Future Leadership and Cabinet Speculation

It's gearing up to be the by-election of all by-elections and the stakes for Labour could not be higher. Welcome to Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. We've now got a date for the Makerfield by election. It's June the 18th. And Andy Berner is facing a brutal contest in what is one of reform's fastest growing battlegrounds. If he wins, Labour could be looking at their next PM , and if he loses, all bets are off . With me to discuss it all is George Parker, our political editor, hi George. Hi Lucy. And Robert Shrimsley, Chief Political Commentator. Hi Robert. Hello, Lucy. And down the line from Manchester is Jem Williams, our Northern Correspondent. Hi Lucy . In a moment, more on the economic platforms and policies of those vying for the Labour leadership and the Chancellorship. But first, let's just talk about what we know regarding the Makerfield by-election. Jen, you live in Manchester, you've been out on the ground in Makerfield . Tell us a bit more about what you're picking up on the ground. The day after it emerged that Josh Symonds, who is the assisting MP, was going to stand down effectively to provide Andy Burnham with a path to number ten, hopefully from his point of view. I went to the town of Ashton and Makerfield, which is one of the kind of main towns in the constituency. And I think what was really striking about it, I I'm sure you've all done violation vo vox bots before where you kind of come away thinking, I'm not really quite sure what that mood was. Like certainly during Gorton and Denton, it was um it was it was really quite hard to gauge, which was then borne out in the result, let's be honest. I mean, the vibe was very strongly, we like Andy Burnham. And and um what really struck me actually was driving back later, Pussy Won the World at World. And I think all of the uh Vox Pop clips that they played were people saying like, yeah, absolutely I would uh I would vote Andy Burnham. There was some journalists there who hadn't found anybody that wouldn't vote Andy Burnham. So while I'm not saying that that is a prediction and there's an entire campaign to go uh right. Um it I I don't think I've ever done a one like that before where I've come away with that impression uh at first sight. And obviously things could change, but but that was definitely the vibe a week ago. Robert, it it's been called high risk, high reward um option for Burnham, high risk because it does seem like reform have a foothold there, despite um gem finding on the ground there is this real personal vote um for Burnham and obviously high reward because if Burnham can win there, you know, he can show that he can beat reform and can build on that to try and take the Labour Party back to a competitive place against Nigel Farage's party before the general election. What's your sense of Burnham's campaign so far? He's not exactly being subtle, is he? He's had a campaign video that isn't just pitching to the local voters, it's pitching to the country. Yeah, I mean I th I think there are a couple of points. I I mean I think the campaign, it's very simple, it's I'm Andy, fly me. I mean it this I don't think there's any more to it. And I don't think that I mean I would defer to Jen, who's there a an awful lot more. But it seems to me that it's entirely I'm a good guy, you like me, I'll get rid of Kirstarmer, I'll change the Labour Party. I I've been great in Manchester, haven't I vote for me? And if you can carry that off, that's the best campaign to run, frankly, you know, very few hostages to fortune. If I was him, I would try and say as little as possible on policy, not least because every time he does, he seems to run into trouble. I mean the the um a man who was very vocal about Brexit a while back called it one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse that broke Britain. Now sort of saying, Well, you know, I um I'm not talking about rejoin any time soon. It was a long term thing, you know, it's don't mention that. That doesn't work in my leave voting constituents. Thorsem of the Apocalypse And um and uh that you know that that's how bad things have been Britain. You can't even get four horsemen anymore. We used to have four horsemen of our apocalypse, now we've only got three. I noticed him sort of saying, actually, I I I'm gonna stick with Shaban and Mahmood's um immigration reforms, which is not the prevailing mood in the parliamentary party. So you can see already how the the Makerfield effect it sounds like a Robert Ludwig thriller, doesn't it? But the the Makerfield effect imposing itself on Andy Burnham, which is interesting in two ways. Firstly for the way the campaign will play out, but also because it will impact on him as a national figure where he to win because suddenly he's confronting the very compromises and difficulties um that Keir Star mer has had to wrestle with for two years and he fundamentally hasn't. George you picked up um the very important remark Berner made committing to the Labour Manifesto uh in twenty twenty four. Is there a risk here that Burnham is going to disappoint the Parliamentary Labour Party and perhaps the wider country if he can't create enough wiggle room for himself to do things differently from Kirst Starmer? Or do you think it was just inevitable he'd have to agree to the red lines on Europe, to the red lines on not raising the three main taxes and so forth? Well I agree with Robert. You w if you're running a campaign like that, you want to avoid showing too much ankle on policy and being tripped up on policy. So he's gradually got there over a number of days. So initially he was advised you've got to say something about sticking to the fiscal rules, otherwise the bond markets are going to be delivering a verdict on you in real time, as indeed they were. Borrowing costs for the government were going up ever since Andy Burnham said he was going to be standing. So he committed to sticking to the government's fiscal rules. And then people started saying, well, hang on a sec, if you're going to stick to the fiscal rules, where are you going to get the money from? If you're not borrowing it, you'll have to put up taxes. What taxes are you putting up? And then he wavered a bit on whether he was committing not to put up the three big taxes: the income tax, national insurance, and