Future Cabinet and Political Stability

This is the Guardian here have voted for change. They have voted for more power. For the North and everywhere they have voted for hope. Now let's give that back to them. First of all, we congratulate Mr. Burnham on holding what is actually one of the safest labour seats. It's been labour for a hundred years So no great surprises you know that is as we were the underdog he was expected to win except I think he's earned the right to be heard here tonight. I don't think there's another politician in the country or labor politician that could have done what he's just done here and this is history in the making. If There is a contest, just be clear with you, then yes, I will run. I will stand, and I've said repeatedly, I'm not going to walk away from that Having won a thumping majority at the Makerfield by election Andndy Bernon is on his way to Westminster So will the so called King of the North be our next prime mininister? I'm Karen Stacey, and you're listening to Politics Weekly for the Guide Joining me today is my colleague, Jessica Elgert. Jess hi Hello So I started my shift this morning at six o'clock by which point The result was done and dusted. You came in soon after that. We've been digesting. ever since then. we've seen Kir Starmer speak, we've seen Andy Burnham speak. we've seen various cabinet ministers talkal on the morning broadcast shows Can you put all of this into perspective of nine thousand dollars majority? Bter, I think than a lot of people expected big a win was this for Andy Burnham Well, obviously, we're a bit limited about what we can report on polling dayays. So I sort of spent a lot of yesterday talking to MPs who were on the ground, activists, campaigners, members of the Berham campaign about how it was looking. And all of them kept saying they felt it was quite mixed that it was tight, that people they were making an extraordinary number of contacts during the campaign because they had so many activists out And they were getting their promise rate, which is one of the things that parties measure, was coming out, you know well for them. People who said they were voting for him were going out to vote. Promise rate is that the number of people who promise to vote for you or? Yes. how and then who you managed to contact on election day and how many you then get out to vote and tell you that they voted. That was looking good But you still I think they saw there was a pretty massive reform presence in the constituency. There was a lot of campaigners there. And so I think you know there was some nerves that someone told me during the course of yesterday, they thought there was still a ten to twenty percent chance that theyabour could lose. I thought that was higher than I thought about it. But from about eleven PM yesterday You know, when you started getting the boxes in, when they started doing what they call sampling, when they started looking at each of the votes of the awards, I think it became clear then that it was a much bigger margin of victory than they were expecting. You know, they there was one MP a few weeks ago who said to me, they thought that it was so good for Burnham that he would beat Josh Simmsons' majority. And he was the only person who said that And I thought,, I don't know about that. And he actually Berham actually doubled it. I mean, it's extraordinary really the scale of that big. Well, let's actually do the numbers just for a moment, because it's worth unpicking some of these fascinating results as they've come out Andy Burnham got twenty four thousand nine hundred and thirty seven votes Second place was Rob Kenyan, the reform candidate on fifteen thousand six hundred and ninety six. That's a majority of over nine thousand, as you say. Pretty much nobody else got any votes. At any scale, Rebecca Shepard, the Restore Britain candidate got three thousand one hundred and eleven, which puts them on about, I think, seven percent. And then the Tories, the Greens, the Libdams all failed to get a thousand votes, all lost their deposits. The Tories got nine hundred and ninety seven, the Greens got three hundred and eight, and the Libdam's got one hundred sixty three. One of the fascinating things there is just quite how much those two parties have squeezed everybody else out That suggests that you know, even the Tories are not really fighting these straight up labour reform battles anymore. But for Anny Burnhon, that is fifty five percent of the vote. His vote is bigger than reforms plus restores put together That's going to be a really important part of his pitch now to the rest of the party, isn't it, that not only can he beat reform, but he can beat reform plus, restore, plus, the toories all put together. That kind of completely changes the dynamic, I think, about what labour people might think about the next election The other thing that Andy Burnham needed to prove was that he could bring that sort of progressive coalition back together around labour so it'd get Greens liibb Dems to make sure that they were backing him and they weren't so profoundly disillusioned with labour that they wanted to send a message by voting for sort of more left parties Imini clearly did that in Makerfield. Again, there's a question which I'm sure we willll come ont to about how can you actually replicate that across the rest of the country? But you know Andy Burnham, the whole concept of Andy Burnham was He is the person who can Reform voters back to labour and bring green voters back to labour. he has a strength of personality. bring both sides back into backacking neighbour and he had to prove that concept and He proved it. One of the most interesting things this morning, I thought was Lisa Nandy going on the broadcast