Andy Burnham and Labour Party Succession

Welcome to the Econoclasts in the week of a dangerous Ebola outbreak in Africa and after Donald Trump has made a maybe not quite so historic or maybe indeed historic visit to China Hello Wolfgang. Yes indeed. We don't talk much about Africa. Maybe we should change that. This outbreak of Ebola is pretty grim news. I'm going , however, to concentrate on the President Xi, President Trump summit in Beijing . And you know this this orthodoxy which is uh unfolding as we speak that nothing much was accomplished it, was a kind of uh anti climax, no great deals were struck. Well I'm going to argue that this was a very significant, very significant and actually a quite successful summit. Mercifully, it extended I didn't finitum Trump's deferment of the tariffs and President G's deferred rare earth export bans. And that's not something to be scoffed at. I will be talking about the future of the The challenger to Keir Starmer is the Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. He will fight a constituency race in a constituency close to Manch ester called Makerfield, where he is gonna be up against, you know, the Reform Party, which has been l leading there in the last local elections. Now Burnham is a man of the left, you know, he promises a new start for the Labour Party. But I have you know looked at what he's been saying on the economy. And he looks to me like someone who hadn't thought much about the economy. And it is the economy where Kirstalmer is failing, and it is the economy where I do not think it will be much of a change. But that's for later. Jannis over to you now. Well thank you welcome. Well, folks, the big event, at least uh when it comes to high end politicking of the last few days was the visit by President Trump, along with many tech lords and other businessmen, and Marco Rubio and Pete Hexas, uh to Bij The Western press, the American press, the Washington Post, the Garden, and so on were underwhelmed by the news that came out of that summit. It was described as a stalemate, as a summit that uh promised much and delivered little. And you know, this is the orthodoxy, which um Vaughn and I feel like we should be debunking now because you know sometimes nothing is a great achievement. This summit is coming after a year of intensified tensions between the United States and China. The New Cold War that Trump began in his first term had escalated massively. Therefore, having a summit like this which cements and extends the truth that was achieved uh when was it last October, last November, is no mean feat. The two superpowers inch closer to coexistence. And looking at Trump, listening to Trump, it seems to me that he has rolled back the neocons push for conflict over Taiwan, for instance. This modigm of the town is now under extreme jeopardy because Silicon Valley needs to up the ante with China. But let me start at the beginning. Uh you will recall that on Liberation Day, Trump announced uh 54% tariffs on China and then China retaliated. And by October of last year of 2025, Trump threatened to boost these tariffs to an exorbitant 200% . Had he done that, effectively he would have ended all trade between the United States and China. And he took President Xi's retaliation, the threat to ban all rare earth exports to the United States, to get Trump to chicken out, to back down fast, agreeing to a truce. We will not tariff you, Trump said to see, if you don't cut us off your errors . And that truce was going to be revisited last April. In the end it was revisited in May during this trip by the United States President to Beijing. The fact that they did not even mention the tariff and rare earth war hinted at making the tru ce permanent. And that should be considered a major success, I think. This summit silence on the Tariff and Rare Earth War should be welcomed as a loud, a boistorusioly good result. It would be a mistake to think that this kind of truce was a foregone conclusion. And here are some pointers. On the 2nd of May, a few weeks ago, the Chinese government legislated to ban Chinese companies from complying with American and European sanctions. Essentially, President Xi, his government, told Washington and Brussels that the time when the West enjoyed extraterritorial jurisdiction in China was well and truly over. Now, Donald Trump could have picked a fight with President Xi on this. He didn't. Secondly, before Trump landed in Beijing, the Chinese government had warned Trump against America's pledge to supply Taiwan with what was it, 15-14 billion dollars worth of advanced weaponry. Now, Trump could have pushed back. That's what Marco Rubio wanted. But then neocons wanted. They wanted the American government, white the White House, to push back against uh President Xi's threats. Well, Trump didn't. Instead, he said, when you look at the odds, China is a very, very powerful big country. That's a very small island, he meant Taiwan. Think of it. It's fifty miles away, where we are 9, 500 miles away. That's a a little bit of a difficult problem . Taiwan was developed, and this is quite interesting what you said, because we had presidents in the United States, he meant, that did not know what the hell they were doing. They stole the Taiwanese, that is, the Taiwanese stole our chip industry. Well, that's a big statement, isn't it? It's um uh statement that made uh big waves in Taiwan and must have been quite uh you know musical in the ears of President Xi. Now there's the third issue that I want to raise uh Walking as well. The question of how Trump