Makerfield Matters?

What would an Andy Burnham premiership mean for Northern Ireland? It's certainly not a sure thing but it is a possibility and on today's red lines we're pausing to consider two key issues. Firstly, what needs to happen for the current mayor of Greater Manchester

widely dubbed the King of the North to snatch the keys of Downing Street from Kier Starmer and secondly, if he manages to pull that off, what big policy changes might he seek to introduce that could impact on the lives of people here. I'm Mark Herothers and with me to discuss how things might unfold in the weeks and months

ahead are Kat Neelan, Whitehall editor of The Observer, John Rento, Chief Political Commentator at The Independent, Adam Payne, the editor of Politics Home and the commentator, columnist and host of the Stormant Sources podcast, Dr David McCann. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining me on Redlines today. Look, there are a lot

of moving parts in this conversation, I think we need to say. And before we go any further, we should point out that obviously none of us have a crystal ball that can tell us what the outcome of the Makerfield by-election will be. Andy Burnham is one candidate of 14. And you can see a full list of who's standing on the BBC News website. But John

And then, Ren too, let's start with next week's by-election. That's clearly step one for Andy Burnham. Can he win the seat? Oh, yes. I mean, the most recent poll by salvation had him 10 points ahead of Robert Kenyon, the reform candidate. That's, I mean, if the poll is good, that's just on the

outside of the margin of error, which suggests he's got a pretty good chance of winning. winning, it looks as if Rupert Lowe's outfit to restore Britain has taken enough votes from the reform candidate to almost guarantee that Andy Burnham wins, which is an irony that Nigel Farage can ponder over afterwards. But no, I think Andy Burnham is on his way to Westminster.

I think he will have to act very quickly to oust Kirstama, but there are dangers in doing that because if he moves first and he's trying to blame Wes Streeting for having started the leadership contest already, but it hasn't started. And if Andy Burnham moves first, he will be labelled the disloyal one.

Well, we'll come on to that in a bit more detail in a moment or two. Just want to go to you, Kat. polls are a snapshot of a particular moment in time, not necessarily a prediction for what's going to happen. John's fairly confident that Andy Burnham can do it. Do you think it's

nailed down at this point or do you think there's still a lot that could happen in the remaining week or thereabouts between now and polling day? I mean, what has been clear over the course of the campaign is that the numbers have improved for Andy Burnham somewhat. So at the outset it was really on a knife edge and over the

sort of last few weeks he has pulled away on on the polling that we've seen but of course polling is as you say just a snapshot and of course not that long ago we had local elections in the area in which it was a clean sweep for reform. So when you kind of speak to some of the people from Labour who have been outdoor knocking with or on behalf of Andy Burnham I think most

people are still quite reluctant to really be too confident or emphatic about it. There's a degree to which people are always slightly over cautious. They don't want to seem like they think they've got it in the bag. But yes, I think on the balance of probability increasingly it is looking as though it will be likely to be Andy Burnham.

Okay, Adam Penn, you've had boots on the ground in Makerfield. What's your sense of of how things are unfolding? Yeah, I'd agree with my two colleagues, John and Kat. I mean, Andy Burnham, he is the favourite.

I mean, frankly, he's probably the only Labour Party politician in the country at the moment who could win this seat for the Labour Party. And that is why, you know, a lot of Labour MPs

want to put Andy Burnham in number 10. I mean, he's the only net popular politician in the country at the moment. I mean, partly that might be because, you know,

he's not in Westminster, he isn't cursed in that way. And there's a lot of Labour MPs who feel that he's particularly well-placed to win over former Labour voters who've gone to the Greens

and lived in the Sims for last election. And funnily enough, Mark, the way Andy Burnham's advocates talk about him and his electoral appeal is not too dissimilar

to how Tories used to talk about Boris Johnson back in the day, the sense that he's charismatic, that he is an effective communicator, that he speaks in a way which resonates with people.

So he is the favourite heading into next week. To sort of, to agree with Kat, you speak to Labour for, can they say that this is, by no means a done deal, it's a close contest.

The reform votes up there in the Northwest is really significant and they're not taking it to the granted, but the likely scenario right now as we have this conversation is that Andy Burnham's mission to return to the House of Commons will probably be successful next week.

Okay, David, what's fascinating is that if you follow what's happening on the ground in Makerfield, it looks very much as if it's an Andy Burnham rather than a Labour party campaign. And that's not happening by chance, obviously. I mean it is an unusual message he's selling to voters. Vote for the Labour candidate to

unseat the Labour Prime Minister. It is, I mean the parallels, Adam's mentioned they're Boris Johnson, but the parallels with Boris Johnson are actually quite striking here because Boris ran up very much on his own personal brand in the city of London. Obviously in Manchester Andy Burnham is a

brand in his own right, so he carries way more than the Labour Party. I mean a friend of this podcast, Professor John Tong has said that anyone else but Andy Burnham would have got trashed in this seat. Anyone other than Andy Burnham would have got absolutely annihilated because Andy Burnham, we're talking about him currently leading in the polls. So