rround and saying that no other politician could have done this. This is why she is serving in the cabinet of Kia Stama. it's quite the comment Yeah, and it is quite interesting as well to hear the Prime Minister this morning talk about how, you know, it' labour's achievements and labours Message of hope over division. that has been the thing that won the makeakefield Well, I mean, nobody thinks that apart from him caring out that change, a lot of what we have achieved people told me wouldn not be possible. If we had sat here doing this interview at the general election in twenty twenty four, and you put me in two years time, the economy will be stabilised, in two years time waiting list will be coming down, in two years time, migration will be back under control. in two years time would EU in the relationship we've got. And in two years' time reform would be on the run and the tide would be turning. I would have said that would be a very good place to be, but that is the place we are in If you extrapolate the result from The local election. Yes in Macerfield, It would have been an eight thousand reform majority. Yeah. So that just shows you, you know, the kind of strength of the switching that's gone on here for Andy Burnham to get that nine thousand majority. All right, well let's go to the man himself and hear what he said from a football field in Greater Manchester this morning. We've been on a path for forty years that simply hasn't worked for people and places in this part of the world. And this now is the change moment. We have an opportunity to turn the tide, to make the country feel like it's working again to make people see that politics positive difference to make people feel hope again That is the main thing I think we need in this country right now for people to feel a sense of hope that there is something better to work towards on the horizon. Jess, one of the things that has fascinated me about this by election campaign and about Andy Burnhams politics really over the last few years is how he talks in quite elevated rhetoric about the need to change the country about the need to do politics differently about you know the need to unite both left and right in a way that hasn't been done before, the need to prioritize the North in a way that hasn't been done before It strikes me that all of those words are now going to run up against the political reality that Kirama has been battling for the last two years And Burnerham's already boxed himself in on a number of issues tax being one major example Is there any way? that he can carry this momentum through if he does, and we can talk about whether he will or not, but if he does end up in number ten I think you know we've always talked about, we're talking about for years, even in the depths of opposition, how the Ky Star's fundamental problem is he doesn't have a story, he doesn't have a vision, he doesn't have a narrative, he can't Dud. thing where you draw all of your kind of beliefs together and put them forward as a kind of political ideology. for one of the better words. Yeah Andy Burnham can do that There's no question about that. Of course, if you're going to be Prime Minister and potentially prrime Minister in a matter of weeks, you need an awful lot more than that You need a serious political operation and again, you know, theyve w they've run an incredible pain but that's very different to having a serious operation that can run Downing Street and run the government. and you need to know quite precisely what you're going to do and what you're going to do quickly, what you're going to do long term. We have never seen anything like it in terms of having to start from the ground running, if Andy Burnham's going to be Prime Minister quickly and how he might change things, what legislation he might prioritize? What's his view going to be on defense spending? know How is he planning for potentially a budget in the autumn? We don't know any of this and some one of his key suppters and advisers texted me last night about three AM saying Wow, we're gonna have to get ready very, very fast. Oh man And they sounded I have to say a tiny bit daunted Wow. Well, I mean that just reminds me of when Kirama himself came to government and we suddenly realized that the planning we have been told had been meticulously put in place wasn't quite there in the way that had been promised. I've just written a piece which should be going up on the Guardian's website soon, which we will link to in the program notes about what policies he might pursue if he does get into government. And it struck me writing this that he's hemmed in on so many different sides for different reasons. So Let's just go through some of them and he's talked about some of them even on Friday morning Public ownership of utilities is going to be a major part of his policy platform. He wants to renationalize Tim's water and then get going with other parts of the water and the energy industry The problem with that is there are quite a few water companies who are actually quite profitable. and you know don't necessarily need a bailout and are you really going to there's two of them which are footy listed. Are you going to go and compensate all of their shareholders, take them off their the stock exchanges and put them into public ownership Then you know you talk about, well, let's do something on the cost of living. fine, you know, you could freeze rent. that might have an impact on house building. You could take green levies off energy bills and put them into taxation. That means you have to raise taxes. Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about devolution. okay? You've already had a devolution bill that allows mayors to ask for whatever powers they want. What more can you do here For me, it seems like there's barrier after barrier to achieving what his rhetoric has said he can achieve. And I know K Sama's allies will say this a lot, but Is there any sense that he can achieve where Kisa has failed I'm going to say something which I'm sure that I think Ali's allies Vandy Bern probably won't like me saying very much, but my strong suspicion is if he becomes Prime Minister, They're things that the Labour Government, that Kia Stara has said in train are just really not going to change very much almost everything that Andy Burnham does will be part of what has been Kyia Staras's program. Yeah, which has actually been a relatively progressive program You know, there are things that you can object to about what KSammer has done over the last couple of years. and I think there are particular ones such as The island of Stranger Speech, the botched welfare reform, the appointment of Peter Mandelon under that under the surface of that Oh lotots of things that the government is doing that it's getting almost no credit for. whether that's one hundred and thirteen billion pounds in investment infrastructure in the first budget that was taken out of the fiscal rules, the lifting the two child benefit cap all of the things that all the reforms that it is doing around net zero, clean energy, You know, the economy is not as in bad a shape as it could be. but I do think that there is a case of put a bit of a better lipstick on some of this stuff And Andy Burnham is a man who can do that then you can see Labour being able to take credit for quite a lot of things that they are already doing and making it feel like change in a way that Ke' Thom just has not been able to do Yeah. And I think this will ruffle a few feathers in the Burning C, but I frankly don't actually see what the other option is. He doesn't have more money to play with. He has a very little room for maneuvre actually. and the change of direction, I think will look much more like a change of story and a change of personle rather than a real change of direction Yeah, fascinating. So stararism but sold better. C it work? Let's just talk very quickly about reform because that's the other half of this. they did not do as well as they'd hoped Is this proof that the wheels are starting to come off the reform bandwagon and that voters once presented with a choice of Nigel Farage or anyone else at an election are increasingly choosing anyone else. I think it's absolutely fascinating how we've seen and we've seen evidence of it and it just makes you realise how much Extrapolation there has been how much narrative built on those six votes in the Runcorn by election, you know almost a year ago, that the reform you won by a very, very tiny margin then that was seen as they're absolutely on the march, they're taking over labour territory, and to be fair to them, they still have a healthy lead in the polls Everywhere you look, you can see evidence of voters piling in behind the candidates who can beat Nigel Farage and beat reform. And I found that, you know, I was only on the ground and make a feelield for a day, but you know I found Tories who were voting for Andy Burnham in order to keep Nigel Farrage out you can see that that is obviously something that has been happening in Makeerfield to a certain extent, just when you look at those results That is a very big problem for Nitl Fge. and they and they've tried, you know, kind of different candidates. they had Matt Goodwin in Gouron Denton, you know, kind of high profile figure kind of intellectual voice of that hard right That didn't work and now they've gone hyper local, a plumber, blue collue job. that hasn't worked either. So what can he do? And I think this will, you know I'd say soul searchingform. I don't know if reform dooul searching, I think it will potentially you there will be some bust ups internally about the postmortem here Well, let's just bring in some of the things that our colleague Ben Quinn has been hearing. He's been talking to reform sources this morning. And it's quite interesting here what they think has gone wrong. I mean, they do definitely think that this has gone wrong. This wasn't just you know, an accident and a one off because of Andy Burnham One reform UK donor said, not only have they failed to win, but they've spectacularly failed It also tells us the underlying support for labor in some cases can be quite strong. There are questions about strategy But also about policies. Populist can only w up to a point en after that it can fall apart Somebody else says he needs to knock heads together and stop the competition between his team, but he also needs to delegate more. I've heard that so many times said about Nigel Farage in various different parties and it never actually happens. One reform activist said that it was a problem that Robert Kenyan was not advised to apologize for some of the sexist remarks He'd made on social media before running Others say, look, this was just a one off, but I think there will be some soul searching within reform. I think there are two defenses and I heard Richard Tice make these or at least one of these on the radio this morning. One is, we're really sorry we've messed up our candidate selection on a couple of occasions and it won't happen again. The other is this election was completely bizarre. We were running against a candidate who not only had the election machinery of the governing party, but was also able to campaign on a ticket of change. That will not happen anywhere else Now I think the second one of those is true The first one, however, the candidate selection points perhaps to something deeper a deeper malaise here in the reform movement, which is they can't quite