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Power to the North, it's Andy Burnham's big plan for the country Welcome to Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. Coming up Berner wants to establish Number ten North, a regional seat of power at the heart of government He also aims to shift decision making over all sorts of important areas to mayors and councils too We'll be looking at the potential upside as well as any hidden minefields in this blueprint for mega deevolution also faces some tough spending decisions when he arrives in office thanks to Kir Starmer's defense investment planan, which finally arrived this week Plus where where is Nigel Farraage Yes we know, on GB newews. But outside the studio, the reform leader is facing claims he's been dodging scrutiny over donations and his record in parliament With me to discuss it all our UK Chief political commentator, Robert Shinley. Hi, Robert. Hello, Lucy Dputy polical editor in Pard. Hi Jim. Hi, Lucy. And political correspondent and across, Hi Anna. Hi, Lucy. On Monday, guys, we had Andy Burnham's first big scene setter speech laying out his vision for government and he focused heavily on devolution. Robert, take us through the top lines of his proposals Well, I mean, as you say, it was this was his first speech as Pime Minister presumptive, essentially And He I think quite wisely decided not to try and cover everything, but say, this is my big idea. this is my big thing And it was essentially as he would put it about rewiring politics of Britain and more specifly the politics of England by saying we are going to take power out of the hands of London, out of the hands of Whitehall, and we are going to give more control to local elected mayors, local councs, and therefore through that to the people who elect them And we're also going to try and defang the Treasury a bit because through its green book, through its spending biases, always fails to invest in the infrastructure regions outside of the Southeast. s's an attempt to say it's leveling up by another name, but with a really hefty push of devolution at its core. And as you said, O of the central ideas that he put forward is a number ten of the North sessentially a prim Minister's off outside of London and after much hand wringing they decided it would be in Manchester. And I think actually the geography of this number ten north is less important than the fact that he is going to put his own prrime mininisterial impramata on driving this forward and really, really pushing this agenda. I think there's an absolute consensus in politics Britain is overentralized and the power has to be given back And that's his big idea. And you know, it's somey We often hear people saying we don't know what he stands for. but actually we do. He really stands for this Jim, you talked about a place first approach, We're expecting housing, transport skills tackling welfare dependency to fall under the remit of mayors and council leaders. I just wondered how popular is this actually going to be with the public? You know trraditionally when we talk about some of these ideas, they take up a lot of bandwidth. and White Hall, if he goes ahead with also slicing and dicing the treasury, that's a sort of machinery of government change that leads to lots of infighting and rivalry between civil servants could now be more inefficiencies with spin offs to other parts of the country, you know differentifferent policies, people having to make sense of the patchwork of how things fit together, potentially a massive headache business, especially big business that might have print across England. What's your take Yeah, I think you've very succinctly identified the biggest challenges and questions around this agenda of Andy Burnham's because We've ended up in the UK with a very ad hoc system of devolution with different powers and different places. And we have a public that is actually not that excited about it and not that interested about it. I've just been writing something about hasas Welsh devolution been a success or otherwise? And there was a poll only a couple of months ago where seventy percent of people in Wales thought that policing was run by national government in London and a third of people in Wales apparently didn't know that education and health were run by the Welsh government. and that is a very solid, well established piece of devolution where you have an actual parliament. So goodness knows only how much awareness there is of somewhere like Lincolnshow that's only had a mayor for a little while. I think the public don't wake up in the morning thinking You know what, cost of living and immigration and NHS are no longer my primary concerns. My primary concern is that the area of Wessex where I live doesn't have a fully elected now. And I think Andy Benham going on and on about the evvolution raises questions about will the public start to think that he's interested at the expense of bread and butter issues? They might also think is he going on about Manchester at the expense of the rest of the country? I think he needs to do a bit of a pivot away from going on about Manchester and maybe talkinging about West, did you say? More about the exactly, more about the rest of the country. and I think as to your questions about treasury and whether this is a good thing or a bad thing to have this new number ten North. I can see why he believes that that it is more than the gimmick and it could have a positive impact in sort of driving agenda that he's interested in like devolution and housing. I worry a little bit that in a world where you have hugely complicated challenges ranging from planning to defence to