Far Right Protests and Political Splintering

This is the Guardian . Specifically on Brexit, are you in favour of rejoining the European Union? I've said in the long term there is a case for that, but I'm not advocating that in this by election. Are you going to step up and contest the Labour leadership? John, we need we need a proper contests with the best candidates on the field and I'll be standing. This by-election is about a labour crisis, not a national crisis. Kirstarman may go, Andy Burnham may replace him, nothing's going to change for the next three years. Is there a chance that he might set out a timetable to leave? Let me be really clear. Keir Starmer remains the most resilient person I know in my life. This is Kieran Stacey. This is Peter Walker. And you're listening to Politics Weekly for The Guardian . I'm joined by Peter this week. Hello. Instead of Pippa, who is away somewhere at a secret location on a leadership away day. So thank you very much for joining us. Pleasure. Always, always, always good. So much has happened over the last few days. It's difficult to know sometimes what was the moment at which everything changed. But something has changed. And as we're sitting here today on Monday morning in Westminster, the feeling is that Andy Burnham is going to be Prime Minister by the autumn. I mean that has now become the default assumption. You talk to Labour MPs, you talk to members of other parties, they all assume that Andy Burnham is going to be Prime Minister. And for me, the moment that shifted was when Labour's ruling national executive committee didn't put up any resistance to him fighting that by-election. Of course, it was the NEC which stopped him fighting in Gorton and Denton. Yeah. This time around, lay down and said, Okay, fair enough, and he can run. And from that moment, it just became assumed that A, he would be selected as the candidate, B, he would win the seat, C he would immediately challenge Keyst one. A lot of steps. And do you become Prime Minister? And that is a lot of steps. And I was talking to people, I was working yesterday, and I was talking to people over the weekend and asking them, you know, what assumptions have we made in Westminster that you think we might have got wrong? Yeah. And one thing that came back a lot, particularly from people up in Greater Manchester and anywhere around Wigan was we don't think that by election is as certain as you guys seem to. And in fact, one of Andy Burnham's very close allies, someone who knows the seat well, told me he only only gave Andy Burnham a forty five percent chance of winning that seat. Now, I should say there's always a bit of a game of expectations management here and also they want to motivate Labour Players. It's also worth pointing out that polling and forecasting in individual seats is notoriously difficult. It is difficult. And there has been a little bit of uh servation modelling, not quite polling, but they've done some modelling based on previous polling they did. And they think that Andy Burnham is about three points ahead, which is not very much. Essentially nothing within the margin of error. Exactly. That's within the margin of error. So is it a forty-five percent chance he has of winning? Is it a fifty-five percent chance of winning? It's difficult to say, but it's certainly not a slam dunk. So it's worth bearing in mind, I think, even as we're talking to people here in Westminster, there are plenty of ways in which this entire plan could trip up and leave us in a completely different situation altogether. 'Ca 'cause I almost thought last week the most significant thing was potentially Burnham being able to find a seat 'cause there'd been so many seats he'd been linked with and all these MPs saying, Look, can I just say no I'm not gonna stand down? So so I I th I think it was incredibly important the fact that he's got the seat. But I I think one thing we can say for sure that if it wasn't Andy Burnham fighting that seat, Labour would almost certainly lose. That yeah. They had a Josh Simon's had a majority of just over five thousand. Yeah. But then in the local elections across Wigan Metropolitan Borough, reform basically won almost every single seat within the make filled area. And they're very bullish about winning. I mean, what do you think is going to settle it? Well, it's really interestinging because I was talk to Luke Trell, friend of the podcast, Polster Extraordinaire, over the weekend, and he was laying out what he sees as the battle over the next few weeks for Makerfield. And he said there are going to be two very powerful forces going head to head in this by-election. One is the personal factor of Andy Burnham himself, very strong reputation, especially in Manchester. That is a real thing. The other is reform's message of defeat Andy and really screw over the Labour Party, possibly for a generation. And I think we'll we'll talk about what happens if Labour loses the by-election, but let me just give you two things that could trip burn them up in this seat. And they've already started to raise their head. One is Europe. Now, Wes Treaty over the weekend gave a speech at a progress rally here in London in which he said Britain's future is in the EU and at some point we will rejoin. There's actually nothing that controversial about that. If you talk to his allies, they they say, look, we don't mean now, we mean at some point in the future, and you'd have to have