Burnham begins: what awaits the new PM?
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What happened on Andy Burnham’s first day as Prime Minister?
This is The Guardian.
Today, Andy Burnham's first day in Downing Street.
Well, he finally made it.
I have just come from Buckingham Palace, where I have accepted His Majesty the King's invitation to form a government.
On his third and most audacious attempt, Andy Burnham is Prime Minister.
He's given his first speech in the job. But I can do something to give people some breathing space now, some help. He's chosen his cabinet.
John Healey is Chancellor of the Exchequer and I can tell you that was not expected.
And now things get real.
he'll go behind that black door and he will wander into the cabinet room and he'll see all those kind of sights that we've seen if we, you know, watch Love Actually. He'll do all of that, but one of the very first things that he'll do is he'll get a briefing from the National Security Advisor. And then this is a real kind of sober moment.
This is Paul Harrison, who worked in Number 10 for Theresa May.
almost certainly completely by himself. He'll sit in his office and he'll be given a set of letters and a shredder. And the letters are about whether we should respond in the event of a nuclear attack or we shouldn't. And they're duplicates and there are four of each because we have four nuclear submarines that operate in the nuclear deterrent. This is basically a process that every new prime minister does by themselves. So he'll shred the ones he doesn't want and seal the others in envelopes.
So they're already written for him, are they? And he just has to sign them?
Yeah, that's a huge decision that you've made. A few hours after you've gone to see the king and he said, okay, you know, please form a government in my name. There'll be a lot of stuff where Andy Burnham will want to pause and look around and think about what he's achieved by getting there. I mean, it's an amazing thing. But also how much kind of hope and responsibility is now invested in him.
From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus, Andy Burnham's Entree.
Paul Harrison, you worked for Theresa May as her press secretary after the general election in 2017 while she was prime minister. Let's talk about what Burnham has just walked into. Because I think a lot of our overseas listeners will be quite surprised to hear that they'll have seen a picture of Downing Street, but maybe they don't realise that it's not a purpose-built government building like the White House or the Chancellery in Germany. It's like a cramped row of little higgledy-piggledy terraced houses, isn't it? Can you remember what you first thought when you knocked on that door and you were let in?
As you say, it is very hibbledy-pibbledy. In fact, the further down below stairs you go into the basement, the more it looks like a collection of sort of abandoned wedding furniture that's not even from the same wedding. So yeah, it's very strange. It's a bit of a rabbit warren. Like lots of old buildings, the rooms aren't the same size. There are stairs that sometimes seem to go nowhere in particular. And in some cases, it's very grand. So there are these amazing rooms upstairs, the state rooms, the ones that people will have seen on television when you see foreign leaders go and introduce themselves. But that is nowhere like the desk space that most of the people occupy. We were six to a room in the bit of the Downing Street press office that I worked in.
So yeah, there is a bit of a facade inside that very grand black door.
And what about the living quarters?
What immediate security briefings and solemn duties await a new PM on day one?
What are they like for the Prime Minister and his or her family?
Bits of them are quite spacious, actually. There's sort of some kind of double-height ceilings, and they look a bit grand in portions, but also, effectively, they're smashed into the middle of the building, so they don't start on the ground floor or finish right at the top. They're kind of a flat that's inserted halfway up, both above number 10 and above number 11, and obviously... prime ministers and chancellors, depending on how big their families are, might have chosen to swap those two places around.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What happened on Andy Burnham’s first day as Prime Minister?
0:00–4:09
2
What immediate security briefings and solemn duties await a new PM on day one?
4:09–13:42
3
What is Downing Street really like inside — offices, living quarters and daily life?
13:42–26:17
4
How will the move to Number 10 change Andy Burnham’s personal freedom and routines?
26:17–29:26