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Chapter 1: What led to Keir Starmer's resignation as Prime Minister?
This is a global production.
There is something quite sort of Shakespearean about this, isn't there?
In that speech, exactly the reason why he has been a failure as prime minister.
It now is another prime minister who has come to power by a general election, but left via a coup.
It is the world's most painful popularity contest. He never established any emotional connection with the public. He was simply a vessel to remove the Tories. Where is the power? Who are we looking at? Are we looking at you?
Are we looking at him?
Who's in control? 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 of my parliamentary party to that question. And I accept that answer with good grace. Every decision I've taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party.
Keir Starmer becoming the 6th PM to resign from office in the last 10 years. And as he did so, he grappled with the question, staring him in the face. Why has his own party... Turned its back on him.
And turned against him viciously so that it is now almost inevitable that Andy Burnham becomes the next Prime Minister of this country. Is Andy Burnham ready? Is the country ready? Welcome to the News Agents.
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Chapter 2: How did Andy Burnham position himself for leadership?
The herd didn't move. The herd stampeded. I mean, this was the parliamentary Labour Party saying, Keir, you're not up to the job. And I'm told that the cabinet were kind of almost ringing round each other before they spoke to Starmer, so that there was a sort of agreed line among a sizable chunk of the cabinet.
on those Friday phone calls that took place and that even until last night, those cabinet members didn't know what Keir Starmer was going to come out and say when he opened the door of Downing Street today or whether indeed he was going to open the door of Downing Street today. They were still in the dark.
They assumed because of the Rachel Sylvester story that in The Observer that he would come out and announce his resignation. But no one knew for sure. And again, I think that the fact that he came out on Friday morning and said, I'm going to fight on. Now, OK, I understand you're trying to give yourself some breathing space. But again, it just shows his lack of political judgment.
Why would you say that on Friday when it was so obvious that everything had changed overnight, not just by Andy Burnham's victory, but the scale of that victory, which meant that Labour MPs were thinking, you know, our saviour is not the guy who's in Downing Street at the moment. Our saviour is the guy in Manchester who's coming down on the train as we speak now.
I think that Keir Starmer's resignation statement, in its own way, adverted to exactly the reason that he was leaving or the reason that he's lost support. Look, I think two things can be true at once. We always say, look, I can totally understand why Starmer is really pissed off. I can totally understand why he must be furious.
I can totally understand why he feels utterly grieved and angry at Burnham and the rest of it. I can see in his head, he sat there thinking, hang on a minute, I won a huge majority in 2024. I won a majority in... Out of 650 constituencies, we won over 400.
This guy, out of nowhere, after I've put six years of hard bloody grafts, sacrificed family time, didn't have to do it, his choice, but, you know, sacrificed a lot because politicians do at that top level. You know, he's coming in after all of that and all that hard graft. wins one constituency, albeit in spectacular fashion, no doubt, and is taking my job? Like, what the hell?
Like, I can totally... And by the way, all these people who bat me like 10 minutes ago, where are you? Totally understand that, and he wouldn't be the first prime minister to feel aggrieved or betrayed. And yet, at the same time, yet and yet and yet... We can see in that speech exactly the reason why he has been a failure as prime minister. I don't think he's been a failure as Labour leader.
I think he's right to point to his record. Six years as leader of the Labour Party. Actually, the longest serving leader of the Labour Party since Tony Blair. Did transform the party's fortunes. He'll always get credit for that. Picked up the pieces after the 2019 election. Put the party in a position where it could win again.
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Chapter 3: What factors contributed to the Labour Party's internal conflicts?
You know, I was speaking to someone over the weekend, very senior in the government, talking about, you know, my problems aren't ideological. My problems are that it was just so everything was so badly managed. There was, you know, bringing people in, building alliances, working out how we sell a story or sell a message. Who do we need to get on board? How quickly can we get them on board?
You know, just the tight decisions, the tight judgments. And Keir Starmer wouldn't make those judgments. I think it's very easy to go down a narrative and, you know, look, people are right to point out seventh prime minister in a decade. And I think there is something, you know, maybe in the periphery about governability, maybe Brexit, whatever it happens to be.
Look, we are literally on the cusp of the 10th.
anniversary of brexit eve and so it would be very tempting to say it's all because you know the uncertainty caused by brexit i think there are particular circumstances about keir starmer and the way that he ran the cabinet and the way that he ran politics and the way that he did politics which was not to do politics is what has cost him his uh premiership right now
I think that he is the author of this, I'm afraid, which is a harsh judgment because there are a lot of decent qualities about him. And I think that he's right to say, look, look at waiting lists, look at some of the achievements we've had. But I just think that you just look at public opinion.
It seems to me totally disproportionate, the amount of hatred there is for Keir Starmer, given that he's quite a mild-mannered sort of bloke.
I think that's John because he never, ever established... Precisely because of his lack of political skill, he never established any emotional connection with the public on any level. He was simply, and I think again, he didn't, he and his team, I don't think, paid enough attention to this fact. They just talked about the size of the majority. He was simply a vessel to remove the Tories.
That's all it was. And from that did not build a successful political program, cognizant of the fact that the support for him was skin deep. Look, I think that, of course, there will be achievements. I think that he certainly, in terms of foreign affairs, we've discussed this many times, restored a certain dignity to Britain on the world stage. You've got to give him some.
Credit for that after years of not just sort of tumult, but frankly, yobbery from conservative prime ministers, you know, just for the sake of it.
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Chapter 4: How did Starmer's leadership impact Labour's public perception?