VAT, which are prohibited within the Labour Manifesto. Then twenty-four hours later, I said to a sp spokeswoman, Is he committing to the Labour Manifesto or not? And she said, Andy is committed to the twenty twenty four Manifesto. Then I said By the end of his campaign he'll be supporting Lostnell and a human rights lawyer Exactly. The rejoining the EU thing that's gone, the backing the immigration policy. So in the end, you end up with a danger that he sounds a bit like uh Keir Starmer in policy terms, albeit someone who might be able to to communicate it in a better way. And I don't think we shouldn't underestimate all of that. There is another option, of course, is which he says nothing and tries to close everything down, and then when he becomes Prime Minister, he does what Keir Starmer did when he ran for Labour Leader, made a load of promises and ditched them immediately and did something different. I think it's a bit different if you're actually the Prime Minister claiming to have a mandate dating back to the 2024 manifesto. If you start deviating too much from the manifesto, people will say, hang on a sec, you've got no personal mandate, you've not no mandate to do all this stuff. If you think you want to do it, have an election. Just to add, I think if you read the um the comments that Andy Burnham makes, and this is kind of just generally typical of the way that he goes about politics anyway, but but particularly the case at the moment. Very often his comments send out a certain vibe, but actually, if you read them carefully, they're not really committing quite as hard as some of the write-up sometimes implies. So for example, you know, it was it s'orts of widely repor ted that he was going to nationalise things, you know, utilities, water, etc. He didn't nationalise things. He said that he was going to put them under stronger public control. Well, I mean there was an argument to say that the government's already doing that, right? Equally, he's talking about reindustrialisation, but he's not said what that means. To the extent that he has said what it means, he points to the fact Greater Manchester has got a local industrial strategy. Well the government published an industrial strategy last summer. So it seems to me, and certainly on some things, he's putting some quite heavy left-wing topspin on things that are actually potentially reconcilable with the existing manifesto. There were one or two examples where you look at it and think, I just don't see how that ha adds up. Such are some of the things he said on council house building. Can't really see how that can be reconciled without ditching your 1.5 million house building target or somehow finding some more money from somewhere. But I think he often leaves himself quite a lot of wriggle room in what he says. And then sort of further down the line, you know, we'll see where he ends up. Jen sort alludes to an interesting point about this government is that actually this is quite a left-wing government that doesn't really want to admit that it's quite a left-wing government and and conducts its work itself almost embarrassed by that fact and constantly how how can we soften the blow of the employment's right package or whatever it is. One thing Andy Burnout, I think, would be different about, is actually he would be a bit more unapologetic about this. So this is actually what we're doing and it's good. I mean I think one of the things that's been very flawed about this government is that it's doing things it doesn't want to admit to doing or is sheepish about because it seems to conflict with other parts of its strategy. And therefore it's disappointing everyone. I think the one thing Andy Burnham would be better at is standing up making the case for those left leaning policies that he's enacting. But George so far, um he hasn't been highlighting any of the achievements uh of the Starmer administration or suggesting that he's gonna try and build on those. He's been trashing them, hasn't he? Saying, you know, he wants to reverse forty years of decline and neoliberalism, reverse privatization, austerity and deregulation. He's being very, very blatant about that, isn't he? Yeah, he is. But I think as Jenny Roberts suggested, it it's criticising the government on a vibe basis rather than actually on necessarily on specific policies. So I think the problem with Andy Burnham is he makes quite sweeping pronouncements about the ills facing the country, the forty years of neoliberalism and the need to introduce business-friendly socialism, as he calls it. But then you say, well, what do you actually mean by that? And when you start asking him what he means, he starts retreating, or you look behind the the detail of it and it doesn't really amount to very much. So I think that's the danger that you know, Robert's written a column uh today about whether Andy Burnham is or isn't the Messiah. I think the danger for him in the course of the next four weeks running up to make field by election is that people will look a bit more closely at what he's saying in detail and wonder whether he actually is the change maker that he claims to be. I do think one thing that's interesting about his business of you know denouncing the last forty years of neoliberalism, particularly Thatcherism, is that there is a brand of nostalgia in Andy Burnham's approach to politics. He's things were better when the council ran the housing and the council ran social care and before austerity and when, you know, we we controlled the nationalists there's a nostalgia there. And I think what's interesting about it is he's up against another party which is trading in nostalg ia with reformers. Actually, what they're sort of saying is we've got two different versions of old Britain for you. Um and which one do you like more? Now those of us who were alive long enough to remember Britain before Thatcherism , um , maybe find that that appeal less attractive. But for those who don't remember what it was like when the indust when most of our industries were privatized, um Do you home up by candlelight, Robert? Well yes. And you know, and and when the trade unions were really rampant, um that that's n not such a lovable agenda. That's a common theme in populism in general, isn't it? To look back and sort of say, Do you remember that back then? And