Joe Pike
speaker
1,425 appearances
17 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard yesterday
Joe Pike’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 — 17 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.
Appearances
Because the journalistic inquiries around who might be willing to give up their seat in the northwest of England for Andy Burnham has tended to focus on folk not exactly in their first flush of youth, assuming that the carriage clock and a spot of retirement would appeal.
And it turns out it's a 30-something.
Yeah, we were building up to.
And in fact, when Alex and I were chatting on Politics Live on BBC Two at lunchtime just before one o'clock, we were saying, because I think it was reasonable to say at the time, although we would say that, wouldn't we?
The story then felt like West Street is not saying anything when there's been this anticipation that,
that he would.
And then when he did say something, he sort of said half of what he might have said.
So he said he was resigning as health secretary.
By the way, during the morning, I was being sent stuff that was being sent by him to Labour MPs, which were the kind of these, like kind of game show style photo slide things being sent around on WhatsApp groups to Labour MPs, which is effectively him doing his, as he saw it, his greatest hits as...
health secretary.
Then at lunchtime, he packs it in and walks, and it's a pretty stinging critique of the prime minister and his style of government in his resignation letter, but does not say that he's going to throw his hat in the ring, nor say that he's got the support to allow him to do that, and then began a blizzard of briefing from those on his side saying, yes, he's got the numbers, but...
you know, he's taking his time, he respects the fact the party wants a conversation, all the stuff about, you know, leaving space for Andy Burnham to make a move.
By the way, Team Burnham say there wasn't any coordination with them around all of that.
And then you had other folk who were...
broadly speaking, on Team Starmer, who were saying, look, we don't think he's got the numbers.
And in fact, somebody who I was talking to, who was well placed to have a sense of how the numbers might shake out in the Parliamentary Labour Party, claimed to me that there was only 44 nailed on backers for Wes Streeting.
Indeed, and that for him to clear the total would require loads and loads and loads and loads of ministers to resign.
Now, you might think, well, hang on a minute, if you've got supporters on the radio out loud saying he has got support and then you've got other people off the record saying he hasn't, both can't be right.
It's sort of possible they sort of could be because support is not necessarily the same thing as being willing to sign on the dotted line now.
No, no, I don't think he's off the pitch.
Showing 1241–1260 of 1,425 · page 63 of 72
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