Speculation Over Chancellor Appointment

This is the Guardian I am going to do things differently. I am going to break with the more of the same approach that has got us here. I am going to give Britain The circuit breaker Andy Burnhams delivered his first major speech since becoming MP for Makerfield. Good morning, everybody for this. It tried to deliver hope, but what have we actually learnnt about Burnamism taking power out of the centre and putting it in the hands of the people and places who can use it best. I'm Pppa Kira and I'm Kirin Stety. This is Politics Weekly for the Guardian Hello, Hello I'm in our Manchester office Karin, having just watched Andy Burnham's speech at the People's History Museum just down the road here, it was a room packed full of local party activists, people from the Greater Manchester Mayalty, a few local MPs and then tucked right away at the back view of the media. We weren't even allowed to answer questions, can you believe it? I know we need to talk about that because that is a big thing. I thought that was really interesting. But give me your overall impression, you know, what was the reception like? this is As you say, Pipper, his first big speech since becoming Makefield MP was it just as jubilant as we've seen down here in Westminster among Labour Party MPs. Yeah, absolutely. So he walked into the room, He was introduced by Bev Creeig, who is running to be his successor as GM mayor. And he walked in everybody stood up. there was applause, even a few cheers And really that sort of acclaim continued throughout his speech. They really liked it in the room. And I guess If the one thing that Andy Bernham is going to do really differently from K Starmer's vibes, this speech showed that he can do that. And he definitely put a spring in the step of the Labour Party people who were sitting around me afterwards, they were saying that they felt that he had set out his vision of hope his vision of change and they felt better for it. So whether he can do that with the party more widely and much more importantly with the country we willll have to wait and see It feels from a Labour partarty perspective anyway that today he got off to a good start. Just a couple of things that felt different from Kstama right from the off. firstirst of all, what he was wearing, he was, of course wearing his trademark black t shirt although under a jacket. bit like you are Pipper actually. you're very you know, I like to mag politicians. And he also started off with a couple of jokes. He kind of made a jokey reference to things that Kemvy Bayidnoock said about him in the last couple of days. Is that all we need? We just need somebody to wear power a bit more lightly Probably I said it was a vies based speech and certainly that was how it came across. We We were, of course, in the Museum of People's History And he made the point when he first came in. jack Do remember that famous speech he made in Manchester during the pandemic when he stood outside his offices? and he was wearing that jacket, that utility jacket, and he was sort of fighting for the people of Manchester against the Tory led, the Boris Johnson led government. And that clip went viral and it kind of really cemented his reputation as being a man of the people Well, that jacket, he told us, is in fact upstairs in that museum. Well as an exhibit As an exhibit. Now I've actually been in the museum before. I've introduced Angel Ro there, in fact, is obviously a favourite of labour politicians. One of her jackets is also in there. but treating them both if you're a fan of labour history that is the display case which contains Michael Foot's dononkey jacket, which of course famously wore There's all sorts of interesting bits of labour history in there, not just the clothes of former and current politicians We should do a whole episode on famous bits of pololiticians' clothing. I do need to share one more bit of inversation about politicians' clothing before we get on to the substance of thisance. Well, he wasn't very short you be pleased to hear. But he did say and in fact, his first announcement, before he got on to all the important bits about devolution and the economy and resetting the system was that he bought a new pair of running shorts. You'll remember he got teased, shall we say, by wearing particularly short, particularly tight pair when it was first announced he was going to run for Makerfield. And he said he either needed to do that or change decency laws. So he got off to certainly as the comedian in the room, he got off to a good start. and then of course We were all looking then as to what he would say next when it came to the substance. Well, let's talk about the substance in a second. But another thing that you mentioned earlier, I think is worth dwelling on just for a second is what happened at the end. which was that Andy Burnham left without taking any questions. I mean, you'd come up from Westminster to be there. Others had obviously done the same thing. There was an entire press pout watching I mean, to certainly say, it's great obviously for you to be in the room and to get the feeling of the speech, but not to have a single question. That's a pretty poor form, isn't it Yes, and it's very unusual for politicians, and we hope that it's not going forward part of the new approach to the Westminster system that Andy Burnham is going to take I traveled up because I wanted to be there, I wanted to hear the speech in person, I wanted to talk to people afterwards to see what they thought about it. But I also plenty of things I wanted to ask about about how the devolution system he envisages is going to work, about the sort of economic broader economic direction of the country, given some of the concerns about his approach to fiscal rules, although he did once again reiterate that he would stick to them You his choice of Chancellor, what he thought about some international policy we've heard basically nothing from him on, and his focus we're told is going to be much more domestic in contrast to Ko Starers. There was plenty we could have asked, but it was made clear to us we wouldn't get the opportunity. Now his team described this as a one off, but in fact, right after the Makerfield by election result, the following day, that Friday When he sort of faced the press, addressed the press, made some comments to camera and some reporters were there. He literally sprinted away from those reporters when they tried to ask questions. So this is the second time. And as you'll know, Kian, if he remains unchallenged, he is likely to become