a separate mandate for it. Whereas Streeting has been saying similar things for a long time. Andy Burnham has said similar things, we'll come on to that in a second. But the really interesting thing about the timing of that speech was it's exactly the message that Andy Burnham doesn't want to be fighting on in that by-election . The other issue that I think could be even stronger there is immigration. Now to win the Labour leadership, Andy Burnham needs to persuade people in the Labour Party movement that he's on their side. And one of the issues on which they're going to be trying to push him is to soften the party's approach on immigration, particularly on the asylum changes that Shabana Mahmood is making. These are the changes which Angela Rayner said are un British and lots of Labour people think the same thing. If there's any hint of Andy Burnham saying that kind of thing in maker field, that could really hamper his chances. But let me just come back to that Europe question because I thought it might be useful for us to go back to Labour conference last year when I asked Andy Burnham that exact question. Hmm. Rejoin the EU or stay out ? Long term, I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna say it . I I w I want to rejoin in the I hope in my lifetime I see this country rejoin the European Union. I'm absol absolutely clear about that. I believe in unions of all kinds. Union the Union that is the UK, the European Union benefited this uh country, trade unions. People get prosper more when they're part of unions of countries or whatever. That's my belief, so I'm gonna say it clearly. I think everybody knowss that' what Andy Burnham thinks and some right-wing journalists have already been gleefully retweeting that particular clip. But I think you can be very sure that Andy Burnham is going to do his best not to talk about Brexit the next month. David Lamy was the government representative on the broadcast round this morning. I was listening to him on various um shows and whenever he was talking about Brexit, he was basically saying, you know, basically I'm not going to say anything, you know, it's collective responsibility. We're not making any decisions now. And the point you made is that any decision to even go beyond the current government's red lines over customs union single market would need a new election or stuff like that. But I mean going back to Luke Trill, I think one of the most significant things which could, if anything, get Burnham over the line, is that Luke Trill's unifying theory of why politicians, some do well and some don't, is the ones who look like they're enjoying it. Yep. Tend to do well. And compared to Keir Star mer, Andy Burnham generally looks like he enjoys talking to the public. Yeah. So if anything gets him over, it's that kind of stardust, that kind of magic. But you can be sure that reform will sh throw immigration and Brexit at him at any chance Let's just talk about what happens if Andy Burnham does lose the seat because that leaves Labour in a carnage very difficult position. And I was asking senior Labour people over the weekend what will happen if Andy loses. And I wanted to just read you this one particular quote. If Andy doesn't win, this person said, the party is in meltdown. They kicked and I'm sorry for language here, but here you go. They kicked the shit out of Keir. Wes has made a tit out of himself. Andy is not an Yeah yeah, you know lots of lots of mixed metaphors, but um you can kind of get a sense that totally in a way the worst outcome here, maybe for anybody apart from where streeting in the Labour Party, is if Burnham now loses because you've you're left with a hobble prime minister and not many other options. Basically, the Labour Party in allowing Burnham to stand has bet the mortgage on him winning this because there's now a clear plan of Andy Burnham returning to Parliament as the person who can win in a reform-friendly seat. And if he doesn't do that, then not only he's not in parliament but his magic is then gone and he's probably doomed forever he can't just keep on fighting seats till he find ones that will actually take him so yeah you would have this probably quite bitter West reating versus Ed Miliband, Angela Rayner fight. And you would end up with a leader who a lot of Labour MPs would think would be second if not third best. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. And then the other question is what happens if Andy Burnham wins, which I think is also very, very interesting, not least because he's said quite a lot about policy over the last year or two, not only about the EU, but I think one of the things that I'm really monitoring quite closely is what exactly he starts to say about taking public control of private companies. Yeah. And particularly utilities. Now, he has this theory of Manchesterism, which I have to admit I find a bit of a vague concept as to what exactly. You say Manchesterism's vague. I guess you know it's just a word with ism attached to the end of it. But one thing that you can point to in terms of what he's done in Manchester is taking public control of the bus and public transport system. It's something he talks about a lot, the B network, and he and his allies talk about it as a possible model for national utility companies as well. First in their sights is Thames Water. And I think this could be a really interesting moment. What exactly is going to happen to