Could Andy Burnham replace Keir Starmer as PM?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It feels like Andy Burnham is everywhere right now. Interviews in the New Statesman and The Telegraph have propelled the question of his leadership ambitions into Keir Starmer’s face. Does he have a really chance of challenging the PM? And what is his vision for Labour if so?
Later, we interview comedian and director of The Producers, Patrick Marber, about Nazi satire, Jimmy Kimmel and Tommy Robinson's march.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.6 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | The thing is, the reality has been, in the 10 years that I've done this job, |
| 0:18.2 | whenever Westminster has kind of gone into a moment, I've somehow been |
| 0:21.3 | drawn into it. And that has just been the reality. You've lived that reality with me. You've |
| 0:25.8 | seen, you've seen that happen. I can't ignore what's going on down there. But actually to |
| 0:32.3 | kind of, kind of directly come back to what you said,'ve not kind of gone you know out there without any |
| 0:40.6 | sort of um you know just me on my me on my own people have been getting in touch with me and obviously |
| 0:45.5 | i've said to them it's not a matter for me uh this is ultimately a matter for the party in |
| 0:51.2 | westminster to decide i'm i am here to support the party in whatever way I can. |
| 0:56.7 | That is Andy Burnham saying all this speculation about him taking over from Kirstama |
| 1:03.9 | is nothing to do with him. But at the same time, he is doing absolutely nothing to dispel it. |
| 1:13.5 | Is the Greater Manchester Mayor making a serious challenge to Kirstarmer's leadership? |
| 1:19.2 | And if so, what is the plan? |
| 1:22.1 | Welcome to the Newsagents. |
| 1:34.7 | The Newsagents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And sometimes you learn about leadership intentions from huddled corners, tiny whispers, little hints that might come from a putative |
| 1:43.8 | leaders, friends, allies, colleagues. But this is very |
| 1:48.7 | different. This has come in the form of, for a start, a front page, a cover of a magazine, the |
| 1:57.7 | new statesman, a very long interview with Tom McTagg. It's an extremely good |
| 2:01.7 | interview actually. And he really talks to Burnham about his intentions, his ideas, his policy, |
| 2:11.1 | his leanings where Andy Burnham espouses what he calls Manchesterism. This is the man who's been the mayor of Greater Manchester for nearly a decade now and talks about Manchesterism being a kind of aspirational socialism. We can go into that a bit further. But as this hit the newsstands, he then doubled down instead of sort of pulling away and saying, |
| 2:36.2 | oh, I think I might have overdone that or I didn't, you know, I think that was, I wasn't expecting |
... |
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