Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a Squeeze podcast, where your shortcut to being informed.
A message from Anthropic. Prezian, a physical AI company for heavy industry, used Claude to help cut critical safety events by over 70% in three months. That's what Anthropic built Claude for, partnering with you to solve real problems. The UK is about to get its seventh prime minister in 10 years after the resignation of Labor's Sir Keir Starmer.
The man tipped to replace him is former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, the country's newest MP, who won a crucial by-election last week over his main competition from the far-right Reform UK party. In this quiz shortcut, we'll look at what went wrong for Starmer, what Burnham's promising, and how things stand in the UK a decade after Brexit.
Squeeze Shortcuts is the backstory to the big news stories. I'm Alice Dempster. And I'm Anna Paikett. Anna, squizzers will hear from your accent. You're from the UK, so you'll be all over the political situation there. There have been rumblings about Sir Keir Starmer's leadership for months now, and all of that led to yesterday's decision for him to step down.
Yeah, there's no hiding this British accent, is there? I was glued to the telly last night, far later than I should have been, Alice. There were a few takeaways from Keir Starmer's speech, which was fairly short, fairly succinct. It was over pretty quickly.
He ran through his achievements before saying how proud he was to have done the job, but he had heard his colleagues' concerns and wanted to make sure the transition of power to his successor was as smooth as possible. He got a bit emotional when thanking his wife and children, who presumably he'll get to spend a bit more time with now.
And for anyone who was watching last night, in case you were wondering what the music you could hear behind Starmer speaking was, it was Beethoven's Ode to Joy, which is seen as the anthem of Europe being blasted out by an anti-Brexit protester in the background.
And we'll come back to the UK leaving the EU and how that plays into all of this a little bit later. But first, if you cast your mind back decades, Nearly two years, Labour came into power with a huge majority, taking it back from the Conservatives, who had been in for about 14 years. But since then, Starmer's popularity has really nosedived.
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Chapter 2: What led to Keir Starmer's resignation as Labour leader?
Things started going wrong for him pretty quickly after he got back in. Now, the biggest warning sign came in local elections earlier this year, where Labour lost almost 1,500 councillors. They lost power in Wales, where it used to be a stronghold, and recorded its worst result ever in elections for the Scottish Parliament.
And it's not just voters who have been unhappy. More than 100 Labour MPs had publicly called on Starmer to either resign or at least set out a timeline for leaving.
That's right. And there's been division inside the party over some of the policy decisions he made. There's been lots of anger from voters, too, about things like cutting the winter fuel payment. Now, that's an annual tax-free cash allowance given by the UK government to help older people pay their heating bills.
This announcement came only a few weeks after him getting the keys to Downing Street. He also tightened up sickness and welfare benefits. He raised taxes on small businesses and pushed through hardline immigration reforms that alienated a lot of traditional Labour voters.
was in response to the rise in popularity of Nigel Farage's far-right party Reform UK, which has been leading political polls in Britain. It used to be known as the UK Independence Party, or UKIP, and it delivers a similar kind of message to Pauline Hanson's One Nation here in Australia. It has a staunch anti-immigration policy, and it's been drawing voters away from the
That's a whole other thing. So if you want to know a bit more about Reform UK, we did a shortcut on it that we'll link to in the episode notes. But the other thing to know here is that Starmer's been facing heat over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as Britain's ambassador to the US.
You might have heard about this because it's been making international news. That was because of Mandelson's former ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. So all of that together brings us to where we are now.
There are a couple of names in the mix looking to challenge Starmer, like former Health Secretary Wes Streeting. But under Labor rules, a challenger needs to have the signatures of 20% of MPs or about 81 MPs to formally trigger a leadership contest. And no challenge has ended up happening.
Some political analysts have said that a leadership change could have come sooner, but the party was lacking the right candidate to replace Starmer. But now that he's stood down, things are moving quite quickly and Labor looks set to promote Andy Burnham. So up next, we'll tell you a bit about him and where things go from here. Support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Keir Starmer face during his leadership?
And worth saying, there have been a heap of elections in the UK over the last few years. Researching for this story, I was taken back to when Theresa May called a snap general election back in 2017. And there's a vox pop of a woman going, another one? Seriously? There's just too much politics happening at the moment.
But anyway, when Andy Burnham tried to stand in this previous by-election, some backbenchers described Keir Starmer blocking him as petty manoeuvring. As frustration in the Labour Party grew, back in May, the sitting member for Makerfield, a guy called Josh Simons, resigned to clear the way for Burnham.
So this was engineered so that a by-election would happen, so that Burnham could run to become an MP and head back to Parliament. That all happened on Thursday in the UK.
The ballot was considered to be a test against Reform UK, but Burnham won the seat convincingly. He won 54.8% of the vote. And political analysts say that the victory has been seen as proof that he can reconnect with voters that the party has been losing in recent years. And that brings us neatly to what he's promising.
Basically, he wants to reset the party back to delivering for working families because it had been seen to be veering over into kind of conservative territory in recent years. In light of that, he's pledged not to raise income tax or VAT, which is like our GSD here in Australia.
He also wants the government to have more control over utilities, so things like water, energy and public transport systems. He plans to replace inheritance tax with a national levy also to help fund aged care.
Yeah, but he'll be taking over a country that is as divided along ideological lines over the economy, national identity and immigration as it was when 51.9% of the population voted to leave the European Union in 2014. what we now know as Brexit.
I cannot believe it's been 10 years since Brexit, Alice. I covered the campaign extensively when working for the BBC before moving down to Australia. I was actually at Glastonbury Music Festival when the exit polls were announced and it was a huge moment for the country. To take you back, that was five prime ministers ago.
So it was Tory leader David Cameron who put this referendum to the British public and every prime minister since then has had the challenge of implementing all the changes associated with leaving the European Union.
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