that mammoth utility company? Lots of Labour people think it should just be taken into government control. And I suspect Burnham agrees with It's a tricky one because you have the argument that these utilities should not be in private hands. There's a very strong reason for that. But to take them into actual state ownership would most people agree cost many billions of pounds . Andy Burnham's been slightly vague in his language. He talked about public control. And for example, the B network, like London's buses, is a franchise run by the Meralty, but the actual buses are run by private companies, so it's a bit of a mixture. So it could be the same where you have utilities which are still owned by private companies, but the state has a lot more control. He's left himself some wiggle room there, but this whole thing is going to get into essentially how left wing on the economy is Andy Burning going to be. And a lot of Labour members and some Labour MPs want him to go quite far. But there's others who say, oh no, it's going to melt down the bond markets, cause a run of the pound, and it's an incredibly difficult balancing app for him. And the lucky thing for him is that in the by-election, he almost has two discrete stages. He has the by-election he needs to win and once he's in, then he can start courting Labour MPs. Yeah. And they'll probably quite happily forget all the vague stuff he said during the by election. Well, hopefully for him, you know, if you're on his team you would hope that Labour members aren't listening too hard when he makes his pitch to some of those maker field voters. But we should actually talk about you know some of the other people involved in this because it's not all the Andy Burnham show. Where Streeting has said over the weekend that he does intend to stand. Personally, I don't think he's got the numbers, and I'm told that he would have to have those eighty-one MPEs, even if a leadership contest has already been triggered. So I I struggle to see the argument for the case, but he's making a good go of it. I think he is. I mean who knows if it was just Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer decided he wouldn't stand and there was a need for someone from the centre right, you might get some MP saying, Well, look, just let's have a proper argument. But I think Wes Streeting's all-out if quiet assault on the top job, perhaps came to an end on Thursday when Downing Street had essentially been in quite a playground way saying, You haven't got the numbers, go on, show us and they put out this slightly strange statement saying, Well we have got the numbers, but the situation has changed. Yep. Which basically meant the numbers go to another school. And and he had to put out this resignation letter which was quite strong. Yeah. And had some good points in it. But was basically trying to withdraw with as much dignity and tact as he possibly could 'cause he didn't . And you know, who knows, Andy Burnham could make so many compromises, he crashes and burns. There might be a fear able future where Burnham doesn't get into Parliament and streeting is the only option. Because I mean he's still very talented. He's a good communicator. Yeah. He's got interesting ideas. Yeah. But I slightly worry for his you know very obvious ambition to take the top job now. Well look, he is not backing down. I am told he is going to make a resignation speech this week in the comments that will be worth watching. He'll be continuing to make the pro EU case which he's been making over the weekend. And he'll also talk about different areas of public policy including um technology and the role it plays in our life and also interestingly, whether we should tax wealth more than income, which is a a very uh you know, it's a subject very close to a lot of Labour MP's heart. Where's the where's the left winger? There you go. And it's not just where Streeting and Andy Burnham that are in this fight. Keir Starmer it has been saying until recently that he is going to get into any leadership contest. Now he spent the weekend in checkers, apparently kind of deciding what to do. Well, I'm not surprised . I mean if I think I was if I was Prime Minister in that situation, I think I'd like to retreat as a prime. A hundred percent. Um but he apparently has decided over the weekend, I'm told, by uh several close allies of his . Two things. One, he's not going to set out a timetable, and in fact, David Lemmy, I think, was saying that this morning. Yeah. He's not going to succumb to the wishes of Ed Miliband and others to say this is when I'm going to leave office. Two, he's actually not going to make a decision until after the Makerfield by election, the corollary of which is possibly the most important point here. He's not actually determined to fight come what may in any circumstance. And I think, having talked to several people yesterday, he has decided if Andy Burnham wins and wins, you know, on a clear majority and it's not contested or anything like that, that he will step down. But if he doesn't, or if there's, you know, a a messy contest and things look very unstable, then he will get into the race. Yeah. And that I think is an important shift. And if Andy Burnham does win Makerfield, I think , it may not be too long before he is in number ten. I think it goes back again to this idea of the decision by the National Executive Committee to let Burnham stand being the key thing. Right. The