health idea of the bandwidth of officials Piticians being sucked up by questions of firstly splitting everything out into this northern outpost and secondly having the sort of questions over who's responsible for what? Are they going to have clashes and overlapping responsibilities and confusion in the years ahead? Maybe I'm too cynical, but I can see why some business people are a little bit concerned. If I can just make a counterpoint on the public response to it, I agree with you that in general, you talk about devolution, you talk about giving mayors power. A lot of the time people switch off. It's not a major concern for them. But when there's kind of polling around what people feel and actually if you listen to people in focus groups But One of the things they talk about is a lack of control, a lack of feeling like, you know, government, Westminster is not working for them, doesn't care about them. And I think it's all about how you sell this idea. And if you're selling it as part of a package if you this is about you guys, you, the British public taking back control I think it could it could really resonate. I mean, I agree thenan. I think you know I mean, Jim's right that when you talk about local government, of course everybody switches off They don't want to hear about the machinery and the mechanisms point in Andy Burnham's argument is that This is about how the country fails people, how it fails to work people, and that you can use it to show tangible results. You can use it to show us he always talks about, you know what he did with the buses in Manchester You can use it to subsidize different parts of the economy, to direct training and to push infrastructure. You could, in theory, use it to stop Um Water companies polluting your local river, so I think the issue is less people want to hear about devolution, which of course they don't, but they can be persuaded to be interested in what you can do with the power if it's given to you. But I think another counter argant as well is that if you think about national policy and what certainly what did the Labour goovernment the last two years want to drive through And one of those things was a massive house building drive that they came up against the unhappiness of a lot of councils, not wanting massive housing stestates pushed on them. They the national government has wanted more AI. It's wanted more green energy. But if you talk to actual regions and say, do you want loads of pylons coming through your countryside to deliver what the national goovernment wants? East Anglia, they've been up in arms about that. So the more you empower localities, is there a question of whether you dilute your abilities to get some of your national agenda done? that depends on where you put power, but if you put it at a county or regional level then I think it's doable And you're right, there are you know if you build things, there're going to be people don't want them built where they are. I mean there was a fantastic thing in the House of Commons this week with a liiberal Democrat MP complaining about a hospital being built because apparently it would undermine the region's golfing facilities. So you're always going to get that kind of nimbiism. But I think the point is at a local level you can make the argument. and I think Anna hit the nail on the head on this one been the most potent slogan in British politics for the last decade, take back control And that's the way Andy Burnham is going to sell this The bigger issues what what they do when they've got that power. Well that's it. I mean, I'm more inclined to agree with you, Jim perhaps a little bit more skeptical or wanting to wait and see because it's a focus yet again on process, it's making big claims, it's getting the public's expectation. in a way that I'm not sure will lead to the outcomes that are expected Jim, you mentioned housing, that's another thing Burnham talked about. and in particular the promise for the biggest Cncil House building program since nineteen forty five, again, that's not going to be easier if you devolve powers. And I also think sometimes people say they want more control in a local area, but I can just as easily see we could be sitting here in eighteen months time And people will be angry that there isn't sufficient accountability at local level or scrutiny. to my mind, it might sound a trivial point, but the lack of a local and regional media means that keeping an eye on mayors and councils that are increasingly empowered will be a key challenge. I just think there's a presumption running through around the Benham speech If you carry out devolution at breakneck speed, there'd be more economic growth. and I don't think necessarily that that is based on historic experience. I mean I'm skeptical as well, but I think one should be skeptical rather than cynical. And I think that if you look at the rest of what Andy Burnham is talking about, there's this heavy dose of nostalgia in his politics about a time before Thatcher when We hadn't sold off the council housing stock and social care was run by the councils. And you know, transport was more accountable and people had bus services that work. And the point is, you know, That's a very backward looking thing, but it's also a potent argument for people that actually doing this we can take you back to a place where you know your rivers aren't polluted, your social care works Your transport is interconnected and it's functional then you will feel better about the area you live in. We talked about leveling up under Boris Johnson, was this idea that if you, you know, if you dollled up the station and put some floral baskets in the high street You've