people are like, W wellell, yeah, roughly I remember being young. I liked being young. But also there was um Janan Ganesh wrote a great column about this, about people having a sort of greatest hits of the past that they took bits from you know the the brick pop era of the nineties and I don't know the sort of the um the swinging sixties chuck it all together into a sort of amalgam of what Britain used to be like, but it never really was. I think that um you know it's it's been interesting listening to him pitch I think on Monday when he gave his speech where he was talking about rolling back forty years of neoliberalism we actually said fifty years and then changed it's forty years of neoliberalism. Um I think actually in that speech he was talking both to the voters in Makefield and there was a lot of very specific niche th ings about Makerfield in that speech uh at an investment summit where you've got the CEO of Network sitting in the audience and the head of the CBI and he was talking about a rubbish tip in Bakershaw and that was kind of quite strange. But you know, that was pitched at Makerfield. But I also think quite a lot of what he was saying was pitched at the membership and um possibly also at kind of the council level composition as well. There was a lot about local authorities, a lot about how badly they'd been done by. And a lot um uh a lot of that Thatcher stuff is is stuff that is felt very, very deeply within the Labour Party in this part of the country. And I think at that point he'd not actually been selected. So you can sort of see him shifting around what he's saying according to his audience. My feeling is that none of that will probably do him an awful lot of harm in the by-election, but it could catch up with him if he ends up in number 1 Robert for for listeners that aren't that familiar with Burnham beyond his current role as Manchester Mayor, give us a short pen portrait of his uh roles in government and his record to date. I can't remember them all. I mean I f I say I first met him as a very fresh-faced um special advisor at the Department of Culture, I think working for um Chris Smith. This is quite early in the Blair government. You know, he has sort of floppy hair. I have this sense of a center politic. I could be wrong on the phone. He looked like he'd stepped out of four weddings and a funeral. And he followed the path that um several of them did, you know, the the Ed Millerbands, David Millerbands, they were all special advisors, Ed Bulls, that Cooper, they were all of a crowd. And he followed that path into into parliament, worked his way up the the governing track. He was um He was in charge of the um ill-fated sex. That's right. So you know he had quite a long-running government. Labour lose office. He runs for the leadership. The first time as a bit of an outside candidate, doesn't get it when Ed Miliband does. Second time, in 201 5, he runs again and actually starts as the sort of putative favorite. He's sort of a bit more left-wing by that stage, but he's not as left-wing as Jeremy Corbyn, but he's definitely more left-wing than Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper, and he looks like the right part. And in fact, some of his people helped Jeremy Corbyn get into this contest because they thought it would be useful for him to have a contrast against the hard left. And whoops, you know, Jeremy Corbyn one which points to a couple of problems he's had in his group. One of which is he's never been especially good at the the grubby backroom arts of politics, which is terribly appealing in a way if if you don't like that kind of thing. But on the other hand , it's the job. And he's never been good at running a machine, getting it operating so that he can get his results. And you saw that even to the extent when he was blocked in the Gorton by election by Keir Starmer. He didn't have the people. And the operation to get him going. But so anyway, after a couple of years with Corbyn, he realizes this isn't for him and he goes off and becomes the Manchester mayor, in which he has hugely recreated himself. I mean, a lot of people thought, well, we won't probably see him back in Westminster. But he recreates himself. And I think probably the defining moment, Jem will have a stronger view on this, was during the pandemic, when he's out in front of the his office raging against how London is imposing controls on Manchester, the London isn't facing himself, and I think that won him a lot of appeal and credibility within the region . George, I was speaking to Labour and P um earlier today who thought that he was likely to unc come unstuck during this campaign as more Well I mean there is a joke and you only have to say that there is a joke and everyone knows what the joke is, but for the benefit of some of the listeners who hopefully haven't come across this joke is the joke is that a a Brownite, a Blairite and a Corbinite go into a bar and the barman says, What are you having, Andy? And so that's the sort of joke. Does he have any fixed principles? And certainly Robert and I, when we first met him back in the nineties when he was a special advisor, you'd have him down to basically a Blairite, possibly a Brownite . And I think the problem is that he, you know, if he arrives in number ten, he doesn't have that sort of body of intellectual work that you know I think we've talked about before on the podcast that successful Prime Ministers in the past have had to be able to lean on Margaret Thatcher most memorably of course, had a big programme sort ofady re to go. Um, George Osborne and Cameron, they had sort of a plan ready to go as well when they came in. Having a plan is always useful. And you sort of, you know, I think we've both sort of been looking through, haven't we, Robert? And Jenna knows has as well, some of the things that his people around him have written. And you put that hold it up to scrutiny and think it's not quite that as solid as you would like. However, the one thing I finally say, this is a sort of anecdotal thing, but I found myself playing football with both Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer on separate oc casions. And their playing style is illustrates the different sort of political style, I guess. Starmer is what you call in football parlance the number six. Solid, defensive, hard