't think he spent years building up an intellectual kind of, you know, hinterland. I don't think he has lots of kind of policy people in his life who who are constantly feeding him. I don't think it's what he would ever talk about. You know, you'd go go down the pub and I bet Ed Miliband would be talking about policy. Andy Burnham absolutely wouldn't. He'd be talking about the Premier League results or be talking about you know totally different stuff. And it's still a Manchester band, probably as well. That's the obvious thing he'd be talking. We're talking about some guitar band that you've never heard of and an album that you know did terribly in the charts. I think that like it doesn't really make sense to go on this wild goose chase to try and understand like Burnham ism or Manchesterism, because I don't think that's what he's about. I think he's an instinctive politician. I think where he where I kind of see him at his best would be like, you know, there was an issue a few years ago about disabled people not being able to catch um trains from certain stations because of the lack of access to platforms. An issue no politician, frontline politician particularly talks about, but he talks about it. And he kept on banging on about it. Then he talks about the access to kind of ticket offices and stations. I think he's like he's a listener. I spoke to Diane Coyle, Diamond Diane Coyle, who's a great economist at Cambridge and who has been involved in the Greater Manchester Project, particularly in the early days, on the kind of policy side. And she was saying it's rare to meet a politician who listens as well as him. So I think he kind of listens. He has this radio show every week, which is less about scrutiny than I think he listens. I think he great at having conversations. I don't think he shies away from normal people and chatting to them. And therefore I think he picks up on little things and he acts on them. And sometimes that can have the downside of like trying to do too many things at once. But I think that's what he's about, the idea that he's got some sort of Milibandite programme that will be satisfyingly served up to you guys in the in the Westminster press. I think people are likely to be very disappointed if that's what they think they're getting. Yoshi, what do you think he would be like as Prime Minister? Well, I said in my piece that that question like reminds me of the thing in Succession where you know Logan Roy is asked by his son Kendall, you know, could I have done the top job? And and and Logan Roy says, you know, you're a good guy, but you're not a killer, you know, and and you have to be a killer. I think that is the thing that always comes to mind. Like, I think that Andy Burnham would articulate a set of labor values in office much better than has been done recently. I think he would connect with voters better. I think people would probably see an authenticity in him that they've struggled to see in Kirst Arma, rightly or wrongly. But I think that you have to be this kind of character who has is so sure about what they want to do that they will carry on doing it even on under incredible scrutiny, criticism, social media barrage, in the today program pushing you around. The unions come in one day and they say they don't like this. The hedge fund people come in the next day and say they don't like this. And I think Andy Burnham, when the unions and the hedge fund people come in, wants to say, Yeah, I love what you're saying and I'm gonna try and figure it out, because he'll genuinely be energized by a great proposal they brought in. I think probably as Prime Minister, you need someone who says, I am on this course and I'm gonna stick on this course because I really believe in it. We've seen under the Slama government that you know, too many U-turns and your your authority just drains away. And my fear with Burnham is that he wouldn't have the killer instinct and the ruthlessness and he would not surround himself with the tough people that you need. And therefore, that it could get quite messy. And I think the only way that he could really surprise us on that front is by going against how he's operated so far and put people around him who question him, who ask tough questions, who prepare the ground, who do all of the stuff that makes policy like really durable. I'm not sure that's kind of been his record in Manchester, but to ha to ha to survive more than a couple of years in number ten, I think he would need to do that if he goes back down to to Westminster. Do you see signs that he might be beginning to do that? I mean we've seen already, you know, it wasn't that long ago that he was saying why on earth do we have to listen to the bond markets? He's already said I'd stick to the fiscal rules. He was saying not that long ago I'd love to rejoin the European Union and now he's saying I'm not proposing to rejoin the European Union. We've seen um uh trans issues. Trans issues. He was effectively saying self-ID is fine. Uh people trying to get him to uh change his position on that. Some of the people who've come in and have started to surround him, I think they wanted him to run in a reform -facing seat rather than in Gorton and Denton, because I think they thought that would make him more nationally sort of ready to deal with the issues that he's going to be confronted with as Prime Minister. We've already seen on migration, he's said, you know, we'll stick with the Shibana Mamu plans, which he was publicly slagging off only a few weeks ago. Now you can see that on the one hand as someone who doesn't have a particularly strongly developed creed and perhaps blew one way and is now blowing the other. But you could also see that as some people beginning to say, look, we like the idea of Burnham as the figurehead for all the reasons that you've said, but we can't trust him to do the judgment. Now, on the one hand, I can see why they might conclude that's better than Keir Starmer, because at least then you're getting the charismatic, empathetic front man uh to add to to something. But half of this is exactly the problem that we had with Keirstarmer was that, you know, under fire you need some kind of certainty in yourself much more than uh necessarily just relying on the people around you. Do you sense that that there's an effort to sort of put a different cadre of people around him? Kevin Lee, we talked about, with been him for years, but you know, he's not someone who's done anything other than be Andy Burnham's sort of right-hand man. He's not perceived in the Labour Party as a big sort of heavy hitter who could go in and be chief of staff in Downing Street, I don't think. Um my understanding is he's already putting calls into other people about that particular role. But is that a process of