Andy Burnham draws his battle lines

Electoral Dysfunction

The hosts analyze Andy Burnham's highly emotional and policy-heavy speech at the Labour Party conference, where he pledged to scrap the triple lock pension pledge, establish a national care service, reform electoral voting

Key takeaways

• Andy Burnham announced plans to scrap the triple lock pension pledge by 2030 to fund a new national care service, potentially saving £15 billion annually but sparking immediate backlash over residential care costs.
• Ruth Davidson shared her personal experience of paying over £600,000 for her parents' dementia and Alzheimer's care in Scotland, warning that Burnham's policy may not cover residential fees as promised.

Main topics

• Andy Burnham's Labour Party conference speech
• Scrapping the triple lock pension pledge

Notable quotes

I was hoping for the Starmer Project to succeed. You were right. I was wrong.

Conclusion

The episode underscores how Burnham's speech successfully cemented his leader

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:00) I'm Adele Robinson, a correspondent for Sky News, and I wanted to give you a recommendation for when you finish this podcast. I've made a documentary for YouTube called The Com, Online, Sadistic and Deadly. It takes a look inside one of the darkest corners of the internet and the disturbing community that exists there, exploring how young people can be drawn into it and the devastating consequences that can follow. It's a story that's difficult to hear, but one I think is really important to understand. You can find The Com on the Sky News app. website and YouTube channel. Speaker 4 (0:32) Sky News, the full story first. Speaker 4 (0:42) I get emotional at lots of things. I cry at donkey sanctuary adverts on the television. I mean, I'm a really easy, really easy to tears. I was pretty untouched. Speaker 5 (0:55) You were right. I was wrong. I was hoping for the Starmer Project to succeed. Speaker 3 (1:02) She'll be able to say, you're going to take money off pensioners and you won't actually reform the welfare bill. Speaker 3 (1:11) Hello and welcome to Electro Dysfunction with me, Beth Rigby. Me, Ruth Davidson. And me, Harriet Harman. And I'm not going to lie, I am pretty exhausted. It's lovely to see you both. I've seen Harriet a lot, actually, because we've been up at Labour Conference. And in between, I've got a half marathon the weekend after next, so I've been running a bit. But I've mainly been running around. politicians chasing them. But also, I've just been running around with Jess and Harriet at conference, so I've had quite a nice time, to be Speaker 4 (1:41) honest. I'm feeling Speaker 3 (1:42) a little Speaker 4 (1:42) left out. You went to New York with Harriet, you've been to Liverpool with Harriet. Like, Speaker 6 (1:46) come on now, women. Speaker 3 (1:47) I know, I'm sorry about that. Speaker 5 (1:50) It feels quite strange to be away from conference and back home because it's such an incredible bubble. And it's such an overwhelming feeling. It Speaker 3 (1:59) really was. And thank you to all of you. And particularly those young, do you remember those young men, Harriet, that came and asked for our photo on the Sunday night? I saw one of them again. Toby. Toby. Toby. And I was asked to make sure we give them a shout out. So Toby in the gang, this is your shout out. Also, I should say. We also recorded a special insider electoral dysfunction live with Angela Rayner. She took a bit of convincing because it started at eight o'clock and she was like. If I don't have to do the morning round, why on earth am I coming to see you all at 8am? But it was really fun. And if you haven't seen that, you can see a shorter version of our chat on the Sky News app and YouTube. So you could watch that. But Ruth, I am coming up to you. I am coming up on Sunday to Tories. Speaker 4 (2:55) There's something about party conferences that's just a bit odd in that momentum shifts. And it did feel like there was a momentum shift at Labour. Like, despite the fact you'd won this enormous majority two years ago, like massive, massive majority, at no point did it feel, looking at the Labour Party, that you actually had confidence in yourselves having won. And it felt to me watching it that you guys have now got a set of self-confidence bordering on evangelism. And we can talk about the actual speech from the leader in a bit. Speaker 4 (3:30) that has kind of shifted the dial for how it's going to be for MPs trying to explain how the country is being run now. That's what it felt like for me watching it. We're suddenly having our post-electoral Speaker 5 (3:44) euphoria, which we sort of didn't feel confident enough to have. And I was having a conversation with my successor, Miata Fanbuller, who's now the Member of Parliament for Peckham, which I represented for so many. decades. And I'd been saying to her, look, you just got to help Keir Starmer. You've got to support him. It's a difficult thing being prime minister, but look, he's led us into victory. There's now 400 Labour MPs. And she was saying, it's just not going to work. And I had to say to Miata, especially after Andy's speech, you were right. I was wrong. I was hoping for the Starmer project to succeed. And a lot of them were saying, look, it's not going to. face up to the reality. The reality is that it's not going to, and they were more in touch with the public than I was. And I think the point is that without Keir Starmer having the confidence of MPs, nobody on the outside, you know, whether they're businesses or whoever, could really have confidence that when they were liaising with the government and when they announced a policy, it would actually come to pass. Because although on paper he had a majority, of over 100, he couldn't actually deliver anything with that majority. And I think now it's absolutely evident that we've got what we thought we got at the general election, which is a stable government with a huge majority, which will get on and deliver a programme. Speaker 4 (5:12) Well, I think this is one of those kind of... pivotal conferences where stuff happens and it slightly changes the landscape for what comes next. So undoubtedly, we'll be unpacking it in this pod and in future pods, but we'll also be unpacking the shift that's happened with the government at our live show. So we're going to be doing that in London. If you haven't heard, insiders are able