Immigration, Europe and tax: the questions Burnham is avoiding | LIVE
Coffee House Shots
The episode explores the political challenges facing Andy Burnham and the Labour Party during their conference in Liverpool. The discussion
Key takeaways
- Andy Burnham faces a significant political hurdle in funding a new national social care service through tax increases.
- There is a widening gap between Labour membership and voters regarding Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) reforms.
Main topics
- Labour Party Conference
- Social Care Funding
Notable quotes
It's not an argument, darling. It's just a national conversation we're having.
Conclusion
The episode concludes that the success of the Burnham leadership depen
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, live from Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. I'm Noah Hoffman and today I'm delighted to be joined by Tim Shipman and James Heal. James, why don't we start with Andy Burnham on Laura Koonsberg's show? It was a pretty seismic interview, and I believe it's the first time that the prime minister has said the quiet bit out loud, namely that Labour will fight the next general election on a manifesto to raise taxes in order to fund social care, a new national social care service free at the point of use. What did you make of the revelations? I Speaker 2 (0:46) think the challenge is going to be for Andy Burnham. How is this such an important defining issue for our time? And yet, supposedly, we're not having a general election until 2029. How is, on one hand, social care so important, so seismic, so systemic of the way in which he's going to conduct his premiership? And on the other hand, well, actually, we're going to kick it into the long grass for the next two and a half years or so, which will lead some people to conclude that there's going to be an election prior to 2029, despite what Andy Burnham did say. this week. I thought the other thing that was interesting was when Annie Burnham was talking very much about what he wanted to be as Prime Minister. He was suggesting that he wanted to kind of bring the country together in some ways. I think that goes back to the point about it's not going to be a conference for hard reckoning. You see the slogans everywhere that says hope again. This is a party that needs some good cheering up over the past two years or so. And you talk about a sort of return to Labour themes. I've been reading for my sins all the Labour cabinet ministers' speeches today. I think there's been about eight or so so far. There have been three references on different occasions. to Harold Wilson, the man who's been dead 31 years. But I mean, this is very much a party getting back to its Labour roots, talking about Labour values and sort of trying to reconnect with the faithful, potentially as Speaker 1 (1:49) a Speaker 2 (1:49) precursor for some kind of earlier than expected electoral reckoning, but more about sort of reconnecting Labour with those voters they lost in such droves at the May local elections this year. Speaker 1 (1:57) And talking about disparity between the Labour membership and the wider public, why don't we talk about immigration? Because we've had Angela Rayner come out and double down. on the call she made when she was out of the cabinet saying that she disagrees with Shabana Mahmood's ILR reforms. Of course, no final decision has been made and there's still back and forth negotiations, but she's really come out and disagreed with the Home Secretary, which begs the question about ministerial responsibility. But Tim, generally, what do you make of the immigration debate within Labour at the moment? Do you think that Andy Burnham has the political capital to go ahead with this, something that arguably the wider public wants, even if it is at odds with the Labour membership? Speaker 3 (2:43) Well, look, I think there's several things here. Firstly, the policy is in flux, so I think it's just about tolerable for Angela Rayner to state her view. When there's a decision, if ministers then start slagging it off, then I think you've got a big problem. But clearly with a new prime minister, the policy is in flux, and Shabana Mahmood, who was one of the most... vocal ministers for months and months has basically been a submarine for the last three or four months pretty much since Burnham came in or pretty actually from before that from when it became clear that Burnham probably would come in so from about February we've barely heard from Shabana Mahmood I think Burnham has some understanding of this. He fought Makerfield. It's a constituency that cares about migration control. And frankly, some of the people who installed Andy Burnham as Labour leader wanted him to fight Makerfield for precisely that reason. Because he's not instinctively anti-immigration. He's instinctively somebody who wants to be nice to everybody. And that includes being nice to all the world's bedraggled who want to come here. But fighting Makerfield kind of... put the issue in his face. And, you know, during that campaign, he did say, you know, we do need to control this. We do need to stick with the sort of basic outline of the Mahmood reforms, even if not every dot and comma is retained. But I do think this is, it's not just that this is putting the party potentially at odds with the rest of the country, where 75 % of the public wants to drastically control migration. It also puts... the party and the membership and odds with their voters. Seven out of ten Labour voters support Shabana Mahmood's reforms. 50 % of Green voters do. 50 % of Lib Dems do. I Speaker 1 (4:21) think there was a polling Speaker 3 (4:21) out Speaker 1 (4:21) that said now, under Burnham, the Labour members have sort of changed their mind. They've turned against Speaker 2 (4:27) the ILR. Speaker 1 (4:27) They've been led by Speaker 2 (4:28) Andy Burnham. Tim, let's talk about voters as opposed to members. I'm talking about voters. But Speaker 1 (4:32) voters, yes. Speaker 3 (4:33) Yeah. So, look, I think... I think it's dangerous terrain for Labour. If you look at what's happened in the polls since he took charge, the whole of the Burnham bounce insofar as it happened, four or five points probably add back to two, three points now. That's all come from the Green Party and the left. There's no inroads against reform. All of reform's reduced vote has basically gone to restore or the Conservative Party. If Burnham were, you know, to maintain the idea that he might like an early election, he would need to be winning a bit more back. directly from reform, it seems to me, and to most of the pollsters I speak to. Those two recent super polls showed Labour at best on 241 seats. Now, there's a whole raft of seats against reform in the north, where a couple of points movement could win back swathes more of those seats, but that hasn't happened yet. And I don't think it will if the Labour Party appears to be at odds with... public sentiment on this. It's Speaker 2 (5:27) really not complicated. I think also it's indicative of how he might want his premiership to be about one thing, but it could very well end up being something else. And we saw that at the Koonsberg interview, he wants to talk about social care, he wants the battle lines to be on tax and spend, he wants it to be around sort of intergenerational fairness. And I do think, for instance, there could be potentially some kind of grand bargain where he scraps the triple lock