Prime Minister on july the twentieth when the Cons has risen for summer recess point that Kemy Badenoock, the Tory leader this morning was making in between a few jibes, was that he wouldn't even face the scrutiny in the House of Commons. So that's not a great start when it comes to scrutiny from the press and from the Cons. And I think it's something we'll wanting to keep a very close eye on I thought Kamy Baynock had an excellent point today. I mean she was saying that maybe Parliament should be held open for another few days, just to be able to give Andy Burnham a chance to be quizzed at least by MPs, if not by journalists. And it's really interesting we'll come on to talk a little bit about who might be in his cabinet later What seems to be happening is all that battle for ideas and all that energy that would have gone into a leadership contest is instead happening as proxies for the various candidates, particularly for a chance I battle it out in the press and on the airwavave. So we've kind of got this kind of xy leadership contest going on, Well we all know who's going to be the leader themselves which is very, I don't know, feels very strange to me. But should we get into the substance of it? Be it was an interesting speech. that kind of I guess the headline was that he confirmed those plans that we've reported on and others have reported on before haaving operations from number ten up in Manchester The change will be the biggest change in our lifetimes to the way the country is run, and it is consistent withith the twenty twenty four manifesto We will create a more streamlined state with a clearer purpose power up all parts of the country and put a laser like focus on growth and regeneration, good growth The change will be driven through the Prime Minister's office. and extended operation based here. in Manchester Did we learn anything else, anything new about how exactly that would work and how significant did it feel We a couple of things and you're absolutely right, that felt like the big announcement out of this speech. and I know this team were quite frustrated that that leaked out last week and we and others reported it. This new office he described as the nerve centre of a rewired Britain, a bit of sort of mixed metaphors there. But it won't be sort of necessarily the place where the centre of UK and outward facing government sits. What it will do is be part of Durnning Street operation, have parity with the one in London, but its whole point will be channel the flow of devolved powers and resources. So for example, the Department for Education or the Department of Transport, bits of their operations in Whitehole, which Andy Burnham would want to be done by regional mayors, by local councils right across the UK, including in fact, Scotland and Wales, The powersb be devolved there, obviously from Cardiff and Edinburgh to more local community level They would flow through that office that number ten North, and they would sort of allocate the powers and redistribute some of the funding. And that would be staffed, yes by some senior White haall civil servants, but more importantly, I think, is the plan is for it to be staffed by people from across the combined authorities, across the Mayaltities and local government in England, Scotland and Wales at the moment, and that they would obviously be experts in how the system works. And they probably, like Andy Berham was when he was greater to Manchester Mayor would have been at the forefront in some of those battles to get more devolved power and resource to their areas. So I think that's sort of how it's likely to work. And I've had a couple of senior civil servants, white haall civil servants, I should add messaged me since saying this is a really good start. This is if you're wanting to take paracloser to people, this is a good way of doing it. And then the second thing that we learned is that it's got to three clear tasks for devolution to increase public ownership of essential utilities such as water, energy and housing. Obviously Andy Burnham said that they would pursue the largest council house building since the post war period. The second element would be to re industrialize huge spays of the country. and he talked about some of the new technology. It wouldn't be sort of going back to the days of factories and so on and heavy industry, but it would be about re industrializing parts of the country, which were previously home to those industries and subsequently have sort of been left behind to use the term that it gets used often for them. And then the third element was to regenerate towns and places that have been left behind. and he talked a bit about high streets and that being a focus. Those three areas, so you can imagine powers coming from the Mistry of Housing, from some of the sort department of environment, from some of the big white hale departments in order to deliver that change Can I ask because the way you describe that is I mean, it's similar to the existing government's deevolution agenda, except in one key way, which is at the moment, the devolution bill as it is, allows for local areas to ask for the powers they want allows mayors essentially to ask for the powers they want. And then the government has to justify why they would say no. Are we saying here that instead of asking mayors to ask for powers A Burnham government is just going to decide what powers should be devolved and push them out Yeah, that's not clear, but what is clear is that he sees more powers and crucially the resource to go with it. And he talked about how local authorities at the moment are so cash strapped that they can barely afford to deliver their statutory obligations, So things like social care and care for children. And obviously they want them to do more. So he gave a couple of examples, one of which was more control of education in London. Now we're unclear whether that means schools. I think it's much more likely to mean skills. And again, he talked a bit about having this sort of parity that previous prrime mininisters have talked about and gone some way to delivering between vocational and academic further education and the fact that in this country still there's this focus on university is the best route. Well, actually, it's not the best route for everybody And the skills agenda is particularly important because Andy Burnham has spent quite lot of time talking to Alan Milburn, who of course, is the former Labour cabinet mininister who's led this review into NTs, young people, not in employment, education or training. And they number