would react to President Xi's power play for joint American Chinese leadership of the planet. Effectively Xi told Trump in noncertain times, and in his face, that if America is to become great again, it needs China. And as if that were not enough, Zhe lectured Trump on the difference between a balance of superpower terror, as it existed between the United States and the Soviet Union in the sixties and seventies . And his proposals, the Beijing proposals, for constructive strategic stability, they call it, and they base it on three planks. First , enlarge the tie of common interests between the United States and China, secondly, eliminate winner takes all zero-sum kind of games, and third, end the roller coaster of American inspired conflict, confrontation, or war. Now, Trump could have pushed back, and he did not. So that's the good news, Pete. What do you think, Wolfgang? I agree with you. I also believe that the US-China relationship does not have to be adversari adversarial, and I believe it m in fact I think she has a point here. I think a lot of the stuff that's happening around us in the you know in the twenty twenties is the result of the West misjudging its size and influence. This is our narrative on Ukraine, it's our narrative on China. We're fighting China, we are banning products, we're obviously fighting the Russians uh indirectly through our help in Ukraine. Behind this is the idea that we are still big, sort of a sunset boulevard type of uh you know i delusion of our own grande ur of the of the past. But the reality is that in terms of, you know, global GDP, if you measure this properly, the West is approximately the same size as you know the uh the you know the Russia China uh axis. We are not the dominant force anymore. The world is much more balanced in terms of its uh GDP. You would not know this if you looked at dollar GDP because you know Russia and China are not fully taking part in dollar markets. So their purchasing power, their general economic power is not fully captured by a classic dollar-based perspective . We are less united than they. We are less able to, you know, take it on the chin, unlike the Russians, for example. We see this in Ukraine. Russia has been not only been evading Western sanctions skillfully, but it's also been enduring uh hardship to a greater extent than be would. This is not a fight we can win. And we're seeing this. We're seeing all these fights that we're doing. You know, whether this is Iran, we underestimated the enemy, Russia, we underestimated the enemy. It's always this underestimate. We underestimated China. The Biden administration famously underestimated China when it imposed the semiconductor, the high performance semiconductor ban, thinking that this would keep China in sort of a a stage of permanent underdevelopment. The opposite was true. China developed a semiconductor industry. And while you can fool yourself to think that they're still behind behind you like by you know a half of a generation in semiconductors, the idea that that China is sort of being relegated by that decision is is absurd. I'm very much sort of in the Kissinger mold of foreign policy. You know, whatever you have to say about the guy, and you know you can say a lot of negative things about him. He got one thing right. He he understood the the danger of the cold war situation and he understood the need to manage it. He maintained back channels in diplomacy. Famously, he had a back channel going with the Russian ambassador to Washington. But that was a viable back channel during the uh Cold War. Important. We don't have this at the moment in Europe. We don't speak to the Russians. We even disagree about whether we should talk about to the Russians. So the fact that Trump has this channel with Xi is hugely important. And it is this this that prevents accidents, these conversations, these the meetings, the meetings of mind that that happened there. And that is important for the global stability. And I think that will also rearrange a lot of the factors. If this world really goes into sort of a you know the West versus versus the rest type confrontation, not only is there a great risk of serious military confrontation, you know, a third world war, if you will, but there's also a significant risk of significant economic dislocation, lack of action on clim climate change, which does actually require all the big issues require that the world kind of works together, not against one another. And you know, you've seen how climate action has been completely derailed. And if there is any progress, it's usually due to pol uh to economic progress and technological progress, but politically we are really regressing in many respects. So yeah, I welcome this and I I you know I completely with you on this point. It's funny you should mention uh that he's trying to manage the new Cold War, which by the way, he started . But even though it's true that he started the the the Cold War, the new Cold War, remember when he banned Huawei and Z and then slapped these uh 25% tariffs on Chinese aluminum. Uh but nevertheless what was interesting was it not that you know when he lost to uh Joe Biden, uh Joe Biden was meant to be the anti-Trump. Uh he was meant to be the guy that walks into the White House and reverses everything that Trump had done. Instead, the new Cold War that Trump had begun was turbocharged by Joe Biden. And I think that Joe Biden turbocharged the new cold war to such an extent that Trump got scared of the new Cold War and now he's trying to manage in particular the ban on