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Chapter 1: What challenges does the revolving door at 10 Downing Street present?
ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis, the host of Politics Now. And sometimes it can be hard to cut through all the noise from the Canberra bubble. But on the Politics Now podcast, bursting it wide open is our core business.
I'm joined by the brightest minds at the ABC to break down the polyspeak and have a chat about what's actually going on behind the scenes. It's called Politics Now and you can find it on ABC Listener.
Chapter 2: Who is Andy Burnham and what are his chances as the new PM?
There's a revolving door at 10 Downing Street. Prime Minister goes in and then is popped out again. This time it was Keir Starmer. So can his likely successor, the former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, last the distance? Today, Simon Tormey, Professor of Politics at Deakin Uni. on why Britain's woeful economy will make it hard. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Simon, we used to love changing prime ministers in Australia. In fact, we did it all the time. But I think the Brits might have perfected the art. Seven prime ministers in just over a decade. They really like doing this, don't they?
Another way of putting it is that we've got a kind of crisis-prone system
political system where successive prime ministers have basically either proven themselves to be incapable or unwilling to take the difficult decisions which confront a country which is in kind of relative decline in European and global terms and there are tough choices to be made and some of them are more likely to make it than others.
All right, well, Keir Starmer, of course, he is the latest to stand outside the door at 10 Downing Street and resign.
The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer and I accept that answer with good grace. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party.
Now, in his speech, he listed his achievements, he thanked his family.
I shall spend more time on the most important job, being the best husband I can to my fantastic wife, Fig, and being the best dad I can to my beautiful children, who are my pride and my joy.
But wow, it's really brutal, isn't it? Because he actually won an election in a landslide just two years ago.
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Chapter 3: Why has Keir Starmer struggled as Labour leader?
Someone who's kind of very much at home talking to the ordinary guy in the street, running around in a pair of shorts and all these kind of images and hoping to use that as a way of kind of building credibility, but also then leveraging that what they call Manchester-ism, a sort of Burnham's ideology for national purposes.
We've been on a path for 40 years that simply hasn't worked for people and places in this part of the world. And this now is the change moment. We have an opportunity to turn the tide, to make the country feel like it's working again, to make people feel hope again.
That is the main thing I think we need in this country right now, for people to feel a sense of hope that there is something better to work towards on the horizon.
Well, Simon, Starmer is out, Burnham is likely in, but he's still a Labor stalwart, right? Just like Starmer is, and he's going to face exactly the same problems. Can he really be that different to Keir Starmer? Will he actually win over voters?
Well, I think that's the $64,000 question, Sam. He is a very capable political operator. He is very good at sort of triangulating, finding the right tone of voice for the right kind of audiences. I think when you're PM, everything is just scrutinized to the nth degree. I think Burnham is a smarter political operator than Starmer.
But of course, only time will tell as to whether this actually works out. And of course, the key issue is that we're not due a general election until 2029. But of course, then they're under pressure to revise that timetable because what is the legitimacy of Burnham himself? He's just been made an MP.
And now he's talking about prime minister and you've got Farage and Kemi Badenoch and all the rest saying, hold on a second, before you do anything, we need another general election in order to give you that mandate and legitimacy. And of course, they're thinking that if they go to a general election, then maybe even reform wins and we'll see a return of the Conservative Party.
How do you think this will all go down across the electorate with the rise of people like Nigel Farage?
Well, I think the electorate is very disenchanted. I think there's a section which is very angry. What Burnham has got to do then is get in front of the cameras, tell a convincing story and avoid obvious catastrophes and crises. And a lot of that is really, frankly, as we know, outside of the control of the political class anyway. Geopolitics is a very complex thing. Trump is out there tweeting.
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