almost a million at the moment. And it it's hugely shaming of our political system that there are so many young people who feel the opportunities aren't there for them. And so I think he wants to sort of rebalance that focus a bit more onto those people rather than necessarily the universityout for everybody Can I sound a skeptical note about two particular points that you' talked about there? Differe. One is on Council House buildilding So What he said was interesting to an extent. He said he wanted the biggest program of Council House buildilding since the post war period. What I want to know from Andy Benham is, what are you counting as the post war period? Because from about nineteen forty five to about nineteen eighty, we did have reasonable rates of cououncil house building. But from nineteen eighty until now we've had almost none. It's very, very few council houses been built in that period because after Margaret Thatcher's reforms, it just wasn't the money wasn't there for it It wasn't the focus of government policy. This government has put thirty nine billion pounds into an affordable housing. over the course of ten years It could be here that he's just talking about that existing program because that probably would lead to the biggest council house building program in the post war period. as long as you're doin the post war period, Up until about nineteen eighty. If he's talking much more narrowly in the early years when there really was a big boost, then okay, maybe it means something. But I just wonder here how much he's redressing existing policies from this government. Yeah Well, he has said on that, and he said this to me when I went up to Makerfield to see him during the campaign, that he wants to redirect the thirty nine billion pounds that the government has already announced for social and affordable homes purely to social homes. Now that obviously means council homes and homes which are delivered by housing associations and it's unclear whether he means both or just council given what he said today. But then you're automatically you're building those homes, but then that means thenre not building what's classed as affordable homes so that's obviously his decision to prioritize people that rely on council homes. but if people who are perhaps wanting to get on the property ladder themselves, that potentially means that they're less able to do so. Yeah, and it means it's going to make it much harder to hit the one point five million homes target. And there's another worry here which is ssentially getalization. So In that post war period, what you did have was large social homes Eates being built, but they were all the same type of tenant. They were all those social rent homes. What I think modern planners say is it's much better to have some ownership, some shared ownership, some affordable and some social rent homes all in a mix so that you don't just have up there, the poor area over there and then richher people are just somewhere else. Anyway, these are kind of interesting details that willll be wiped out The other part where I just thought, o I wonder what he means there, and I wonder if he is going to be able to see this through was when he was talking about public ownership or public control of utilities, he was talking very much about getting people's bills down. In the water industry, I think there's relatively little evidence that public control gets people's bills down. In fact, there's quite mixed evidence other places where it's happened say in Paris or in Berlin Sometimes bills do come down, not a huge amount, I would say. Yeah. Sometimes actually they don't come down at all, but investment can improve Almost always it improves the public perception of those companies. So that might be something that happ But especially in the water industry where you need to put a lot of money into updating the sewers and the various other parts of infrastructure I'd have thought you'd want to spend that extra money if you take away the kind of extra bit goes in private sector as profits I would have thought you'd want to use that extra money to upgrade infrastructure, not just to reduce people's bills. I'd be really interested if he decides to prioritize bills over infrastructure Yeah, yeah. well on Bill's, just another couple of things that we should say about the speech that stood out to me. He talked about how people needed some breathing space and that when he was on the doors in Makerfield, the one thing that everyone said to him he picked up was that the biggest concern was cost of living. Of course, Bills are part of that And I thought it was interesting that he said that in order to help people with those rising costs He wouldn't take risks with the public finances, but would seek to give Britain some breathing space as soon as I can. People need to be able to look forward to a night out or a holiday with the kids. People need hope. Now we don't yet know what that might look like, but we have obviously reported previously on there being some sort of cost of living package, which could affect energy bills, it could affect transport costs, potentially housing, rent costs But it could also be bigger. And we know, for example, that the unions' lobbying him to lift the threshold freeze on tax. We know that he's talked about devolving business rates back to communities. What does it mean for sort of rewriting the tax system, for example? We don't know yet, but I think that's something that we should look out for. And then the only other thing I'd say here is and I'm sure we'll pour over this in the pages of the Guardian and the Bguardian website more later I thought it was quite interesting how he talked about having a real rethink about how the Westminster system works And he said that one of the problems of his generation of politicians and he included himself in it is that they've let people down. They've failed. And they've resorted to sort of like point scoring and finger pointing and sort of division rather than coming together to address some of the country's biggest problems. And he said that he wants to bring an end to that and bring people together, including not just within different So the Bard church thing, there's different wings of the Labour Party, but also cross party to address some of these big problems. And I think for a country which is so tired of division, that will be a welcome message. Whether it lands so well with the other political parties, I think I think probably less so. and there's obviously a huge amount of mistrust and skecepticism amongst the different