leveled up the region, but the bottom line is You only level up a region a place by putting money in people's pockets. That's the only way it really happenens. Yeah. And if what he thinks, we will make our regions work better Well. policies that we will put in, that is a broader and bigger argument. The interesting question is What happens when those places elect someone from reform? or the conservatives with a completely different agenda what they want to do in the region. And it's not what Andy Berham wants Robert, you've wrote fantastic column this week on nostalgia and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And one of the themes you picked out that I thought was interesting and I think will be a key tension in the Berham administration is this idea that He leans heavily on this idea of, as you say, going back to a sort of pre thatcher era and trying to unpick what seems to be conflicting ideas about Manchesterism and the business friendly policies that he has enacted and continued from his predecessors there. And what seems to be shaping up to be quite an intervention led administration that he's outlining now. Yeah mean Listen to his recent speech, read the book that he wrote with Steve Rothotherham head North. there was a very clear worldview and outlook that Andy Burnham has and it is the state intervening, be it the national state or the local state, as it were. It is stepping in to do things to create, you know formulas and frameworks that the deliver services in a certain way. but Manchesterism when actually worked was all about a business friendly pulling in investment, strategic planning. what they needed for the region. And you see all these adjacent think tanks and people who are talking a Burnham book because they're known to be sort of semi close to him All of those agendas are higher taxes. Rdistribution from the south to the north M active intervention, more regulation, sometimes you know, renationalization with trade unions on the boards of the new nationalized utilities. you know, Now that's them, not him That agenda is very much going backwards agenda, which doesn't ever take into account that, you know, not everything in the economy worked that brilliantly before Thatcher. know He's not thinking about those things. And I think all of it I mean, as you're kind of alluding to there, it will cost an enormous amount of money. And I think in Manchester, obviously, he was quite successful at bringing in sort of private companies to help. support his agenda. There are some people around him who are very, very resistant to the idea of doing partnerships, particularly with kind of foreign companies, US companies really want the state to be intervening. And in Germany, for example and elsewhere where to bring up productivity in other regions like post unification required, I think, two trillion euros. And I think, you know, if you're going to lead by this kind of state, to kind of level up a lot of these regions it's going to require a huge amount of.ory about on this theme today, Anna, about, you know, his approach to AI And it's very much it's not a sort of forward looking Rishi Sunak, how do we make this work for Britain? It's a defensive. We should be frightened of AI. know the world Britain is going to be a victim of AI, a victim of American AI. and I think That's true across a lot of thegendas. It's like it's all about the victims of capitalism I don't actually think that the burn in thegeender as we understand it at the moment will actually cost an awful lot. So if you if you look at it in sequence, if you Look at his language about greater public control of utilities and that kind of thing. He's sort of talking about over ten years we sort of have greater taxpayer involvement of some kind, the only actual company that he's indicated he thinks should be in state roll is Thames Water and our regular listeners and readers will know that Thames Water is pretty close to collapsing into special administration at which point, you know it wouldn't cost us anything in terms of taking initial control of it. You obviously have running costs. In terms of him talking about the biggest council housing program for decades It doesn't look like he's talking about actually providing more money. It looks more like he's thinking about taking the existing thirty nine billion pound package of money for affordable social and council housing, which was set up by the government a year or two ago and maybe pivoting it entirely towards council housing. We don't know if he's going do that or not, but the money's already there The money, interestingly is very backloaded and for the next couple of years is not much more than they've been spending on affordable and social housing for what it's worth. So what does that leave? It leaves a very strong hint in his speech that there will be money to help people through the cost of living crisis. but I would imagine that would be like in the low billions, maybe. Jim, what about his reindustrialization pitch? That to me sounded like a big mindset shift towards buying British, towards sovereign capabilities in manufacturing and steel. But that doesn't cost anything if you food and farming Well, it does if you sort if it leads to sort of thinking on Whitehall that You have to prop up those industries through forcing the government to be a better customer thinking of sort of backing those industries rather than looking abroad. So you might end up with contracts that aren't best value and' paying slightly more in order to keep it British. I potentially considerably at risk. But you take there's still competition between more than one British company for some of those I