tackling, a bit boring to be honest . Burnham, centre forward, sort of buccaneering style, uh much much easier on the eye. And I think that sort of sort of gets the heart of them really. They've this their style. And you know, in this era, it may be that style will be enough to get him over the line. I think there's one other tiny interesting thing about Andy Burnham, which is that if he were to become Prime Minister, aside from the just under three years that we had Gordon Brown , Labour Party has been run from London, essentially, since nineteen ninety-five. I mean people who were steeped in London, Blair steeped in London, you know, Jeremy Corbyn, Ed Miliband, Keir Starmer, uh in fact most of them from very small parts of London. And and their coterie is is often London people. Were he to become Prime Minister, he would be a very much a northern Prime Minister, surrounded by a lot of, you know, his allies are often Northern MPs, Lucy Powell, Louise Hay, something says Angela Rayner, I guess. It will have a different feel, the pot of a different feel and you know, it is a vibe, leadership it to some extent. But they will approach politics, I think, slightly differently, for not being steeped in London in the same way. And I don't know that that's a disadvantage. Really interesting point. George's point about coming in without a body of intellectual work. I think that's sort of what he's trying he's trying to fill that space with this Manchesterism idea, isn't he? Because actually, the project in Greater Manchester, the kind of economic story over a long period of time, is very much grounded in intellectual thinking. I mean, it has been very coherently thought through and followed through over many years. And I think, you know, actually what he's done over the last year quite often is when he's been giving policy speeches as Grace Manchester Mayor, not written by some political advisor because he doesn't have that army of people around him, that speech will then kind of double up as a shop window to the parliamentary Labour Party or to the membership where we're saying, like, hey, look, you know, this is a blueprint for other things. I think that there's two problems with that. One is that there's a question about how translatable what's been done in Greater Manchester is to other areas, because the more I have covered other parts of the north, the more I've realized kind of how unusual Greater Manchester actually is. It takes a very long time to put those kind of building blocks in So he's arguing essentially that a kind of culture of collaboration over a long period of time in Greater Manchester, the ability for lots of different parts across the political spectrum to work together on the same page, to pull in the same direction, to make trade-offs, to be long-term and strategic, which obviously is something that could be sort of translated elsewhere, but there was something about the political culture and the strength of the leadership over a long period of time in Greater Manchester, underpinned by a pretty coherent economic geography, underpinned by certain decisions that were made a long time ago, for example, taking the airport into Munici pal ownership. There were lots of ingredients in the mix there that you can't immediately pick up and put down somewhere else. Like some of the principles you absolutely can. Some of the others you can't translate easily to another place and you and and potentially not to the country as a whole. But I think the bigger problem with it is that he's using Greater Manchester's kind of economic journey as the basis of his pitch to the left of the party. And he says that Greater Manchester not only does not believe in trickle-down economics, if you read the latest Greater Manchester strategy, it says it's never believed in trickle-down economics, which is just simply not true if you look at the way that it has gone about reviving its central economy. And it didn't do it by reindustrializing itself. It actually what it did after the 1980s was pivot towards a knowledge economy and grow its professional services sectors. So it's not wrong to say that there is an intellectual underpinning for the Greater Manchester project. I would just suggest that it isn't actually the basis of what he's saying to the party. And it that then makes me wonder exactly what the underlying sort of coherence strand of thing And people also say that you know he didn't come up with this, it harks back to Howard Bernstein, a former Manchester local authority chief, don't they? Um in the meantime, uh Robert, this is all incredibly awkward for Kirst Starmer, who remains the Prime Minister for the time being. He's also got to head to uh a series of international summits this summer, the G seven in France, N aATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, and potentially an EU summit, although a date for that is not set, all the briefing is that it's not going to be particularly significant given all the turmoil in the domestic uh picture in the UK. Um what's his best option now? Yeah. I mean look the good news is that um the leaders of these other organizations have had plenty of experience of lamed up British Prime Ministers of late, so they'll know how to handle him. Um what's his option? His option is to wait it out. Just get on with it as best he can. Try to maintain as much of his dignity as he can. We've got a month of essentially frozen politics. Um, you get on with pushing out the policies you're doing, trying to make yourself look competent. Because the one thing that remains up in the air is that Andy Burnham might lose this election. And then we're in an all bets off situation. Andy Burnham might lose it. Where Streeting has damaged himself probably in the eyes of the party. I don't think it's the last couple of weeks have worked well for him. So he's probably weaker. So then the party's got to decide do we want Angela Rain and Red Miller Manus B?urnham By the way, if Andy Burnham does lose, that's a huge shock because that's the champion. You know, that's sort of Hector at the gates of Troy has been g been been taken down. So, you know, that's a huge shock for the party. It doesn't really have a good plan B. And I think at that point Staller might begin to look at this and think, you know what, maybe Wes will challenge me and maybe I can take