find the right people. And once you get past Farraage and a few other peopleeople around him quality drops off quite starkly. And even those MPs that you've seen get elected, I'm for to give Sarah Poaching in particular here then kind of tends to stumble a lot when they do get into Westminster and get exposed to more regular scrutiny. So that might be something they have to sort out. The Andy Burnnon problem they can't really do much about Yeah, and I think you, obviously the other answer to that is to just keep taking more Tory MPs over to reform. Zia Yusf clearly doesn't want to do that and in fact seems to won that debate within the party that there was a cutoff point. There won't be any more Tories joining. And of course, that comes with its own risks, doesn't it? Be You know, then you just looked like the Tory Party in disguise. So all of these things are a big dilemma. and you know part of the big professionalization of reform, which millions and millions and millions of pounds worth of donations do not actually seem to be fixing All right, well thanks, Jeff. Let' take a break here and when we come back I want to talk to you about exactly what is going to happen over the next few days, which could be some of the most dramatic we've had in recent British political history. thirty three days, thirty three episodes, No of switch. From the goals and the glory to the politics and the problems of the World Cup, if you want soccer analysis from a podcast that's been overanalyysing the game for more than twenty years, then this is it. Join me, Max Rustton, and our expert team of soccer journalists every day of the tournament. canan England end sixty years of hurt? or will this be another year of falling just short Probably World Cup Daily, listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch full episodes on YouTube Welcome back. I'm speaking my colleague, Jessica Elgt, who is sitting in a gloomy room in the middle of the palace of Westminster, while the action is actually elsewhere. Well every politico in Britain seems to be up in Makefield or the Greater Magester area today. But attention is going to shift very quickly to where you are, Jes, because the question over the next few days becomes, what is Andy Burnham going to do with his new Westminster seat Is he going to manage to unsek Kir Starma? Will there be a contest Can this be done quickly and bloodlessly as Burnham's allies would like First of all, how quickly do you think it can move and are you expecting anything today So I think it depends on so much, Kirn to be honest, but preference of the Burnham camp has been course the weekend, the weight of Parliamentary party opinion, particularly MP's opinion is So great that the Prime Minister sees that there is no other option but to hand over in an orderly transition that would not involve ideally cabinet or ministerial resignations. They are strongly guiding that they want to avoid that kind of project chaos, which the enemies of Boris Johnson unleashed where he effectively couldn't form a government because no one was willing to serve as a minister they will see that there are so many MPs who are prepared to backkendy Burnden and that both whereest streeting won't be able to make the numbers. Nobbody else will be able to Prime Minister will see that even he doesn't have The backing to go on and he will agree with Andy Burnham that there will be this orderly transition that we've always talked about, which would actually give Burnham a bit of time before he goes into office. Now the problem with that plan is the Prime Mister could just tell them to do one And there's not very then much they can do about that apart from launch a leadership challenge, which Kia Starmer has said today that he will fight And so I think the question is is who goes to see Kir Starmer over the coming days? What is the conversation that Kir Starmer has with Andy Burnham? We know they spoke just after he was selected as a candidate, but the two, as I understand, have not spoken since then. So they have to have a conversation. we'll see whether Kir Starmer keeps him hanging on for that conversation as he did with West Street when West Streeting asked to see him just after those may elections and subsequently resign. Might West Streeting go first and trigger a leadership contest On Monday or Tuesday that Andy Burnham can then join thats something. He said at the end of last week that he would do f course that was before we saw the size of Andy Berners's majority. And if you're wear streeting now looking at the writing on the wall, I think you might start to come to other conclusions. So We'll see how all of that plays out It's going to be absolutely fascinating. And I think we're starting to see the beginnings of that even now. So reports are coming out as we're speaking, Jess, that Kis Ama has got on the phone to some of his closest allies, David Lami, Richard Hammer being to the people being mentioned just to see what they think and to test his levels of support. We have seen three people in the government offer completely different analyses on the radio this morning. First of all, we had Lisa Andandy, the culture secretary say Only Andy could have done this, which suggests to me very heavily that she thinks that Andy Benham should become the next Prime Minister. Th we had Harriet Harman, and I say in the government, but Harriet Harman' hass been given an advisory role to the Prime Minister in recent weeks. She's saying We do need to have some kind of process here. Maybe all the potential candidates can get together and agree that this should go to MPs, but not the wider labour membership in an effort to keep this tight and quick. Not exactly the most loyal thing to say. And then we had Steve