think the idea that Andy Burnham could s single handly sort of re industrialize Northern England is a joke that I don't take seriously at all. Well, sure won't c anything because he won't be able to do it. He's not going to recreate the steel industry. know I mean even Germany' having to scale back on that as its auto industry comes under great pressure. He's not going to recreate steel industry. He's not going to reopen the mines We're not going to have a great big auto sector in Britain. Defence. I think we could I could see significant increase in the defense industry What are these industries that Andy Burnerham is going to re with which he's going to re industrialize vast parts of the country? That's just not the way British and the Western economy is going. It's smaller, smaller, more nimble manufacturing. It's more automation. You know where are these jobs and reindustrializations coming from? I don't want to be too negative about it. I mean I hope we do. I'm not quite sure where he thinks all these great factories are coming from. I think again, speaks to the way in which he's perhaps a bit backward looking in his thinking talking about that theme of nostalgia again rather than forward looking and trying to lean into the sectors of the future like AI You mentioned defence, Robert. Of course, we've finally seen the Deence investment plan this week. We've spoken about it on the pod quite a lot because it's been this agonised process and the source of much wrangling between Downing Street The Treasury and the Ministry of Defense. Starmer finally signed off about fifteen billion pounds for the military over the next four years, about half funding black hole that was identified earlier last year in the plans to modernize and strengthen the armed forces. E now there's this bear trap that Star has left for his successor Burnham, in that that five of that fifteen billion is unfunded. And across the rest of the ten billion, yes, Starmer said it's going to involve trade offs, it's going to have to come from the reallocation of capital budgets from other White haall departments Actually, Downing Street's only been able to point to a few road projects here or there that have been cancellled pointed to the broad idea of finding two billion odd efficiency savings from the Energy Department The hard work of But finesting the detail of where the axe will fall across apartments will be a nice welcome gift for Burnham It's like sewing prawns into the curtains of your ex. I said that like that was something I've done in the past. Just to be clear, I haven't. All Kiss Ammer has done is sketched out the outlines and the parameters of where some of the cuts will fall, say for example Des Nz Department of Energy and net zero willll have to find two billion of efficiencies. But yeah, that's going to be one of the first challenges for Burnham's Chancellor. we still don't know who that is and no Each of these departments one percent a year, there's going to be some really difficult decisions. you know, efficiency savings in DesNS You don't find two billion of that just by laying off a few people or shrinking your headc, You have to really take the ac to some programs, if you Andy Berms transition team, there had been room for feeling quite optimistic about the public finances in the sense of your predecessors have put up taxes by seenty billion to that over the last two years. There were widespread expectations within the Treasury and within Whitehall at the start of the year when we had the U.S Israeli attacks on Iran that it would send price of oil and gas through the roof to the extent that there would be this horrendous damage to the public finances in the UK. know thingsings have not been as bad as economists had forecasted. I think extra output of fossil fuels from the USA, from West Africa, from elsewhere have meant that energy prices haven't been as catastrophic as some White H forecastters have thought. And so even though there's going to be some eating away of the fiscal headroom that Rachel Reeves left at the last budget of I believe twenty three billion pounds, I don't think Burnham is necessarily going to have to come back for tax rises to deal with the Iran crisis, but he is going to have to make some unfortunate and probably unpopular decisions Anna, it feels likely that Berham might end up having to revisit the settlement for defence, given the reception that the dip, as it's known has had from the defense establishment and you know sources coming out from within the wider military and defense complex saying, this isn't enough. We are trying to pitch ourselves as being in a leadership role within European NATO, and yet we're tumbling down the league tables in terms of our capability, in terms of our percentage of defense expenditure as a proportion of GDP and so forth That's the last topic on which he wants to spend time, effort and money when he arrives in power, isn't it Yes. I think it probably is and as Jim's pointed out, he's going to have these battles, you know, unless he kind of sends it all off toever this chancellor is, he's going to have these battles with a lot of different departments to work out where those cuts come and one percent cuts to capital budgets. That's going to be really, really tricky to find. I do think there's a possible kind of political win for him when it comes to defense. I know he's not going to want to find a huge amount of money immediately and he's probably going to want to kick the can down the road. But you know he's maligned by a lot of people on the right as being super left wing, wanting to throw loads of money at energy and net zero and all sorts of different things. And I