microchips, the Chips Act by Joe Biden. Um I think that Trump wasn't happy with that. And you can see now that you know he took NVIDIA's uh Jensen Wang with him. There was a hilarious moment he won when he said in one of the interviews we he was giving on Air Force One that he was going to ask the Chinese to open up their markets for microchips. Seriously? It was Joe Biden, the United States, that banned the sale of advanced NVIDIA chips to China. And Trump is is he seriously asking Beijing to reverse Washington's own policies? Because he cannot go against Joe Biden's Microchip Act so much because and the reason why because uh has been offered us uh I don't know whether you've seen recently, Anthropic published a paper. It was called 2028 , two scenarios for global leadership and in you know anthropic, which is supposed to be the less gung ho, less gung ho than Google or Palantin when it comes to the weaponization of AI for uh belligerent purposes, uhh, antropic nevertheless, is demanding with this paper that uh the administration ramps up the new cold war against China, turbocharging even further Biden's legislation that bans microchips. Now, the question is why ? One of course explanation is very clear that you know companies like Anthropic are really scared of companies like Deep Seek, because the Chinese are catching up very, very quickly, even though they don't have access to the most advanced microchips, they are managing, they have workarounds, they have extremely good uh coders and programmers, and they can squeeze a lot more juice out of older and less advanced uh microchips. I think Wolfgang there is something else happening here. There is a coalescence, this is my theory. Shoot it down if you want, between Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Because you know, I don't think that uh OpenAI and Anthropic have much to fear from Chinese AI companies because you know they they they're effectively the Chinese and AI companies are not competing in the United States. They're not competing in Europe so much. But what I think they really do fear is an advantage that the Chinese have, uh, which is systemic. It's good. It's not technological, it is systemic, and that is that in China there is no clash, there's no contest, rent-seeking contest between uh their big tech, their AI industry, and their banking sector and their banks. They two work together. Maybe they don't want to, but they're forced to do so by the government. And the result is that you have an integration of cloud capital, uh AI if you want, and the finance. It's called I call cloud finance. And the result is Witch , the central bank, digital currency and so on. Things that you would never see in the United States. Why? Because Wall Street does not want to share its financial grants with Silicon Valley . So companies like Anthropic, like XAI, Elon Musk, they would very much love to develop cloud finance in the same way that the Chinese are doing, but Wall Street doesn't let them. And therefore, American big tech sees this as a major impediment. And also with the Genius Act, uh, the fact that, you know, companies like uh Tether are given the opportunity to issue effectively uh to mint the American dollar a digital version of it when Silicon Valley has difficulties doing that because they are stationed in the United States and because Wall Street doesn't let them do it. So at least that's my theory as to why Anthropic is so gang-ho about ratcheting up the new gold war that now Trump is trying, as you said, to manage. I think the AI situation is at the moment quite murky . The Americans have succeeded actually in developing some really astonishingly good models in the last few weeks. The latest updates in both for anthropic and open AI, uh absolutely. These are not these are not just the kind of five percent improvements. They can do things that the previous generation couldn't do. I think the Americans have another advantage, which we should not underestimate. China already said it will not allow companies to fire workers and replace them with AI. Now that's we know this is how productivity gains happen. You fire workers and you you know you let the computer do the do the job. That's that's when we talk about productivity gains. That will be the ones that will be China will not do that. The US hasn't got any tools to stop anyone from doing this. You're already hearing Meta cutting workforce by 10%. We heard JP Morgan planning a staff reduction by about the same amount. So 10% seems to be the number that everybody in the United States seems to be sort of the ballpark that they're planning for. So what I expect to happen is that there will be a huge competition. I don't think military AI it will be hugely important. I don't think it will front run this in the way that the military frontrun the development of the semiconductor in the s uh 50s and 60s. That was m largely a military, you know, a defense department, procurement and um you know a, state funded research program. That's not the case now. It's very much a private sector thing, and you know, there are different funding models. But you know, this is not the the military is not gonna be the main thing. This is so huge, this market. So we're not in this sort of in this sort of compet ition where you know if Deep Seek succeeds then we don't because you know this is you know this is there are only a few companies out now there will be so many more. Anthropic and open AI, the big issue for them is not to keep Deep Seek down. The bigger issue for them is just to, you know, the