him on, or maybe I can just push all this thing back till next year and see what happens. So I think his whole strategy, his only strategy, um is temporizing, getting on with it as best he can, looking as dignified as he can, and just waiting to see if if things play out differently. Jim people are saying this is the most consequential by election of all time , because it does feel like there is this juggernaut in motion. If Burnham wins, many Labour MPs believe he'll be an unstoppable force to become Prime Minister. And if he loses, there is this sense that Labour will be plunged so much further into despair and the question of how the party can turn round its fortunes and become competitive against reform um will remain very much unanswered. Yeah I mean I think after the local elections, the Labour Party, I think, essentially collectively concluded that they just could not go on like this. And if they did go on like this with their current leader, then, you know, potentially they might cease to exist as an electoral force. So yes, I mean it's hugely consequential and and it is unusual in being consequential, you know, just as a by election. You know, normally the the by election happens and the person trundles off down to Westminster and life carries on. That won't be the case with this. And I think, you know, if he does win that by-election , I find it hard to see him going down there and not being welcomed as a conquering hero because he would be the guy that would have beaten reform and, that that is the thing they're probably most terrified of, is a reform victory in 2029 and the kind of the close to extinction of the Labour Party. Let's talk briefly about the uh reform candidate, Jen. Uhot anher plumber after uh the winning green candidate in Gorton and Denton by election uh earlier this year was a plumber. Tell us a little bit more about him. He's local. He ran for the party in the 2024 general election uh in Makefield . I think on this occasion, you know, what reform have done is tried not to repeat what they did in Gorton and Denton, where I think they picked somebody who was sort of better known in Westminster than he was on the streets of Gorton and Denton. I and they tried to go for somebody who's less controversial, although I think already various previous social media things have been dug up about in possible kind of questionable previous associations. Reform do so far seem to be kind of trying to keep him away from the national media and only holding press events that are for for local press. So, you know, we'll see whether any more um uh comes out about him. And I think the other thing to mention is that the Green Party candidate has very suddenly and quickly also stood back from contesting the seat as well. So it's not clear what the Greens are going to be doing. Robert, just a just another quick thought on Robert Kenyon, the reform candidate. He's very much making this argument that he's the local guy there for the community. Andy Burnham is using Makerfield as a stepping stone. Do the voters of Makerfield will they care about Burnham using that? Or would will they quite like the idea of potentially having a prime minister as their Well I haven't been up there yet to give you a really reasoned answer, but my own instinct on this one is that you're not going to be able to get away with portraying Andy Burnham as a carpetbagger in this constituency. It's not going to work. Even the stepping stone argument is I I think too nuanced because frankly, quite a lot of people will quite like the idea of having a prime minister in their constituency. It it means it'll get some money, probably. Um so I I think that's the wrong approach for reform. I think they're better off with a same old Labour, don't fall for it, and pushing on the issues that they feel strong on, be it immigration, Brexit, whatever. George, uh what about Rachel Reeves? Uh this week we've had um this rather extraordinary announcement of summer freebies. Um take us through quickly what this three hundred million pound package involves Well I mean this is all about Rachel Reeves staying in the game in exactly the same way Robert's just been describing Keir Starmer and West Streeting trying to stay in the game until we find out what happens on june the eighteenth. And Rachel Reeves, her supporters say, believes that she has a future in the Treasury, even if there's a change of leader. Some people would raise their eyebrows about that, but some people do. And so she has two strands of her economic approach that she set out this week. One is that she thinks the sub-fundamentals of the British economy are strong. We have better than expected growth in the first quarter of the year, the fastest in the G7, as she likes to point out. And then this big package of measures to help address the cost of living crisis falling on from the Iran War, which aimed very squarely, I thought, at Labour MPs and Labour voters to show that the government is on the side of people. So some things that the Tories have described as gimmicks, such as free school uh bus travel, discounted, entry to um to museums and so forth, subsidized meals and cafes and restaurants for children. A significant package of help for heavy industry, ceramics and chemicals, which use a lot of energy, that will play well with northern MPs and people who believe there should be a bit of reindustrialisation or less deindustrialization anyway. Help for motorists as well, the five P fuel duty rise that was planned by the end of the year. That's been shelved until next year at le ast. Um so a whole load of measures really aimed to show that she has a set of retail announcements. And by the way, where's the money coming from this for this policy? By closing a tax loophole exploited by Boo Hist, the oil industry . So people will say, well, it's all a bit gimmicky. I actually think there's a place in politics for gimmicks sometimes because if you're a Labour MP and you want you don't want lofty stuff, you want people to feel stuff on the ground. If you can take the family out on a bus trip for free, with the kids for going for free and then go for a meal and they're and they get cut priced food, you know, people think, well, good on Rachel. Well they might do. Maybe it's too late. Well we quite like that, didn't we? We did. Jen um Stephen Bush took