think there's an opportunity for him to come in and say, you know, I do take defence really seriously you know, I'm going to set out further down the line, you know, where further cuts might come and also potentially marry it with a very well thought out, well developed plan to reform the welfare system that might come with investing in skills, investing in jobs, but also you know changing the system in a way that could reduce expenditure over time. And I think that would be, you know political win for him if he can make the numbers work, which is can devise a very thorough, well thought through plan on the hoof as he tries to get to grips with it all. Robert, lots of chatter around David Milliband and his interest potentially in coming back to government Lots of intrigue I was last night at the foreign Office drinks in Lancaster House where It was the name on everyone's lips. Could he be the next foreign secretary? some of those who championed Evet Cooper making clear well We heavily criticize the Tories for putting in a foreign seecretary in the House of Lords the labour you know, party really be able to do the same What's your sense of the reprisal of the Milliban Bothers drama two point zero. Well, I can exclusively reveal that I don't know. You're right about in the book, Head North, which she wrote with the Liverpool May, Steve Rothham, there's a sort really scathing passage technically in Steve Rotherham's words where he attacks the tourist having nobody any good they could make foreign secretary had to put an unelected here and un likelected figure into the Lords to do this. And David Cameron was considered quite a success as foreign Secretary. He'd got access to people that an ordinary foreign secretary might not. peopleople were aware that he was a world leader. He had relationships and You can see the argument for it. whether David Milliban quite operates at the same level, I'm not so sure. He has been foreign Secretary before. he's got an international network. U I think the one thing that is worth saying is that Andy Berham doesn't want to worry about foreign affairs. and all new Prime mininisters say they're going to do foreign affairs and they will end up getting sucked into it. So if you can find a heavyweight, most of this off his desk He'll be very, very glad of it U You run up against two issues. you know, onene is does he need? bring in someone who's not even in the laws. The other is this whole issue of, where are the senior women in your administration, which is a huge issue for labour in particular And you had this line about there could be more millibands in the top jobs than women. So I think those things have all got to be balanced out. I genuinely don't know which way he'll jump on this. If I had to better penny, I'd bet against David Milliban, but I don't know Yeah, I for it's worth. I could see him definitely coming in in some kind of role and Berham wanting to make use of his talents. But I have to say I find it difficult to see how longer term you could have a foreign seecretary in the Lords. And even those around Cameron at the time were trying to defend it by saying it's clear that this is a temporary time limited role until Sunak has an election Jim, you wrote a great piece about the Milliband brothers and the prospect of The tragy comedy comoming back to Westminster Yeah. I mean just going back to Robert's point about gender, I think you're probably going to have Lucy Powell as deputy prime Mister. I think you're probably going to have Shabanam Mahou and one of the great officers of state. So I'm not sure that's necessarily the disqualifier, but I agree with you about the deemocratic legitimacy of having someone in the House of laws doing that job. And I think bear in mind that David Milliband was you know a policy onek in number ten ranging across domestic and international policy and therefore he has more kind of bes in his quiver than just foreign affairs. I wrote this piece about the Miliban brothers possibly being a cabinet released at the top of government together again and there's something really quite sad about the way they fell out in twenty ten. I can't believe that sixteen years have passed. And just remind listeners who may not have been kind of into politics then what happened to lead to this colossal Estrangement of the pair. Yeah, so you have these two brothers from North London from us sort of hyper political intellectual family of refugees originally from think Eastern Europe' settled in London and they were steeped in politics. they go to work in new Labour, David Milliband works for Tony Bar, Ed Milliband works for Blaair's great rival, Gordon Brown and so they're on the sort of dividing line of the new labour split, which to us now in the context of having seen Jeremy Corbyn civil War since then looks pretty minor. but it was a big civil war at the time. and when the leadership became vacant in twenty ten, David Milliband was the bookie's favourite to win, great communicator. Ed Milliband decided to run against his older brother. He won by tacking to the left and getting the support of the big trade unions. David Millerband was furious with his little brother. beating him to what he thought should be his prize. And within a few years he'd gone off to America to run a humanitarian I jump in on this one because' an unpopular position. and I mean, actually I like David Melliban, but I've always felt Edin Miliband has always got the blame for this estrangement in this round, you know, because he dared to run against his brother who'se birthright apparently in the premiership or the leadership of the Lab Party was and who hadn't managed to square him . And