to buy tickets for it now. On Monday, everybody else is open. The tickets are going very, very fast. If you are an insider, you get a 15 % discount. from the live show to it's London in November the 26th at the Cadogan Hall. And genuinely, I've spoken to our commercial people. I know everyone says tickets are selling fast. Ours actually are. So get on it and don't leave it because that 15 % as well, that money off, that is only valid for another week. And another thing, let me tell you, the 15 % off you get from the ticket price is more than it costs to become an insider. So, you know, in your interests. Get on board. Speaker 3 (6:08) That was a public service announcement there from Ruth Davidson. Thank you. Speaker 3 (6:17) Let's get back to Labour conference because you are right, Harriet. It really was like going into this bubble and then you come back out and you're like, what's going on? And I have to say, this one did feel really consequential. We talked, hadn't we, on the pod after the United Nations in the run up to Labour, that you were going to be left in no doubt that this was a change, Prime Minister, with a specific agenda. and bloody hell, whether you like what he said or you hated what he said, it was quite an incredible speech. Afterwards, people were talking about it being the best speech, political speech of a generation, comparing it back to Gordon Brown's big speech around the financial crisis back in 2009. And it felt... very consequential in the hall because Andy Burnham really was making his argument for, as he put it, a new type of politics, a new economy, a different path. And you were left with no doubt that that is what he intends to do. And I would say that he is an unusual politician in that he's honest. He says what he believes. He doesn't... dodged the question. He went on that stage and he pulled out his entire guts and heart, you know, and actually even in the interview yesterday I did with him, he said, I just decided I'm not going to think about focus groups. I'm not going to worry about this or that or what I should do. I'm just going to do what I think is the right thing to do, driven by my... family and my parents and how I've been brought up and I'm going to go for it. And that's what he did in this speech. And Sean messaged us on our forum to say, I'd love to hear people's opinions on the prime minister's speech. And I really would like to hear both of your opinions. But Harriet, you were right in the front row. Harriet was honestly, because I come in. And I go and stand on the side because at the end we have to run up to the front of the stage and do a piece to camera for our reports. So I'm sort of in the side, but right by the stage. And who was in the front row? Smack middle in the front row is Harriet Harman. I Speaker 5 (8:41) mean, it was just, it was an emotional experience. I mean, it was overwhelming at times. There was that moment where suddenly he'd finished a little passage and... He stopped. And I thought, oh my God, what on earth has happened? I turned round and looked at the screens, which is giving him his autocue, which is his script for him to read it. And it started with when my dad died. And so I knew that what had happened was he just was taking a moment. And I reckon that he must have known, having practiced and rehearsed the speech. that this would be a difficult moment for him. So he had a plan of how to deal with it, which is just to stop. But it seemed to go on for ages. I think somebody was saying it was like 35 seconds. It felt so long. And then, of course, the whole conference was willing him strength to be able to get on and speak it. It was a massively emotional speech. Except for one year, I've been to every single conference. since 1982. And this is one of the most outstanding I've heard. Speaker 3 (9:56) Yeah, actually, Harriet, just on that, people were comparing it to Gordon Brown's 2009 speech. Do you remember that one? Speaker 5 (10:05) Yes. And that was very rhetorical and very compelling. Speaker 5 (10:11) But Andy's was different in a way because what he was doing is saying things have got to be done differently. By the end of his speech, every 100 % of people in that hall were up for going with him for that change. Speaker 3 (10:24) I mean, for my bit, because I was in the hall and we're going to get to the substance of the policies, but in terms of the presentation, if you like, the oratory, the storytelling. It was truly an exceptional speech. There was a moment, as Harriet said, because for everyone that has been bereaved, and most of us have been bereaved, that raw feeling that you knew he was feeling in that moment about his father, you could not help but feel moved by that. It touched for me on my mum and my brother and my friend Laura. And in that moment, I felt my own grief. And I turned around because like Harriet, I was like, why has he stopped? Because he just stopped dead and he just couldn't continue. And I thought, oh my God, he's going to lose it. He's going to, you know, when you've tried to, I gave a eulogy recently at my uncle's funeral just a few weeks ago. And I got three paragraphs in and I nearly lost it. And then I said to myself, Beth, like pull yourself together, woman. And then I kind of. I found that thing and I carried on. And that's kind of what happened to him. And I turned around, the cabinet were in tears. Ed Miliband, who's recently lost his mother, he was in tears. Louise Haig was in tears. Anneliese Midgley, some of the people that have been very close to Burnham, those two politicians. I mean, it was really, really genuinely emotional. And because of that emotion, when he did start to speak again. I mean, the atmosphere was just incredible in the room and people were just willing him on. The way I described it when I spoke afterwards, it was like, yes, it was a prime minister laying out his vision for Britain and his argument. But also in that moment, it was a son. grieving for his father and remembering his father in a very public, visceral and vulnerable way. And I just think whatever your political persuasion, you can't fail to be moved by that. But I think there was such a political maturity Speaker 5 (12:40) about it as well, because, you know, I knew Andy from when he was in his early 30s and I could never have imagined the place that he got to with that speech. He's at ease with himself. Some people were saying that he was very relaxed about