the the the is the is the product development and interlinking this model with some real world action. Some of the things they've done recently. I would probably not make too much of it. I do not I do not want to wouldn't extrapolate open eye for example doesn't you know doesn't play that game. Others are not playing this game because it's a huge it's a huge market. Now we know that anthropic is going heavily into the area of security. You know they released this software mythos , which they released to a very small number of clients that detects security vulnerabilities in software systems. Now, Mythos is a potential you know doomsday mach ine because because it you know it doesn't only detect your vulnerabilities but it detects everyone else's vulnerabilities too so you can pretty much hack everyone in the world. So anthropic clearly goes into the security business. And for anthropic anthropic you, know, a a a nice cold war would be you know great good business. Other people have different models. You know, I would assume that the big issue, the big money in AI is not the military. I mean the our military spending, even in countries like the United States, three and a half percent of GDP, yeah, is is is big. You know, Russia is six percent of GDP. This is these are big numbers, but it's you know our private sector spending is so much more our industrial spending. AI, this will be an industrial story. I mean when we remember the 20s, when we get old enough to remember the 2020s, you know what will we remember? Will we remember the Ukraine war? Maybe the Iran War, maybe, but we'll probably remember AI. That's that's the story of the 2020s. That's what changed , you know, what changed the world in the long run. That's the big story of what is happening. And I think it's a broader social phenomenon. And I think both the United States and China are extremely well placed for it. It's no no surprises to learn that Europe is not, for a number of reasons. We discussed this in earlier podcasts and to which we will return. But both countries having pursued very different strategy, China has this massive advantage that it it has in the long run the better energy policy and also the better planning, energy policy planning. It's heavily invested in renewables, solar industries, hydropower, uh massive, massive ex uhp ansion of renewables. Trump has kind of killed that industry in the United States. It's all oil and gas. And oil and gas is not gonna give him this this this c the sheer quantity that he needs. So the anti-renewables is a really big strategic mistake of the United States. And this is sort of my main reason I'm skeptical. But for now, in terms of the product development, in terms of the software development, Americans are doing very well. But so is DeepSeek. I completely agree. This is a very, very serious uh player and I think there's room for all of them. Well nobody disagrees that AI is going to be the big talk topic that we'll be discussing over the next hundred years. So the econom ists are going to come back and we should have a debate about AI on its own. But I will insist before moving on to the next segment that you know this blending of AI, cloud capital, and finance is a clear and present nature for the United States Germany. But yeah, I will keep telling this story now for a while. In the meantime, folks, um hang on because uh Wolfgang is going to talk about the succession game in uh 10 Downing Street in the United Kingdom, and he has some choice words for one of the great pretenders at the moment for the residency of 10 Downing Street, the position of British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. We'll be back after the break. Don't go anywhere . London we are back. Following the soldier's success of Econoclasts Live, Wolfgang and I are heading to King's Cross. Our guest, Hassan Piker. Hassan Piker, Pikerism, if you will. A man that calls for an open revolution. Piker has millions of online followers that could translate to voters. I'm very much looking forward to discussing the true power of the online left. And I'll be challenging him on some of his more controversial points on US foreign policy and most recently microlooting. Tickets are available right now. Go to unheard.com forward slash iconoclasts live So, welcome back to the Econoclasts. In the United Kingdom, there is a struggle for a succeeding Keir Starmer. I personally think that Kier Star mer is toast. I may be wrong. What we do know is that Andy Burnham, the leader, the mayor of Greater Manchester, is throwing his uh hat in the ring. He's going to contest a by election in the area in the Greater Manchester area, uh, hoping he's going to win that seat in order to challenge Keirstammer. The question is: what happens next? Wolfgang. Burnham is contesting a constituency that is in the sort of northwestern industrial heart land, the constituency of Makerfield. In this constituency Labor lost to reform during the local elections by quite a wide margin. In fact, so this is one of the constituencies Labour's needs to recoup, to regain in order to be assured of winning, say the next general election. So this is in many ways a good test. If Berner makes it there, he can make it, and I that is the one conditional statement I can make if he wins this election, which is by no me ans clear. But if he does, you know, he will be in a very good position to become Prime Minister to challenge Starmer. And I would even think that Starmer might in this case even, you know, step step down and let him proceed. If Burnham fails to