actually what happened is Ed Millaband won the contest in a fair contest, he offered David Milliband a big job in his shadow cabinet. and David Milliband went off in a hufff. The estrangement is much more down. from the outside, I don't know the the details of their relationship. is down to David Milliband not being able to, you know, a good l. It's a bit like Venus Williams refusing to talk to Serena Williams for ending up better at tennis, right And C can I ask you another question? because it's often said that within the Parliamentary Labour Party, David was much more aloof, He hadn't done the networking, all the sort of glad handing in the tea room. He hadn't built friendships and alliances. And when it came to the leadership contest, he wasn't that well personally known to MPs, whereas Ed's a lot more friendly, personable wasas there something it definitely is a bit mean I wouldn't overstate it that there was something, I mean, Ed was regarded as the slightly more human bigigger. of the two of them, but the key point was that the party wanted to get away from blairism and David Milivan represented the Tony Blair view and Ed represented the Gordon Brown worldview and that was in the more ascendant. so they wanted to bury Blairism and David was essentially tainted with that. And I think it's quite possible that if Ed Milliban hadn't been there, it might well be that someone else would have beaten him Right now, someone is asking AI a question about your industry. They're looking for the perfect recommendation or an accurate solution, and they're ready to act on it. When AI gives an answer, is your brand a part of it or not Most companies have no idea which. J changes that. We show you where you're visible, where you're not, and give you the tools to do something about it It's time to make AI work for your brand with Gist. Learn more at gist. ai Well, it's been a strange sort of interregnum period we're living through at the moment as we're all waiting for Burnham to take over You might have thought that Niiggeer Farage, the reform UK leader, would take advantage of that vacuum to dominate the agenda to sell his own narrative. but instead, he's been conspicuous by his absence. not very visible on the party scene, certainly wasn't holding court at the spectator' summer drinks on Wednesday night and on the Green benches and Prime Minister'sQions as well. look Very subdued What's going on Yeah, it's a very conspicuous absence. I've been talking to some people in the party who say You know, that feels like there's something going on beyond kind of just trying to sit back a bit and let, you know burnam play out for a bit and work out what the next steps are. I think it has been a really challenging period for the party. They've basically had unabashed momentum since about March april, twenty twenty five up until the local elections this year And it was from that point on that things started to sort of unravel a bit for the party and it was a real really damaging blow in Makerfield. Third by election in a row they've lost e election in a row they've lost and they lost it by a very sizable margin. Then you've got the revelations of the five million gift. from billionaire Christopher Harbourne. And Farage came out sort of all guns blazing for a short period, sort of left his hibernation, came out last week to do a round of interviews to sort of explain this donation, which is a huge amount of media attention, but he came off I think quite badly in those interviews, and there are a lot of people, you know, even close to him in the party who've been quite critical publicly about his performance on that. And so I think there's broadly, know, speaking to people in the party, there's a broad acceptance that momentum has been lost. and there's anxiety about it. There's also a bit of anxiety about Boris Johnson sort of coming out and talking a bit more and people asking, you know, is he coming back in some form or another? And what's given rise to that It was around the Brexit anniversary. he came out and he did an Instagram video and he's generally been, so I hear advising Bad knock a bit and generally doing more media appearances and things like that. I've had a couple of people from reform asking me about what's going on with Boris Johnson. Is that something maybe listeners don't realize? A lot of our contacts getting pick up the phone to us to try and find out what their own rivals and internal and external are doing. sometometimes they hope that intelligence flowes both ways. H Farage realized he's made a big mistake over accepting this five million pound personersonal gift. We know it's being investigated There's some chat that he is concerned about there potentially being a by election in his patch if he's if he's sanctioned and a petition. is drawn up and he falls foul of the results of that Yeah, I mean amid all the sort of hyper speculation about Nigel Farge in the last couple of months and is he healthy or not and that kind of thing? the disappearance totally coincided with the exposure by the guuardian of the five Million pounds b and you know Let us not forget the scale of this gift It is the equivalent to the average person in Britain who would work for two hundred years to take this money. It is more money than I consider myself a reasonably successful person. It's more money than I will earn in my lifetime. And I don't know even kissed arm' suits. I don't know. I don't know how You know, I've spoken to people in reform who said, you know, Nigel needs to communicate better this five million. There was this awful interview he did with some broadcast but there was a female interviewer and she asked you know how much