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Coffee House Shots

Andy Burnham’s ‘fantasy politics’

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

Politics, Daily News, News

4.42.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Donald Trump might be in the UK for the state visit, but it’s Labour pains that are dominating the headlines and, predictably, there is a typical northern lad who thinks he could be just what the party needs. Despite having made two previous (failed) attempts at the leadership, Andy Burnham is on manoeuvres. He does seem to have the key thing that Starmer lacks – i.e. the ability to communicate – but he does unfortunately come with his own history of flip-flopping. What does this say about the state of the left wing?

‘They clearly hate it!’ says Tim Shipman on today’s podcast about Labour’s experience of government, but is Burnham’s ‘fantasy politics’ really the answer? And could he be the one to take the fight to Reform?

James Heale speaks to Tim Shipman and Isabel Hardman.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.



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Transcript

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0:00.0

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involves risk. Hello, welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Hill and I'm joined today by

0:48.4

Tim Shipman and Elizabeth Harmon. Now, first of all, we've got the big story of the week,

0:52.9

which is Donald Trump, coming here on state visit, but not much has happened currently, So we thought we'd go on to Labour Pains, talking about what's happening in the Labour Party, and in particular, two elements of this, one of which is the ongoing Deputy Leadership Race, and second of all, the kind of movements about Andy Burnham. Now, Tim, you have written the political column this week. You are talking about what's happening in terms of the, what should we say, Keir Andy relationship, the psychodrama. Tell us what you've been reporting on this week. Yeah, I mean, I think Andy Burnham is obviously slightly on manoeuvres. And lots of MPs are, in a way, this is fairly astonishing, talking about whether the Prime Minister should be forced out,

1:28.2

either before Christmas or perhaps after May's elections.

1:31.2

It's not that straightforward to get rid of a Labour leader.

1:35.0

But often the problem in the past has been who is the replacement going to be, and it's not always been clear.

1:40.4

And I think now it's beginning to become clear that most of the people who would like

1:45.0

to see the back of Kirstama think that Andy Burnham is the answer. One of the ministers who's kind of

1:51.6

flirting with this idea at the moment said to me, if Farage wins the north of England, he becomes

1:56.1

Prime Minister. And Andy Burnham is basically our most popular politician in the north of England.

2:00.6

And if you look at the polls, that's backed up by the numbers. I think Burnham is basically our most popular politician in the north of England. And if you look at the polls, that's backed up by the numbers.

2:03.7

I think Burnham is somewhere 40, 50 points better off than Stama in those ratings at the moment.

2:09.7

There, of course, he's very popular for getting a bunch of national taxpayers' money spent in Manchester

2:15.4

and taking control of the buses and the trains and all that

2:19.9

kind of stuff in a process that was assisted by Boris Johnson and his transport advisor, Andrew Gilligan,

2:26.8

who's been writing about that this week. But number 10, I think, who've been very much on the

2:32.1

defensive as a result of the resignation of

...

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