capture the seed, then we may well have Stharma continuing because the other challenges to Stharma are not very strong. The more interesting thing for me to actually discuss today is what to expect. Say Burnham wins. Sermon becomes prime minister. This is something to do with economic policy. Now most people don't, you know, find this, find this rather technical this stuff, but economic policy is is important because it's the lack of an economic policy success that puts Starmer where he is right now. Successful economic policies usually were the result of a strategy. This is not something that you come up with in an interview. This is not like you know something that you know Yannis and I you know come up with in the podcast. This is something you work on. It takes a long time. Thatcher took years to develop a strategy. Tony Blair took years to develop a strategy. Karl Marx took even longer to develop his strategy. These are successful strategies in the sense that they had an impact, a political impact. Can it work politically if you don't have a policy? Now Burnham a year ago said to help with the bond market . There was a supporter last week, an MP from Liverpool, who said that the bond markets will have to fall in line with our policy. Now we we know very much, it's almost the definition of the bond market that it doesn't fall in line with any one's policy. What any successful strategy needs is some kind of a plan to deal with these adverse situations. You know, there is this bond market thing. Structural economic growth in the UK is very low, and that any policy would need to deal with this issue, and that any estimates of future tax revenues depend to a large extent on the economic growth rates, and you might get into sort of you know vicious circles of you know lower growth, lower tax revenues, less money to spend, higher deficits, higher interest rates on bonds and and so on, and you get a you get a vicious circle. That's bit a little bit what happened with the current government. The reason why this strategy, I know I don't you know I've been a critic of Keir Star mer's economic policies and racial reefs' fiscal policies, precisely because they started off with a deficit and then they worked themselves sort of downward to you know what it leaves for spending and didn't didn't think about the the true dynamics uh about the economy about growth. And it's all it's all about growth. If you have three percent of growth, you can be pretty irresponsible in terms of or what people call irresponsible, you can be pretty irresponsible in terms of your fiscal policies. You may still need a fiscal framework, but you don't need these incredibly rigid fixed fiscal rules. If you have zero growth, yeah, you need fiscal rules. Zero growth is is a nightmare. You can tax people. You can do that. But that may may reduce your growth. And the experience in the UK has certainly shown that higher taxes, you know, are not are certainly not going to help you raise more uh revenues in the long run. So these these strategies haven't worked very well, but we have to concede to Star mer and to Reeves that they prepared. The policy that they have is a policy. It is thought through. It was costed. It is there was a thinking behind it. I don't like it myself, but this is different from something that doesn't even start from a a policy and that is just a collection of slogans. And there's an awful lot of slogans in in the left about you know about equality, about opportunity and and about enabling people and you know thinking that the joining the EU this is the latest thing that sort of sort of happening happens in you in in in UK politics that joining the EU would miraculously you know bring the growth back because you know the growth was apparently lost because of Brexit. You have an awful lot of these one-liners, you know, you know, Burnham changing his economic strategy during an interview. Now, whenever I see that happen, that to me is a red flag. That to me means ah he doesn't have a strategy. And when you don't have a strategy, then the bond market is really in charge. And we're already seeing this because the bond market started to panic last week when Burnham looked like you know like a very probable successor to Starmer. The bond yields have have risen. They're now you know I was looking at the 30-year bond yield is now almost six percent. This is a very, very high rate. And Burnham played down the fears by saying, yeah no, he will pursue the same fiscal policies than racial Reeves. Now, I'm not sure this is true, but if it were true, then the entire case for a Burnham Prime Ministership would completely dissipate because if you do the same policies, because it is the fiscal rules that Reeves has introduced that constrain the government in so many ways. If you commit already at this stage to the same fiscal rules, then I'm asking myself, what is the point? I will agree agree with your conclusion, but disagree with many of the reasons that you give for it . Just to spice things up a bit, Volcan. Now, you and I are economists and we are the econom ists, we have a tendency towards economism that is to find the economic rationale behind uh everything. I'm guilty of that as much as you are, maybe more so. Uh but on this, I'm going to take a distance from what you were saying because I don't think that Kirst Dahmer is facing the difficulties that he's facing, that is, you know, his toast, as I said in the introduction, only because of his failed economic policies. I think that he's sensationally unpopular within the Labour