533. Andy Burnham's Big Gamble: Can He Beat Reform?
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What recent events prompted this emergency episode?
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How did Wes Streeting's resignation impact the Labour Party?
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Welcome to The Rest of This Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
And me, Alastair Campbell. And we're talking about developments in the leadership of the Labour Party. We had the dreadful local election results recently since when there's been massive speculation about whether anybody might challenge Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. Step forward this morning, Wes Streeting, Health Secretary, resigning from the cabinet, saying in his letter of resignation that he no longer has the confidence in the prime minister and he wants a broad leadership debate to see who should follow him. And then this evening, step forward, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, lots of talk about which seat he might step into and step forward on his behalf, a young MP by the name of Joss Simons, who has stepped down from a seat in the Manchester area and
And Andy Burnham says he wants to ask the national executive to let him be a candidate.
Let me try for foreign listeners just quickly, or any British listeners who, like me, have been doing other work today and haven't been following the ins and outs. Essentially, under the Labour Party rules, if an MP, sitting MP, gets enough MPs to back him... just over 80 MPs, they can trigger a leadership challenge to the sitting leader, who in this case is Keir Starmer. And then the rules are that it goes to an alternative voting system where the electorate voting are Labour Party members and affiliated members, which I guess means members of trade unions or certain types of members of trade unions. And if nobody clears 50% of the first round, the candidates' votes are redistributed until somebody emerges as the winner.
And the system, I guess, was set up in order to try to balance two things. One is to make sure that the candidate was not such an outsider that no MPs were prepared to get behind them. So maybe that was sort of blocking the return of a Jeremy Corbyn, who maybe they thought wouldn't have got the requisite 80-plus votes. And the second thing is, of course, giving a voice to the party. But that means that different MPs now challenging Starmer have advantages and disadvantages. Starmer has one big advantage if he wants to hang on, which is he can try to hold the MPs and stop them putting their names behind an alternative. And we can talk about that. If he fails to do that, then I guess there will be insiders who may be better at mobilizing the critical number of MPs.
And then there may be somebody, and this is what I wanted to get you with, what if there's somebody like Angela Rayner who might be more appealing to the party and the country? And for someone like me from the outside, it seems to me she'd almost be a shoo-in if it was just the Labour Party members voting.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What recent events prompted this emergency episode?
0:00–0:56
2
How did Wes Streeting's resignation impact the Labour Party?
0:56–10:49
3
What is Andy Burnham's potential strategy for leadership?
10:49–14:35
4
How does the Labour Party leadership challenge process work?
14:35–18:58
5
What advantages does Keir Starmer have in retaining leadership?
18:58–25:23
6
What are the risks for Andy Burnham in pursuing leadership?
25:23–27:27
Speakers
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