uh a different view from George when a fairly excoriating inside politics newsletter this week in which he said this kind of untargeted retail offer um entirely undermines the whole point of keeping Rachel Reeves in post, which is that, you know, fiscal prudence and and not sort of falling prey to these kind of gimmicks. What do you make of her move? I I I think I'm probably closest to where George is at on it. One of the things that struck me about it, and maybe I've got too much Andy Burnham on my brain, but it felt quite Andy Burnham ish. There was a former minister um quoted in the profile that I wrote of Andy like last week or the week before, who was sort of casting back to when he was in government under the last Labor government and saying one of the things that stuck in the mind was Andy Burnham advocating for free swimming. It was in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. And they were saying it's kind of a good example of something that was just like quite retail, but that he he did sort of understand that sometimes you just do need something you need something just to chuck around and it doesn't actually have to be all that expensive. My understanding of the bus part of that package actually is that it's been in Genesis for for quite a while because it's been trialled in the west of England, I think. And it isn't going to be hugely expens ive. So I do I think that the Labour government at the moment is going to get a hearing on stuff like this? Like probably not, because people hate the Labour government. But I'm kind of, I'm not really like massively opposed I do think in defence of Stevens position uh I I think it varies between different things, but one of the points he's made quite strongly where I actually agree with him, is the government's m rowing back on the uh 5P duty on petrol. Uh and that actually it was meant to be scrapped scrapping the freeze on that and it's actually kept it going. If you're moving into a crisis where petrol is scarce, it's useful for people to know it's expensive. And so actually helping insulate people against the cost of that is problematic because you want them to use petrol a bit less. And you'd be better off directing money at those essential areas where you think well we need to make sure they can afford to do it or we the Hauliers can function. But actually encouraging me to get in my car and go for a jaunt into the country is not actually a good policy at this point. I thought Stephen uh was was right to point out that the International Energy Agency has given ten uh levers that governments can pull to try and encourage less use usage of energy and this government hasn't uh adopted a single one of those. George, you had a fascinating story this week about Ed Miliband and his role advising Andy Burnham to stick within the fiscal rules, not necessarily the sort of fiscal rectitude position we would necessarily associate with Red Ed. Tell us about that. He's obviously positioning for the Chancellorship under a possible Burnham premiership, isn't he? Yes, I don't think there's any doubt about that. There's a people talk about a sort of Burnham projects and um it's been under discussion for a while, people like Lucy Powell, um Jim O'Neill, the former Treasury Minister, very much associated with the Northern Powerhouse, and Ed Miliband, all sort of um in there. And um I was told that Ed Miliband was one of those people pushing Andy Burns to be very explicit very early on that he would stick to the government's fiscal rules to reassure the markets. And as you say, that's not something you would necessarily associate with Ed Miliband. In the piece I wrote, I was quite interested to speak to Nick McPherson, Lord McPherson, who used to be the permanent secretary of the Treasury for a decade, represents absolute fiscal orthodoxy, the Treasury view. He worked with Ed Miliband for eight years and he said he thought he would make an a extremely good Chancellor , which I thought was interesting. I think it's also quite useful for the Miliband camp to let it be known, or for it to be known at least, that M. Miliband is in favour of fiscal discipline. Because the problem is if he's been lined up as the prospective chancellor in a Burnham government and that is seen as a particular problem in the markets, then there becomes a case for putting someone on the right of the party like West Streeting, for example, Pat McFadden to in there to reassure the market. So it's quite useful, I think, at this stage for the band to let him know that he actually believes in physical discipline too. Green agenda which he uh helms within government at present that he prioritises that over growth and and people remember his prospectus when he was opposition leader. Uh Jen, any other thoughts on obvious candidates that Burnham might be looking to or Well I think you know, it's it's obviously he's been in Greater Manchester for the last nine years. So actually some of the people he's closest to are not the kind of people in Westminster that are are best known. And I mean I've I've sort of written before that I kind of remain a little bit skeptical that he's got this very close circle around him even now in terms of those kind of SW One people. And in fact, actually somebody said to me yesterday that that as far as they could see, that remained the case. You know, there were not very many people who were kind of like fully in the loop of what he's doing. I mean again, I think Jim O'Neill is sort of you, know a, potential . He was a minister under George Osborne, he's a cross-bench peer. Um, and he's also advised Rachel Reeves. He's from Greater Manchester. He's got a good understanding of uh a very good understanding of exactly what's been going on in the economy in Greater Manchester over however long, but has also kind of operated as a critical friend. I mean he's not been afraid to kind of go like, well, you know, what kind of Andy Burner are we necessarily going to get if he goes into number ten . The question for me actually is whether or not Andy Burnham wants constructive challenge around him. In recent years, that hasn't been so much the case in Manchester. There were a few people who had been absolutely providing that, I think, over a period of time. And he'd been saying , no, do you know what? Actually, that's not a great idea. I