Party and in the base of the Labor Party for a number of reasons. There is something else that I want to share with you. About a year ago, a year and a half ago, when I was in London, in the city of London, I was talking financi ers. I can tell you that even though Keir Salmer was still at the prime of his first term, having won an a crashing majority in the House of Commons, there were financi ers, including some former high ranking members of the Bank of England, who were speaking about Andy Burnham . gl Inowing terms. One of them even said: you know, Burnham has actually done things. He's actually shown that he can make at least the greater Manchester municipality complete projects. Whereas these bos ers, and they were talking about Starmer and uh Reeves, uh can't make anything work. They are just absolutely incompetent. They can't even organize their own office. So you know, the business model and the lack of a macroeconomic model that makes sense is important, but I don't think it's everything. It doesn't explain the the loss of faith in Kirstama, the fact that you know almost every wing within the Labour Party wants him gone. Having said that, I will agree with you with your outcome outcome, with your conclusion. Now, in the last twenty-four hours, I've seen statements coming out of Auntie Burnham's mouth that to me are a very poor start of his campaign. First, he allowed himself to be dragged into the Brexit debacle by saying that he n he he feels that Britain should come go back to the into the European Union. He always felt that. But this was the wrong thing to say at the beginning of his campaign to win this by-election. Why? Because he gave reform and Nigel Farage something to aim for. To you know concentrate all their slings and arrows on uh portraying Andy Burnham as the man who wants to betray Brexit. That was a very silly mistake to do. And then he tried the what was even worse the was the way in which he tried to roll this back. He started saying, oh, we're not going to be talking about that. We're not talking about big questions. I want to concentrate on local issues because I want to give the people of this particular constituency, I forgot its name, the best service that an MP. It's like saying that the previous MP was a fool and couldn't deal with uh local issues, and he's come in there to deal with local issues. He's not coming in there to deal with all local issues. His line should be: I'm standing because I want to be prime minister and I want to demonstrate to the good people of the Labour Party, both members and friends, that I can defeat reform. I can defeat reform in a constituency where, as you said, Wolfgang, uh they won a few weeks ago in the municipal elections, in the local government elections. He should use this by election in order to tell his big story, which could be about beating reform, going again against the misanthropy of the anti-migration drive that reform is leading, and so are the Tories, by the way. But he's not doing that. He's flip-flopping between talking about Brexit, which is a huge question in Britain, and saying no, no, no, no this is not what I'm going to to be on about the by-elections about local issues. I think he he started very, very badly. Now regarding the bigger question, I think you're absolutely right. You know, I remember listening to him talk a few years ago and and he said and I don't disagree with what he said, he said that the UK economy's problems are deindustrialization, privatization, austerity, and Brexit. I'm also keen on the last explanation of the problems. Now, deindustrialization is of course the key reason why Britain is finding itself in the quagmire it is in. Austerity, you know my piece about austerity. So he was right. And and privatization, the way privatization was done under Thatcher, but also Blair. But he's missing the main culprit, the elephant in the room. And that's the city of London. That is financializ ation. There was no discussion about financialization, no discussion of the problem that you and I have discussed many times before, that you have so much money in in the city of London, in the financial circuits of the United King dom, which is not being invested in productive activities. That's not on his radar. And as long as this is not on his radar, I agree with you that he is not going to have a business model. But tactically, at the political level , he's set off in a terrible way by flip-flopping between saying that he's running this by election on local issues or on Brexit. No, he can't do that and expect to win. So my fear is for him, not that I look I'm not uh I don't consider him to be an a a a a figure of the left, by the way, you called him a leftist. I don't. I you know and I'm a leftist I should know. My My prediction is that he he may very well lose this by election because he started off this in this particular manner. Yeah, I mean I would agree with you that Starmer is certainly tone-deaf to the you know to the heartfelt wishes of his party. I want to leave this aside because this is a different subject, and I also agree with you that his you know his campaign went off in the worst possible way. I would add his commitment which he made in the interview to keep uh racial reefs policies, because that's something he shouldn't have done. You know, he should have instead come up with an idea, an alternative, in in simply in order to give people a reason to vote for him. Because if you know if if you already start this way, serious people can question what the outcome will be, and you said he doesn't