Reid, Uber loyalist, last man in the trenches insisting that K'dama should stay in place and would fight any contest to come And doing the thing that I know that you and our colleague Pippa have reported on, which is tryrying to throw up hurdles in front of Andy Burnham to him becoming Prime Minister. I think one source told you that it was going to be the hundred meter hurdles, O of which the first of those hurdles is, well now he's got to fight the Ger Manchester Mayoralty to make sure Labour doesn't lose that We're already seeing people stake out their positions. It's interesting. we haven't heard, I think key figures yet, people like Shabana Mamud people like Ed Milliband, they haven't come out swinging for the Prime Minister Are they going to very quietly over the weekend call him up and say, all right, that's it, the gameess up If so, we might just see the fight draone from the Prime Minister by Monday, but you know, if he thinks he's got any chance, it feels like he's in the mood to battle on I think there are two camps that are really important here. First, there are the Prime Minister's actual friends. So they are people around him in the government who have, you know, not the sort of loyalist, but people who have been You know, there since the very beginning of his leadership campaign around him when he was shadow Brexit seecretary. Those people are Jenny Chapman, who's the international AidS secretary, the attttorney General, Richard Hermmer, the Cabinet Office Minister Chris Ward who used to work for Starmer, it's these people who are sort of his closest councsel as well as obviously his wife Victoria. And I think a lot of will depend on what these people are telling him to do And I think the other one is those kind of loyalist ministers who have not really taken part in this and are kind of like the Bellweher ministers. And those would be people like Emma Reynolds, Heidi Alexander, people who just haven't really got involved in the back and forth. know what does Bridgete Phillipson think? And I think those people are going to be more influential actually in kind of tipping in how this goes You know, rather than Edmin Obama S should bon in a mood, which frankly everyone knows. In that case, it was a really telling moment earlier this week, something that wasn't very much noticed in Westminster. Emm Reynold stood up in the chamber of the House of Commons and did this little notice statement where she said that as environment seecretary, she was recommending against the proposed rescue deal on the table for Thames Water, which could eventually see it privatized or maybe even listed on the stock exchange. What that means is Nationalization of Thameswater has come one step closer And to me, for Emma Reynolds to be saying that in the Chamber of the House of Commons suggests she might just be trying to edge herself a bit closer to Andy Burnham's policy platform. Now, maybe that's just a sensible thing to do politically, but I thought that was one of those really telling moments where you see ministers from a current government try and position themselves in anticipation of what they think the next government is going to be Yeah, and I think that that's happening across the board. And rightly so, I think there are cabinet ministers who have worked hard in their portfolios who are genuinely worried about what a massive change of cabinet might mean. know among those would be Bridget Phillipson the SEN reforms have taken a lot of delicate negotiations with MPs. and there are things at a very critical stage the European summit that's coming up in a few weeks, which Nick Thomas Simmons has been handling, what does it mean actually to have a massive change of these ministers? That will be the arguments that a lot of people close to Andy Berham will be hearing. but I think allies of his will say to us is that Andy Bern when he comes in will need to look like change. and change does mean a fairly massive clear out of who have been previously in charge and new people put in who are very much aligned to him, but also looked like a kind of spread of the party, which has been his mantra since he's been out of Westminster, that there needs to be kind of a broader church, not just within labour actually, but across the progressive parties. It's funny actually that the one person we haven't really mentioned in all of this is Rachel Reeves and it feels like Again, she's going to be someone who's very crucial. We know that she's had a very difficult relations with numberum ten over the defense spending row that's been happening that led up to the resignation of John Healy. she and people around her do will be really, really interesting over the coming days. Wellhall we just do some of those runners and riders? Be I know you've done a couple of pieces on this First of all, let's do runners and riders if there is a contest Let's say that Andy Beramore West Streeting gets the eighty one. Cest is opened up we would expect, obviously Burnham maybe West Street, if you can get the numbers possibly k a star to run, who else can do so? I think it's possible that PLP will want that to be a woman running which would be a reasonable expectation when the Labour Party hasn't ever had a female leader. That could be Ete Cooper. It's funny we're talking about Angela Rayna anymore. it feels very unlikely that she would run against Andy Burnham in that kind of contest. But you know a person was saying to me yesterday that you know there it might be get to a point where if Kia Stahmer can't run, then people want to coalesce around a kind of loyalist candidate to sort of test Burnham, put him through that leadership contest. The most obvious person for them to coalce around in that instance might be Darren Jones