evolution or are we just really exposing all the stuff that you've you've talked about that and the caricature that he he just moves with the passing weather? Yeah, I think the caricature that he moves with the passing weather is a little bit unfair. Yeah. Because I think it's more like he's in a role where he doesn't have that many hard powers at the moment and therefore he can pick up little issues and he doesn't have to decide on them but, he can kind of campaign to make them better, like homelessness or like the thing with the stations. Like it's like he g he can, you know, bump people together to get the decision made. I don't think he's a kind of weather vane entirely. I don't think he's a kind of chameleon or anything like that. But I think he's someone who doesn't have incredibly strong convictions about one way of doing things. And therefore I think this like municipal leadership role, I almost like referred to it as like kind of like the the the great American mayors of the past or almost pastors, you know, like people who can like be vessels for people's kind of hopes and dreams, etc. I think that suits him better maybe than the real cotton throst of Westminster. I could be wrong about that, but I think if you look at this campaign so far, he looks a little bit lost. I don't know what you guys think, but in some of these interviews, he he'll say something about Manchesterism and then he'll be asked, What is that? And then he'll say something about buses. And then once he has to try and then move the creed from buses onto energy or into trains, it all gets a little bit loosey-goosey. What's what do you mean? Are we talking nationalisation? No, public control. Okay, what does that mean? Because we've already kind of got big public control of trains. How are you going to make them better? It doesn't, again, it just doesn't strike me as a guy who has thought these things through to the level that you need to to put together a national program. Could he have much better people around him? I think he could, but I think in my piece I identi I identify a potential problem with that, which is that Burnham has tended to gather people around him who are like him. They're boosters, they're positive, they're wordsmiths, they're raconteurs, they they they they they like having a pint with him. He hasn't tended to have hard, tough individuals. There was one individual, Amon Boylan, who ran the GMCA. He was a really impressive kind of operator. He unfortunately died um recently, unexpectedly. But I you know, Burnham doesn't have a great tracker record of putting those people behind him. Is that because of his personality? Is that because he kind of um he needs affirmation more than some politicians? He has a slightly vulnerable sort of sense of pride. He kind of needs people. This sounds to me, this is someone describing Boris Johnson to me . Yeah. With the exception of that brief period where Dominic Cummings was able to sort of push through Brexit. The idea that Johnson, you know, was unable to put a team together, the idea that you know he wanted to to be loved rather than respected, it feels very reminiscent, James, doesn't it, of that kind of vibe that that surrounded Boris. And you know, he got to Whitehall and it it didn't quite work as everyone had hoped. Have you had much feedback from this piece, Yoshi? Um have Burnham's people been on to you complaining about the cats? Have they been saying this is all unfair? Have they been saying actually what about this or that? Or have you had more people getting in touch saying you've got you've captured him to a T here? I've spoken to a couple of people this morning who've worked with him and who thought that I captu red him fairly and and and and that I got to the heart of things right. So I feel like my analysis is probably right. I think that the the the the cat uh the cat thing probably wouldn't be appreciated by the the the Burnham camp. I've actually tried to have a policy of not becoming close to political leaders up here in the sense of texting them, etc. You know, people have said, like, has he texted or whatever? I I've never tried to get Andy Burnham's number, I've never gone for a pint with him or whatever. I probably wouldn't have been able to write that piece if I had, because I I would have felt bad about comparing him to my cat or whatever. But I I think that the Boris thing is interesting, isn't it? I remember on the first day that Boris um went into number 10. You remember they're all the advisors outside number 10 who were all his kind of staff and they were all um corralled outside. And I remember the TV commentary at the time, people said as a mayor, he really like delegated a lot of the responsibilities to other people and that's what he'll do as Prime Minister. There was this guy Eddie Lister, there are all the all these characters who were gonna who were gonna make it successful because Boris didn't quite have the executive skills. It's always gonna be the chairman of the board. We're always told the Prime Minister will be the chairman of the board and the Chief of Staff will be the Chief Executive and all the ministers will be the It never works like that in Westminster. You've got to be the Chief Executive, otherwise you're not functionally the Prime Minister. I think you I think you guys probably know much more about that than I do, but I it that definitely feels to me like the the the sense that you've got to have someone at the m at the mi at the middle who's got really strong convictions and who has incredible self confidence as well. I think Burnham has wonderful qualities. I actually think some of the dismissive talk about him in West minster is unfair and is actually quite reductive. I think he's a tremendously talented politician. I think he's a bit of a once-in-a-generation communicator. And I think that emotional thing we talked about earlier is a phenomenal strength. But I think he would need to have an incredible team around him for it not to become quite messy, for the backbenches not to start getting big things off him for different lobby groups to walk out of Downing Street, not thinking that they've just won some big, you know, some some big prize from him. I think that's the concern. I've I've been covering him for these six years, and I think he I think he really wants people to like him and I think he really wants affirmation and I think he's got this whole incessant thing about the West with the ways of Westminster. I think he feels very hurt by the rejection from losing to leadership elections , particularly the second one in 2015, which I think he really thought um he would win. And I think that mix means that he really wants to have people around him who say, you know, you're doing great. And I think what he really needs