have a policy for the city of London. He doesn't have an economic policy. I think we've probably agreed or we agreed on this. Now let's talk about Manchester. Now I've been to Manchester and uh I was I went I went there a year ago and I was absolutely stunned how how wonderful that city has how how it changed, how how wonderful it has become. I completely grant him that. Whether it was because of him or despite of him, as people now quarrel. I I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It is, you know, he was a great mayor of Manchester, in a way that Boris Johnson was a great mayor of London. I mean, this is you know they're doing their mayorships, but Manchesterism, as as as you know, Burnham calls it, uh you know, burnomics as I would call it, Manchesterism isn't gonna work. You and I talk about this all the time. Fallacy of composition, everything something works for me and then it works for everybody. How does a city work? You have a budget. You do not have a currency. You do not have a bond market. You do not have these vicious circles that you have in macroeconomics. But the important point is that Manchesterism is irrelevant for the UK. I don't want to probe you whom you talk to in the in the in the city, and there are people on the left and there are people you know so who support burnham uh and there are people who cringe about strum that's f perfectly clear and a lot of people want to get rid of him but we should separate from this the the our analysis of what to expect from the economic policy because it's that is the policy that is failing in the UK. It is not only the fact that some person has done some bad things, I mean the whole Mandelson thing and we had a whole session on that was so badly handled. It maybe Burnham has that character. So, you know, you might swap, you know, swap the guy and get somebody who is slightly more, you know, more of a more of a of a human. The economic policy, this is what's failing people in, you know, especially in the north of England, uh, the kind of the people that he uh claims to represent and that he he whose whose interests he claims to serve, they will not benefit from a policy that will be unchanged, an economic policy that will be unchanged and it will only be about how we frame it, how we sell it. The Labour Party is about to change its leader. This is a big deal. One of the lessons of this period is that you do it when you really know what you're doing. If you do it because the guy is nicer, but the economic policy is the same, I wouldn't, you know, I think this this bar is too low. If I was a strategic advisor to the Labour Party, which you know I I you know I'm not and will not be and not applied for that job either. I would say, you know, do it, get rid of him, but you you use the opportunity for new economic policy narrative. It has to be a different policy, but it has to be a cohesive policy. You know, there are intelligent policies on the left just as there are intelligent policies on the right. Um there are different ways of how to affect the economic outcome of the country. But Burnham doesn't have any. That is the point. It's not about whether his instincts are right. It is about you he doesn't have a strategy . So he'll probably end up with racial reese as his chancellor because he needs to placate the bond markets. It would be the worst possible start. And as you said, Yanis, the you know his election campaign, you know, didn't get off very well . And that basically tells tells me that he was not prepared. I mean, i would you not have a strategy to talk about Brexit? Would this be something that you would accidentally get into if you if you were running for the job of Prime Minister. Yeah. Uh it's for me completely inconceivable. You're seeing a pattern already being established and this is why I'm skeptical about this potential uh Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Well I couldn't agree with you more. When uh I have meetings with people in my party here in Greece, they say to me, Well why can't we emulate Zoran Mamdani? He promised three things, four things, uh and he's trying to deliver them. And what I say to them is exactly what you said, Wolfgang. That we know we are not running for a municipality, we are running f to run a country. And you know when you do that you have to have a macroeconomic policy because you know you have to deal with the markets, you have to deal with uh interest rates, you have to deal with this uh remarkable inter interdependence between uh your fiscal policy and your constraints. And therefore you must have a macroeconomic plan. Let's wait and see. I personally think that Andy Burnham has a capacity to would have had a capacity had he put his mind to it, had he had a better plan to defeat reform in that constituency. Maybe he can recover his poise. The fact that he is more liked and has shown that he can complete a project that, you know, Keir Starmer never managed to complete. Even when he was uh director of public prosecutioners. There was a mess in the Crown Prosecution Service. He was a terrible manager, even when it comes to microstuff. So let's wait and see, shall we? Indeed. And we discussed three subjects essentially today. The US-China relationship, AI, which is part of this, and the future of British politics. And I'm sure that they all have in common that we will return to them in the not too distant future. So don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe to the Econo Klass wherever you listen to or watch this podcast. We'll see you again next week.