Hugo Gye
speaker
182 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 20 Jul
Hugo Gye’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
The question is, what happens in six months, a year, if Burnham goes the way of Keir Starmer and the way of pretty much every leader in the Western world and becomes rapidly more unpopular once they're in power?
Will Labour still continue to row in behind him if that happens?
I'm not so sure.
What we know is that he has left-wing vibes without it being clear that he actually has a policy platform that would differ very much from Starmer's at all.
He said he thinks it's important that Labour keeps to the manifesto it was elected on in 2024, a manifesto that obviously was drawn up by Keir Starmer.
And that manifesto has some pretty strict limits on what a new prime minister can do.
For example, that manifesto says that Labour...
won't raise any of the four biggest taxes that the government levies on the public.
It also says that a Labour government will strictly balance the books.
Well, if you're not going to borrow more and you're not going to tax more...
there's not going to be much more money for public spending in the short run.
So Andy Burnham gives off this impression of being more of a sort of socialist than Keir Starmer, more of a progressive champion.
But it's not actually very clear there's much he can do at all that's all that different.
As I say, it's mainly a matter of probably vibes rather than substantial policy shift.
So this is a question that The Economist looked at a few weeks ago, and we came to the conclusion that no, Britain is not ungovernable.
It's just badly governed.
I think there are some structural issues, particularly in the wake of Brexit, and we have a governing class that has lost the ability to compromise, but a sufficiently strong leader really could change that.
If Andy Burnham can use his popularity and use his status as a new broom to impress on Labour and impress on the political class as a whole, that Britain can only be governed with some hard choices, some hard compromises, for example, genuine planning reform that would have losers as well as winners, or an energy policy that actually accepts that a
full-throated 100% drive towards eliminating carbon emissions at the expense of all else is not the right one and that we need a compromise that brings down the cost of energy, big issues like that, but hard decisions, then Britain could be very well governed.
It's just we've had a succession of leaders who, partly through their own fault, partly because of external factors, haven't been able to make those breakthroughs.
Showing 161–180 of 182 · page 9 of 10
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