And he is going to become the next prime minister. Don't need to get it right anymore, John. We've moved on now. I know, I know. But what does it say about our democracy that we have chosen, in effect, our next prime minister and he has not yet even been sworn in as an MP as we sit here and record this at 10 to 1?
Well, we should talk a little bit about the future and what the timetable is going to be for this transition that is coming up right after this.
What do you reckon? Prime Minister by July? I'm going to... Any message for the region as you head down to London?
So Henry Bolingbroke never had to contend with Avanti trains, famously. Andy Burnham is leaving Manchester, Piccadilly, I think, the station there, with quite a throng around him. And it is an extraordinary moment because he's just, you know, he's not even an MP yet. He has not even been sworn in. He's in his T-shirt.
Black t-shirt sort of the uniform the Mancunian uniform and jeans Burnham normcore. Yeah, and he's about to get on a train to arrive into what a totally expectant Parliament And he will be sworn in at 2.30. And I guess there is some sense that when Keir Starmer took to the lectern at 9.30 this morning, it was precisely to avoid there being this overlap of, you know, where is the power?
Who are we looking at? Are we looking at you? Are we looking at him? Who's in control? So Starmer had his... Time in Downing Street, first thing this morning. Burnham will be sworn in at 2.30 this afternoon. I don't know if we'll expect Starmer to be in the Commons for that, will we? No, I'd be amazed. Watching his own execution.
So I have to say, when we were talking about this over the weekend, we did imagine a contest which opened on Tuesday, frankly, and was sort of all done and dusted a week later by the 9th. The way Starmer has set it out is slightly longer, which is it opens on the 9th. In other words, a sort of, what is that, a week tomorrow. And it is finalised by the 16th of July.
Unless there's a contest and it will run until September.
Exactly. Now, we know that West Streeting has, in the last couple of hours... pulled away from his own bid to be leader. We can debate whether that means he didn't get the numbers or he did get a deal, a big sort of offer of a sort of big state of office job. And we are waiting to see if anyone else will come forward.
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Chapter 5: What were the emotional responses to Starmer's resignation?
I mean, you look at some of the briefing that was taking place over the weekend about Ed Miliband. And because the suggestion being that he might be the next chancellor of the Exchequer and you have the markets. And the CEO saying, oh, my God, no. You know, remember that whole predator producer stuff from when he was the Labour leader? And then you have the unions saying,
GMB and Unite say, oh, my God, no. I can't see that. No, you can't make him Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Can you see Ed Miliband as Chancellor?
No. I can't. I think with the internal opposition now from GMB and Unite, I think it would be very, very difficult.
But I also think it has to be somebody that Andy Burnham can basically hand over the numbers to but not feel that he's in constant opposition to. So I think, I mean, the West Streeting Burnham presumably sets up a kind of personality clash because you don't want somebody who wanted your job.
I think a political clash as well.
Right? I mean, that's what I mean. Political personality... You've got two pretty bright lights there, both trying to shine. I wonder if it's a sort of Healy character, which would make a lot of sense. You know, John Healy steps back from defence, you know... Can't get the money for that. But actually, it seemed to be pretty loyal. It seemed to go back into lockstep behind a leader.
I mean, that's not a stupid idea.
I mean, we're putting all these names to things. What we don't know is where Andy Burnham stands on any of these big policy questions, which are the central ones about, you know, where does he stand on net zero? Where does he stand on increasing defence spending? What does he want to do about the, you know, the debt levels in this country? And where does he want to raise money from?
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Chapter 6: How does the political landscape change with Burnham's potential rise?
He would set up a by-election in Hoban and St Pancras. Look, it's a rock-solid Labour seat. It should be on paper. But Zapolanski has talked in the past... about standing against Keir Starmer in Hoban and St Pancras, given their local election performance in the Borough of Camden, they would fancy their chances.
And it would be an early test case of whether an Andy Burnham-led Labour government could do the same thing that Andy Burnham in the great market town of Makerfield has done, which is able to corral and bring together
The progressive vote and whether you can do that outside of a contest where basically you're running as Andy Burnham yourself rather than the Labour Party and where, frankly, reform would be nowhere because, you know, we can predict few things in modern politics. But I think it's fair to say that reform's chances of storming Hobart and St Pancras is quite slight.
Yeah, I mean, it could be one big fuck you from Andy Burnham actually to Keir Starmer if he can win his own seat again for Labour. It's interesting, YouGov saying today that with Andy Burnham announcing he does intend to stand for the leadership, 19% of Britons say they'd be more likely to vote Labour if he became prime minister. I mean, that is astonishing. If the party...
think they can rely on a 20% boost, then they are not going to have very many qualms about what has happened over the last 72 hours. That said, I don't think Keir Starmer will go anywhere. I think he does still have a sense of duty. He has said that he will be at the side of whoever comes next. Happy to advise all the rest of it. Maybe that's just what you put into the nice speech. That's fine.
But I wonder whether he will want to actually stick around, do a Rishi, be gracious, stick around, do your thing, not leave your constituents and actually feel part of the project in some shape or form for a bit longer.
Chairman of the FA, anybody? Is that job coming up, John?
I can see that. Well, it depends who wins the World Cup. If we win the World Cup, then, you know, Keir Starmer would be delighted. No, I spoke to someone last night, because there's been this theory going around that one thing that could happen is that Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister and then says to Keir Starmer, do you want to be Foreign Secretary?
And I spoke to someone last night and they said, not a chance. Not a chance. There is such bad blood between them.
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