moment that happened, then the next obvious thing was well if he gets in he's not gonna fight and there's a very important reason for him to not set this out now because basically if you set a timetable to go become the lamest of lame ducks. Yeah Theresa May did that, Tony Blair did that to an ext ent, and all your authority is gone. It's like the Wizard of Oz, the curtain's been pulled back. There's just nothing there. And at least now, I mean David Lamy on the morning broadcast round was saying he's not gonna set a timetable out. He wasn't saying he's gonna go. So that very much fits in with you. But there is a world in which Andy Burnham loses the by-election and you know West Streeting hasn't got the numbers. And Kirstalmer might suddenly think, well, if it's Ed Millerband or Angela Rayner, both of whom have potential downsides as PM, maybe I should stick around. Yeah. But I think you're right. I think if Andy Burnham came in particularly with a whopping mandate for the Makerfield Public, he would think I'm not just gonna fight this anymore. Yeah, I think that's it. Meanwhile, I should say, the in fighting within the Labour Party continues and uh I have to say where Streeting's intervention over the weekend where he started talking about EU membership has triggered an angry response not only from Andy Bennham but also from allies of Keir Starmer and people in the government. And one government source texted me late last night and with such a vituperative quote about where streeting that we actually didn't run it in full in the newspaper. But I can tell our viewers and our listeners that this person, this government source, called him a clapped out backbencher. Uh such was the vitriol theory me. Um between the two camps. So you know, we are going to be in for several weeks of this messy inviting. And we had Lisa Nandi on the Sunday broadcast round, and Lisa Nandi represents Wigan, which is quite Brexity too. It's obviously very near where Megfield is. And she's always been kind of the front bench Brexit conscience for Labour. Yeah. So what was she saying it was a strange thing to say? Odd. Odds, yes. Odd was her word. Which was a good thing she said. Laura Coonsberg at the BBC asked her, What do you make of what West Street was saying? She said, I thought it was odd. Which is about as damning as it gets, absolutely. Well let's pause here for a minute. When we come back we're going to be talking about something quite different, which was two huge competing rallies taking place over the weekend in central London. I'm Kai Wright. I'm Carrie Sherman. And we are here to tell you about our new show, which is rooted in this fe eling that at least I have, I know you have, where you know, it's kind of like when you wake up in the morning and you pick up your phone and you're just hit in the face with a fire hose of news, right? Like there's war, there's authoritarianism, our planet is learning. I could go on and on and on. And on and on and on, but like we're trying to figure out how to manage it, right? Like how do you manage it? I manage it by leaning in and trying to learn more and trying to figure out okay how can I be smarter about this particular topic and who can I talk to that's going to make me feel better about it. And who can tell me who's responsible for the mess that I'm reading about. So that's our mission. That's the show . Welcome to Stateside with Kai and Carter. We're a new show from The Garden. We're talking to big thinkers and the best journalists, just trying to understand the world through smart conversation and honest reporting. We don't have billionaires telling us what to say Stateside with Kai and Carter will come out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday starting May 13th. Follow on Apple Podcasts or catch us wherever you watch or listen. Welcome back. I'm here with the Guardians Peter Walker. Peter, we were talking in the first half of this episode about the chaos in Westminster uh in and in British politics more generally and the uncertainty in the Prime Minister's position. Arguably something more important happened over the weekend, which was two very large sets of people went on two very large marches around central London. One being the Unite the Right movement, far right movement led by Stephen Yaxley Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson. The other was a pro-Palestinian march. I was told that these two events coupled with the FA Cup final being on the same day made this one of the biggest policing days in London's recent history. No overtime within fifty miles of London. Absolutely. I mean it does seem that both of them managed to pass off reasonably peacefully. The two crowds, as far as we can tell, didn't really come into contact with each other. But I thought it might be worth just dwelling a little bit on that Unite the Right March because significant though it was, large though it was, it was kind of importantly different in many ways from the same event a year ago. Yes, because the one about a year ago shocked quite a lot of people. This is the Unite the Kingdom one, where Tommy Robinson and basically people who are often far right nationalists, anti-Islam campaigners, but with a slightly strange Christian uh element to it too, 'cause Tommy Robinson has decided he's a Christian now. And the first one had about 100 and fifty thousand people, which is the biggest far right demonstration, basically living