wouldn't go and say that. I wouldn't go and do that. And for one reason or another, not for any particular reason, a lot of those people are not around anymore. And I think he probably does need those people to kind of prevent some of the flights of fancy that he's sometimes prone to to go on. Um in terms of names, I mean, you know, one name that gets banded about is the um director of strategy, I think is his job title of the combined authority, John Rathmall. He previously was um head of economic policy when Ed Milibam was leader with the Labour Party, and prior to that he'd worked in the Treasury, and he's a civil servant for Andy Burnham at the moment. And and actually a lot of of the kind policy thinking behind you know the kind of Greater Manchester project as it currently is, uh, I think probably comes from his pen. Um, so you know, he's got the credentials both from the kind of government machinery point of view, but also from the political point of view, from the Labour Party side. My guess would be that if you wanted to go down there with Andy Burnham, then the door would absolutely be open, you know. But I think one thing I would suggest is that watch Manchester as much as SW1 in this because he may well import some people from up here. I just want to make one point about Ed Millerband. Um the one thing I think that will be a factor in the consideration is if he makes Ed M iliban Chancellor, whatever the pros and cons you think in terms of the market , he is basically going to run this government. Ed Mullaban will because he is so much more politically effective, so much more ministeri ally effective. You know the one thing everyone acknowledges about Ed Melman, whether they like his strategy or not, is that he's good at driving it through. He's pretty clear-sighted about the kind of politics he believes in. And I think he would just be an absolute force in the government if he was made Chancellor. It would be rather like having Gordon Brown in in summary. I mean, he he he he's more personable and easy to get on. But you know, I I think he would become such a power in the government that the one question Andy Burnham would I I think wonder about, or or ought to at least think about is am I going to be able to cope with this? Am I going to do this? Am I going to be able to overrule him when I need to? How am I going to push back on this? And I do think he'd be it's a question he ought to think about. Mm-hmm. I've certainly heard people say Mili band , while acknowledging that he cannot be the candidate, the main candidate, if the likes of Burnham is back in the Commons, to lead the race for the leadership against Starmer, he has thought about how he would run a campaign and what he'd offer and so forth. So i it's just a sign, isn't it, that he hasn't totally given up that ambition to be a good idea about what he believes in. He's written books on this. He is somebody who's really thought about his politics , what he believes in, how he thinks things should work. I think he'd be a real force. And also j you know, I've been thinking a lot about what Andrew Burnham might actually be like in there, you know? And I think, you know, he's got these weaknesses where he has a tendency to be a magpie and sort of uh I guess adapts the latest conversations that he's been having with somebody, or as I say, you know, this is where he gets the sort of flip-flop um reputation from. But equally, his reputation within the Greater Manchester combined authority, I don't think could be a lot better than it is among a lot of the staff. Like they they do really genuinely love working there, I think. And and he is a bit of a star attraction in terms of going and you know, going and working for Andy Burnham, in a way that I I'm not sure that that has necessarily been the case for Keir Star mer. Whether he he would be sort of sufficiently strategic, I guess, about maintaining the relationships that he needs to maintain. I think he's perhaps slightly different, a slightly different question because he has a tendency to not nurture the relationships that he might be wise to do in the long term. But I think he would bring probably quite a different culture to number ten and it would be really interesting to see whether or not the civil service was able to get behind that or not. I don't know, it's an open question George, uh we shouldn't forget West Street Inc, who is still claiming he has the numbers to launch uh a contest or at least fight in a contest if there is one launched. He's come up this week with uh a proposal for capital gains tax to be equalised with income tax. He's put together some quite complicated detailed proposals about how this would work. He says it's a wealth tax that would work. He's saying that this is a pledge for if he becomes Prime Minister, but really there's a lot of suspicion that he also is vying for a chancellor position in a Burnham led government. challenge. In Downing Street they reckon he had about forty five maximum and they did quite a lot of ringing around on this. And since then he hasn't really done himself many favours, as Robert was s saying earlier on. I think a lot of people don't think he's handled himself very well. His resignation letter was a bit sort of unnecessarily harsh, I think, on Starmer. And so yes, but he wants to keep himself in the game and by reaching out to that pool of uh voters, the majority of the selectrists in the Labour Party on the soft left, the centre left of the party, and coming up with a the idea of a wealth of tax that works, as he calls it, is a way of reaching out to that group of people. And in fact, it's one of those things that I think people across the party can agree on that there should be a transfer of taxation from income from work and income from assets and wealth. However, this is the big, big thing. This is not something that's never occurred to people of the Treasury or ever occurred to Rachel Reeves or indeed never occurred to Minister George Osborne himself and the coalition. It was a t central tenant of the Liberal Democrats when they were in coalition. Yeah, that it's been a it's been a century-long obsession of the Liberals to move taxation. So the problem is one of logistics. The way the capital gains tax structure is structured at the moment, the Treasury has concluded that the rate at which