of this money has gone to security? And he snaps her and he said something like, well, how much of your salary you spend on beer? And it it just looked random, It looked rattled, it looked bizarre And he was sort of snarling. it looked very unattractive, but having never been given five million pounds myself by a random crypto billionaire on a mysterious desert island in Southeast Asia, I have no way of thinking through the best way to explain this to everybody. I'm not sure there is an easy way to explain a five million pound What some people might call a bung, but Reform UK calls a gift. And I think he has belatedly realized that he should have thought about that before he took it Robert, what's going on with Reform your eyes. Everything Jimmano said I completely agree with. And I think There's a bigger thing going on with the reform as well, because I think it's trying out its path again I think it's slightly lost its I think the influx of people from the Conservative Party rather change some of its thinking and it's trying to work out which way it wants to go because fundamentally brought in loaded of people like Robert Jenerick. ra and like that. And these are all small state conservatives who have a particular worldview And on the other hand, this is an insurgent party that's meant to hate the Cervatives And it's meant to be radical and different than the new politics, which was Andy Burnham is trying to take away from them as well I think They're struggling a bit for their own definition, and we saw obviously in Makerfield, you know the modest success of Rupert Lowe's Restore partarty, which I think rattled them a bit as well. And I think they're trying trying to get their bearings again And I think that's coincided with the absence of Farage because of his personal financial issues Um You say they've lost some by elections. I mean, ironically, if you were sanctioned by the House of Commons and forced to hold a by election, that might be their comeback opportunity. I think he has us old Donald Trump view I can be in politics and make lots of money and making lots of money has always been important to him British sensibility isn't like that. and actually we punish politicians, even for relatively small financial indiscretions me think about the row that there was over the free suits that Lord Ali gifted to Kir Stahmer before the election. So I think they are in a bit of a crisis Bost around his leadership and around their political direction. And they're still trying to work it out. I think it's a bit early to be writing them off, but just to add one more thing to the pot Andy Burnham arrives Let's say the first couple of months go quite well. B like him. He gets a bit of a bump. It doesn't take a lot of a pole bump For reform to come down below one of the other two parties, Labor or the Cervatives, or to even drop level with them And then all of a sudden, everyone's going, Well, all bets are off. We've hit peak reform And there aren't any more elections for a year. So It could be quite worrying and troubling for them. So I think they've got a bit of a crisis and how they handle it is going to be the test of whether they can stay ahead the whole of this Parliament. Yeah, if I can just say that, they're very aware of that. and I think there's been discussions in the party about, you know We're going to see a labour bump. We're going to see a rise in the polls, but it's likely we're going to come down. We need to keep cool heads. And I think that you know part of the a relative silence of the party at the moment is is strategic. I mean, it's all the things that we've talked about this a. lack of momentum in the crisis, etcetera. But it's also, you know There's no point right now. Everything is about Burnham right now. And let's let this play out And let's regroup, they're doing some restructuring They're trying to work out exactly as you say what their messaging is, where they sit. So we can take a bit of a backseat now and we can come back in potentially in September. That's good thinking. But the other point, I just imagine this when this poull bump happens, they take a knock Let's just imagine Conservatives get a couple of polls where they're ahead of reform Yeah It doesn't matter where labor is But the conservives could be head Everyone's concerning Kemmy's done it. She's pulled them back. They're now the voice of the right, even though that's not quite right Well, let me just read out what, according to the FT's poll of polls, what the state of play is at the moment Reformer on twenty six percent, having trundled down six points since last autumn, Labour on twenty and the Conservatives on nineteen. So all clustered quite close, albeit reform have a six point lead. And one reform figure said to me this week he thought the kind of core reform Supp was about twenty two percent And if that's accurate, I think that's eminently be by either the Conservatives or Labour whole narrative, mean it's all about being the alternative to labour and being the right wing challenger to labour. Actually the damage has been done for the Conservative partarty is immense. They've been hollowed out everywhere. they've losing counllors. know, Reformers done a great job taking them down. Let's always get ahead for a couple of polls We're going to start discussing them differently. and I think that will really shake the momentum on confidence of reform. And just on that point, I mean, Farage spent a huge amount the end of last year and the beginning of this year claiming that the Tory partarty were done as a national political party. and he said it again and again and again in interviews, in press conferences. And that hasn't