memory. Yeah. And it shocked a lot of people. And there were a lot of people on the left and in government and in police who thought this one would be even bigger. Right. Even though they were trying to claim, you know, it was hundreds of thousands, if not half a million, the police estimate was about fifty or sixty thousand and the crowds did not seem that big. And there were arrests, but between the two marches there were no more than about thirty odd. But what I found was quite interesting is that the kind of far right Twitter types were clearly quite disappointed with how few people they were because they kept on sending clearly fake clips. The most popular one was of a Shakira concert in Rio. Wow. And there was other ones where they had clearly AI generated pictures of this union flag massive crowd going over Westminster Bridge and people pointing out the march didn't actually cross any bridges. Right. So there's fake uh images doing the rounds, there's kind of computer generated images doing the round. Our colleague Ben Quinn was actually at the march and he wrote a brilliant piece for The Guardian. We'll link to that in the episode notes. But I just wanted to kind of highlight a couple of things he said. I mean first of all he said that the energy was clearly down on last year and that was partially I think as you're saying a lack of element of surprise and the the numbers being slightly lower. He also said there wasn't really a big name surprise speaker like there had been last year when Elon Musk gave a video address, which really apparently a left. guests, uh overseas guests, far right ones, but down the street banned them all. One of the things he said was it was quite an eclectic bunch of people as well. There was a whole group of uh Jews for Tommy Robinson. Uh there was a group of Iranians who were kind of pro Shah and wanting to to turn the clock back on the Iranian revolution. This was a kind of hodgepodge of different causes all loosely united, but not quite all pointing in the same way. I would argue the majority are still possibly the legacy Tommy Robinson slightly football thug far right stuff. Look at all the pictures, the majority seem to be, you know, men of a certain age. But it is interesting that they are gathering, as you say, more of an eclectic bunch. But the other thing too to point out is that the uh Palestine March, there were some signs that were attracting the attention of police, but overall it was quite peaceful and this is interesting because the Conservatives in particular had called for it to be banned, calling it a kind of hate march. And obviously, you know, I can't speak on behalf of uh everyone, but it seemed to be compared to some previous ones quite peaceful. Okay. Well uh I still think that it is worth bearing in mind that there were still fifty thousand people out there, even by police calculations. For United Kingdom rally. And uh you know, whatever else we talk about, we just gotta keep that in mind. This is a movement which has gathered pace so quickly. That is a lot of people . And it's been funded from the US. Tommy Robinson has been quite open about the fact that people who are adjacent to the Trump project give him a lot of his money these days. And it's the same way that the algorithm on Twitter were X's as it now known prioritises these kinds of voices. So there's a lot of, you know, objections from people on the right about electoral interference from like the European Union and stuff. But we have to accept there's also this currently indirect, almost Auburn style electoral interference from the US. And it has a uh consequence for Westminster politics as well. In one specific way, one of the things that our colleague Ben Quinn noticed was quite a lot of chanting for Rupert L owe, the former reform MP who has gone off to set his own even further right party restore up. And he seemed to be quite a popular figure at this rally. And one thing I've been told, just bringing it back to our initial conversation . In maker field, one thing to watch is is there a split actually in the reform vote? And will there be you know maybe four or five percent of those voters who split off and vote for a restore instead restore have done quite well in certain places, including Great Yarmouth recently. So as much as we talk about the splintering in the left vote, it's kind of interesting split there in the right vote as well. I think it's a fascinating thing 'cause I would argue that Rupert Lowe is probably the UK's first openly very openly far right MP we've had in maybe a generation or more than that, and Restore Britain, the stuff they argue for, is very, very much further right than reform U K. And I think it's a worry for reform in Makerfield. It's the kind of constituency where they probably wouldn't get more than four or five percent, but that could make the difference. That's something to really keep an eye out for. Yeah absolutely. Well that's all from us. Thanks very much for listening. Please make sure you like and follow Politics Weekly UK to keep getting our episodes in your feed. And also please remember to keep emailing us your questions. We will be answering them very soon. The email address is Politicsweeklyuk at thegardian.com. That's politicsweeklyuk at thegardian.com. This episode was produced by Frankie Toby, Nardus Milenich, and James Tyndale. The music was by Axel Kakutier, and the executive producer is Marz Eptahaj. Bye-bye.