political parties, which I think would make this in practice quite difficult to deliver. But it was interesting that he is at least starting with a sort of a hopeful message on that that he wants to come in and change things. The reality, of course, as we've seen many times before, may be different. Well, I think we saw a little bit of that with Kimy Bitnoock's speech just before Andy Berham stood up, which I have to say was not in any way warm or youifying towards The most likely next Prime Minister Let's pause here for a minute After the break, we are going to talk about who might be Andy Bedams Chelse The World Cup is back and because we have no offs sw whichitch football Weekly is going daily. If you want a podcast with more footballing heritage than a Brazil number ten, more talent than a French starting eleven and more predictable than an England penalty shootout, look go further. We'll have thirty three daily episodes covering not just the goals and the glory, but the politics and the problems of this year's tournament. Can England and sixty years of have ht join me, Max Ruston Our expert panel and Barry, every day at the tournament, Wlc up daily, listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the full episodes on YouTube Peppa, I wonder whether one reason that Andy Berham didn't take any questions in his speech this morning, as you mentioned earlier was because he didn't want every single question to be, whoo's going to be your Chancellor? He said he wasn't going to name any cabinet appointments as far as I could tell until he becomes Prime Minister. I guess we'll all have to wait for another three weeks, will we? Yeah, certainly closer to when he takes power, it was one of the first things he said when he came into the room. The speculation would have to continue, he said. But it was just that, it was just speculation. Now obviously, we, amongst others, have been doing some of that speculation because we talk to not just to any old ally, but to his closest team to try and get a feel for what a Burnham government might look like. And while I absolutely take his point, their point that the most important thing is a policy platform because what's the point of announing a cabinet if you don't know what they're actually going to deliver? The one exception to that I think is the role of Chancellor, not least because it's the single most important appointment he can make. And there's been such speculation about that word again, about whether or not it would be Ed Milliband or whether who still appears to be the favorite, or whether it would be somebody different perhaps from a different wing of the Labour Party. And there are multiple threads to that. Does he need somebody that can deliver his agenda, who can take on treasury orrthodoxy and be radical and deliver the sort of change that he was talking about in his speech Is there a danger that that person ends up spooking the markets? We saw their reaction last year when he talked about the country being in hwk to the markets? Does he need to reassure them? Do he need to reassure the public, if one of the options is something like Ed Milliband, who has seen as being so committed to his net zero agenda. So there's all sorts of thread the question of who the Chancellor might be. And I think they're going to find it increasingly difficult not to sort of give some indication because of what it says about the direction that he wants to take the economy and the country. This isn't about know Westminster, who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out. This is actually really fundamental to what happens next I completely agree. I mean, an Ediniban Chancellorship would be so different from a I don't know, a West streeting Chancellorship probably from a Shabana Mahood Chancehip. I think this is really important information. I think he should be giving us some indication. You know, he's not really been tested in any way and we still don't even know who is the second most important person in his government will be and yet. he's almost setertain to become the Prime Minister in three weeks time One interesting thing though was after he finished speaking, the pound actually strengthened and bond yields came down a little bit and there wasn't massive movements, but it does suggest that markets at the moment aren't perturbed by the uncertainty surrounding that position and even by the possibility that it will be Ed Miliband. So for all of the commentary by some people, including Kemmy Bidnoock that Ed Miliband will be a disaster for the bond markets. and you know this is the way to re in Britain. Market doesn't seem to be showing that at the moment. And what I think is really important to remember is that what the markets want or what the markets need is certainty and they can pretty much anything it's just about being able to plan and knowing what's coming up. and they don't like unexpected surprises as we saw with Liz Truss and her mini budget. So if Andy Brham's team lay the groundwork, if they make it clear who they're going to appoint possibly ahead of time, and if they set out his policy agenda and continue, as what he did once again in the speech today, to reassure that he would stick to the fiscal rules that understood the importance of fiscal responsibility and indeed restict the Labour Party manifesto, then that puts in place some guardrails that investors can look at and start to get a sense of what direction he's going in. There's still lots of unanswered questions, obviously. This was just his first big policy speech. We've got three more weeks and I'm told several more speeches to come, so we'll hopefully start to be able to to find out a little bit more about what Berham Gvernment would look like. and hopefully, Kiirin next time we'll get questions Absolutely will look P if there is no Q and A after the next speech, not only will we mention it in this podcast, but I think we'll be mentioning it in pretty defiant terms to Andy Berham's team themselves. We'll be heckling him for questions. Ill tell you that. That's a good idea. You should stand up and start shouting there. I remember Nick Robinson when he was BBC political editor trying to do that to Xi Jinping, so, you know they're going to take the Beijing model to us we can do the same by st now Anyway, more luck. Yeah, exactly Well, that's all from us Peppa and I will be back another episode very soon. This episode was produced by Frankie Toby This million itch Music by A Cagutier and the executive producer is Mazep Taj Bye bye. 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