Oh, interesting. Okaykay. That's a that's a bit of a left field one. Let's say that Andy Burnham does become Prime Mister, give us just a few names as to who might be in his cabinet Well I think the biggest question obviously, isn't it, Karin is is who's going to be Chancellor? And I don't know, I always try and think like what is actually the most obvious thing and work back from there. And the most obvious chancellor is Ed Miniband by Miles, the person who kind of aligns the most with Burnham says his vision is his think big approach, which he had in the run up to returning to cabinet He clearly fits with the direction of travel of Bernerman. He has been, you know his closest cabinet ally when it comes to paving the way for him to return the first person to mention to the Prime Minister that he thinks it would be wise to have an orderly transition before the next election. So he's the most obvious Of course, that comes with its own risks, doesn't it? You know bond markets may not like the idea of Chancellor Rd Miller band, even if it's an administration committed to fiscal rules So then who does it look like then might there be a deal with West Street? I think that's possible, but there's lots of parts of Andy Burnham's program that West Streeting might not want to sign up to So Bana Mahood, someone who's been talked about, it seems pretty clear that she'd prefer to stay at the home office Okay, all right, well, that's fascinating. I do think West steting as a slightly underrated bet for Chancellor, not least because One of the things that I know Andy Burnham's supporters are looking at is where Streeting's proposals to raise capital gains tax and using that to pay maybe for a cost of living package. watch that space on there. I think it's worth finishing by just rememinding ourselves that we're only two years, less than two years, in fact after Kiss Sta one a stonking majority at a general election Do you think that voters will see everything that's happened over the last few days and everything that's likely to happen over the next few days and think Well, fair enough, Labour's got his hat together and now they've actually got somebody popular in number ten Or do they look at this and think We've only just had a general election. Why have we got a different prime Minister and we haven't even had a say on who it should be I think it's extraordinary that we're in this position with such a sizable majority. but you know, this has been something that's been in train for a long time. something that's been in train The idea of replacing Kirst Star with Andy Bernon was something that I think we first reported and we heard talked about last summer and that has been you know, because of the unprecedented and probably unfair unpopularity of the Prime Mister because how he has managed to alienate people on both the right and the left and that sort of crunches his numbers to be sort of the worst least popular Prime Minister in in memory and you know, again, that feels quite baffling when you say that, but that is you know, the case And so more people that you hear you out on the doorsteps, particularly Makeerfield were saying they were voting directly for a change. They knew they were voting for a change in Prime Minister. And almost nobody had a good word to say about Kist arma think the danger for labour as well is this idea of kind of chaos and turmoil, which was exactly what Labour promised to end And I think that's one of the reasons why Burhams Campper are extremely cautious about this idea of multiple resignations, ministers kind of leaving and then there being a long winded contest where you effectively leave the country ungoverned, you know for months, potentially months. got to try and do this if they're going to do this in a way that doesn't look like the Tory chaos of those years of Boris Johnson and Lizruss and Rashi Sunak, they may not be able to avoid that, but they've got to try Well, let me just throw one other potential scenario into the mix, which is what happens if Andy Burnham does get in starts his term as Prime Minister and very quickly finds himself just as unpopular as Kir Stama was. What them for labour Do they try and turf him out and find somebody else? Or do they have to accept that, well, maybe this is just where we're going to become the next general election. Once they've played this card, there are many other cards to play It looks like You know, labor have pinned all of their hopes on Andy Burnham now and his ability to beat reform and you know the demonstration of that in Makerfield. Every Labour MP who wants change will say we've got one chance, we've got one chance to get it right to reset And you know, there was an argument from quite a few of them. It's a compelling one the party actually should have waited a bit longer before they made that change that you would do, you know, quite similar to the liiberals who in Canada did, you know, with Mark Carney, you make a change you know, just a year out or less from a general election and reset then and use the bounce then. But, you know They've doing it now. They're in it now. This is where we are. And that's where we are. That is all from us. Thanks so much for joining us. Please like and follow Politics Weekly UK to make sure you keep getting our episodes in your feed Piipa and I will be back on Monday with more analysis of this result and to check in on who exactly is Prime Minister Any comments or questions you have? Please send them over to the usual email address, pololitics Weekly UK at theguardian. com Politics Weekly, UK That's the Guardian. This episode was produced by Frankie Toby, the music by Exel Pcutier, and the executive producers Ramaz Etahaj and Ellie Berry Bye byee This is the Guardian