happened I mean, they're still at, you know, eighteen, nineteen percent You know they're definitely less successful in some parts of the country, but there is still a national force. He also boasted that there were going to be a large number of defections that were coming down the line from the Tories. There was obviously Swella Brvman and Robert Genrick at the beginning of the year, but since even after their very successful performance at local elections, they just haven't had that slew of defect the shutters would come down. It may be. but I've been interested to see there have been the odd councillor come out and said that they regret defecting from the Tories to reform. what happened to them So I mean Robert Genereick's got a profile When was the last time you heard heard from Sella Brffaman?. I mean and actually, you know, I think conservative MP's are looking at this and going I'm not sure this was a great move. Yes, well, we'll come back to the Conservatives in another episode soon and consider what's going on with them. Behind the scenes, there's some interesting moves with some key advisors from the press operation, from the shhadow Chancellor's team out of the party to do different things. So be interested to see if what's going on there. time left for stock picks. Jim, who are you buying or selling this week? I'm gonna buy Blairrightes generally because We were sort of led to believe that Andy Berurnemoth is kind of super soft left and left of Kar ararmour and all the rest of it. But in his first pickers's chief staff James Pernell Uber Blairite from the Blair era. talkal about bring back David Milliband, another mega Blairite from the Blair era and you know nobody's discussing the idea of Pat McFadden being demoted he's actually apparently in potential succession as one of the slightly less likely candidates to be Chancellor. therefore, I wouldn't buy into the Westminster assumption that Liz Kendall and Peter Carl are going to be dem I mean, they might be but you know we are seeing far more blare rights being kept than one might have expected to mono Interesting and a about you I am going to be selling big US tech companies in the UK, their role in the UK, because I've been speaking to various people in and around Burnham's team this week and they are quite very critical about the strategy that's been employed by this current labour government towards big tech and our reliance on big US firms like Meta and Microsoft, etcetera who've been building data centers and you know doing other projects for the government. and they want to have, you know, much more investment in British companies, while also, you know a much greater focus on protecting British voters, British consumers from the kind of perils of big conglomerates before anyone writes in, that is not investment advice. We are the financial types, but this is a political podcast. Those are Anna's personal views Robert, how about you Well, I was in a very similar vein and where I was going sell science and science policy because I think There isn't or an appreciation for this that I'm seeing coming out of Burnham camp moment. There's a bit of lip service to it in his big speech on Monday, but I mean, for a man who comes from the city that gave birth to the atomic age, you know one of the first computers in a way, he doesn't evince an interest in the future in that way. and I worry about science policy and a commitment to driving Britain forward in science. And I think what I would like to see and haven't seen yet, but thiss time is a big science figure. around team Burning. Boris Johnson had Dominic Cummings, who was a real evangelist for tech and science policy to do his thinking for him. Rusush should sounak was his own science and AI evangelist. I would like to see a big science evangelist in and around the Burnham team and I haven't seen it yet, and it slightly worries me. What about you, Lucy I'm going to buy Morgan McSweeney. His stock is obviously very low since he was forced to resign as Starmer's Chief of staff and was pretty roundly blamed for many of the ways in which the Labour administration has gone so wrong under Starmer, but he's just given his first sit down interview to the great George Parker It's a lunch with the FT and I thought it was fascinating to him more about his background. I just hadn't realised how close to sort of dropping off and the edges of society he had been as a young man and he came from Macreman Island to London and worked on building sites, worked in a pub that he took George to, was pointing out the spot where a customer had punched him once and he talked about being destitute so for surfing and really how that had grounded his politics away from idealism to something earther because he understood arious life and livelihoods can be for many people. He lived that himself. But the reason I'm buying him is because he is still this incredibly effective campaigner. He's saying he doesn't want to get into the political fray for the next few years, but he is taking up the cause of wanting to protect ocracy from the pernicious effects of artificial intelligence And I just think he's an incredibly canny operator and therefore I wouldn't bet against him in anything he turns his mind to next. That's what we've got time for Anna Jim Robert, thanks for joining. . Nice,ucy. bye Lucy That's it for this episode of the FT's Political Fix. put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes Do check them out. The're articles we've made free for political fixed listeners There's also a link there to Stehven Bush's award winning insside Politics newsletter. You'll get thirty days free Don't forget to subscribe to the show