it's set is pretty much the point at which you maximize revenue. And if you start going above it, people change their behaviour, you damage enterprise. And so you talk to people at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, they'll say that if you want to do this and raise the kind of money that where Streeting is talking about up to twelve billion pounds a year, you would have to restructure the tax completely and the base, try to avoid unintended consequences, impact on entrepreneurialism. It's a really big body of work. You can't do it immediately. There'll be winners and losers. And it's one of the reasons why people talk about it in leadership contests in in other arenas, but it never actually happens. I mean I think it's really interesting because as George said, this is something that seems to run across the party. Um even before West Streeting spoke, I think someone who's a bit of an outrider for him, Chris Curtis, who runs the Labour Growth Group, put out a pamphlet talking about and they talked about this. They talked about the extraction economy and these areas where people obtain income and wealth not through their work, but through ownership, scarcity, monopoly, regulatory capture. And that there are areas that you should be aiming the tax system at more squarely. And one of these is capital gains tax. People who support Andy Burnham are talking about the same thing. But as George says, the problem is there are very good reasons why we don't do this. The fact that it probably isn't going to raise very much money. Also, you're going to have to offer up all kinds of allowances so you don't, you know, put off the right kind of investment that you want to see. So it's it it's very difficult to see it making a large amount of money. And the thing that I was struck by this is that although you can see the moral argument for equalizing it with income tax, you can see the political case and the fairness argument. If it doesn't work, then you have to question it. And part of where streeting's pitch was to be from the wing of the party that does the thing that works. Actually I'm prepared to have private capital coming into the health service if it makes the health service better. I'm that side of the par ty. And if you then start pushing forward ide as which dissolve because they look but because they look nice to your to the party members, I think you not only fail to win over those people who would be more attracted to someone like Andy Burnham anyway, you actually damage yourself and the caucus that might agree with you . We've just got time left for stock picks. Jen, who are you buying or selling this week? A slightly speculative one, but I think I'm going to sell Bridget Phillips in the education secretary, simply on the basis that, you know, she's she's generally seen as being an ally of Keir's Dramas, but more specifically, Andy Burnham has probably criticized the Department for Education more than any other part of government in the time that he's been mayor. And in fairness, that does predate Bridget Phillipson. Um, but he still has continued to criticize the Department for Education. I mean, i even in in the last few months in a speech has railed against the D F E. So on that basis I'm gonna kinda guess that she might not be welcome around the cabinet table. Robert Okay well I did think about buying in Miliband for the reasons we just discussed, but I've decided so that's's there too many hurdles to jump over before we get there. So I'm gonna sell where Streeting, who I think has actually had a bad couple of weeks. And I think when you talk to people, even those who are sympathetic to him, they're sort of saying, We don't see how this can happen for him. You know, if Andy Burnham comes back, he's not going to be leader. And actually, I'm not convinced Andy Burnham is going to rush to him as his Chancellor either. He probably hasn't got the numbers to challenge Andy Burnham, if Andy Burnham was back. And if Andy Burnham were to lose, I'm not sure he's wowed the party in the last couple of weeks. There are people I've talked to who say, you know, well actually I think even Keir s Keir could beat him in a contest because people are not impressed. And I do think it's a very difficult thing to play the outside challenger . Uh it's a very hard road that one and I and I think he's not made life easy for himself and I'm gonna gonna sell him. George. Well I was about to come up with the same person to sell but I think in that case I'll switch my attention to Angela Rayn er, someone else who was talked about in fact she was the favourite, wasn't she, in the betting odds not very long ago to be the next leader. But she's but she's dropped off out of the running um completely as far as most Labour MPs are concerned. And just to add to her recent problems, the Jen might be able to fizzle in a bit more detailed the case, but um as we before we were recording, it's great managed to police said they were investigating some allegations of electoral fraud in Tameside, which is in Angela 's area. Um so yeah I'm not suggesting at all that Angelaina was a personally involved, but nevertheless some sort of jiggery pokery going on in her backyard. I don't know, it just adds to the sense that things aren't going so well for her at the moment. What about you, Lucy? I am going to sell the Foreign Office, which is mired and lots of problems at the moment. Um morale is pretty low because there are huge cuts going on and they've just had yet another difficulty this week with James Roscoe, the deputy UK ambassador to the US, having to leave his post abruptly with immediate effect after a formal leak inquiry into how details of a national security top secret meeting uh on the eve of the US Israeli strikes on Iran made its way into the Spect ator magazine. And it's yet it's just the latest embarrassment for the department, which seems to be battling on a number of fronts right now. And that's because I was also going to go for Angela Raina, George, and you uh you ate my lunch. Well that's all we've got time for. Uh Jen, George Robert thanks for joining. Thanks, Lucy. Thanks, Lucy. Thanks, Lucy . And thanks for listening. Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Nisha P The broadcast engineers are Andrew Giordardis and Bianca Wakeman. We'll meet again here next week