Keir Starmer<\/a>. Pressed on whether the middle class \u2014 Londoners on good incomes but also facing the capital\u2019s high cost of living \u2014 could also be caught by Burnham\u2019s Treasury net, Watson adds: \u201cIs he essentially talking about taxing people in the leafy South in order to pay for the North?<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s where you draw the middle class… I think we\u2019re edging down towards the aspirational people who now can\u2019t quite afford to send their kids to a private school, who are now also feeling the pinch on their holidays… they\u2019re feeling the stress of the rung below them, and whether they just start thinking Canada looks a whole lot easier or Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The warning is stark, possibly slightly surprising. But Watson and MacNamara, who now present the In The Room podcast, have years of behind-the-scenes experience of No\u200910, and wider Whitehall, and their candid take on the challenges of government could no doubt help the Burnham team avoid some of the mistakes which plagued Starmer\u2019s Downing Street. \u201cHe\u2019s got two-and-a-half to three years to be able to turn things around, and for people to feel differently, and as much as he has articulated how people feel, it\u2019s very Clintonesque \u2018I feel your pain\u2019, whether he could turn that around remains to be seen,\u201d says Watson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pattern of the last few years suggests that he can\u2019t, so with my most negative view, I think that we\u2019re headed for perhaps a hung Parliament, perhaps a strange coalition, and trouble ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manchester swagger in No\u200910<\/p>\n
MacNamara is more optimistic, especially in an era when personality seems at times to matter at least if not more than policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I really hope that we can see in this reign of Burnham is some of that Manchester swagger because you want confident leaders,\u201d explains the former civil servant, who played a key role in the staging of the London 2012 Olympics.<\/p>\n
![\"UK](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/UK-Prime-Ministers-Andy-Burnham.jpeg\")
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UK Prime Ministers who preceded Andy Burnham<\/p>\n
Getty Images \/ The London Standard<\/p>\n
With the UK set to get its seventh Prime Minister since 2010, the \u201cconstant changing\u201d has hit the Government\u2019s confidence in delivering. The biggest blow, she adds, was the \u201castonishing\u201d gap exposed by the Covid pandemic for which the Government was supposed to have been fully prepared but was found hugely wanting. Both MacNamara and Watson highlight the torrent of decisions that Burnham will have to make. He will be shocked by the pace of No\u200910, says the ex-civil servant.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndy Burnham\u2019s going to get the shock of his life when he sees how degraded and different government is now\u201d<\/p>\n
Helen MacNamara<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the data shows that there is a sexism problem in the Labour Party,\u201d states MacNamara. While sceptical about an \u201cold boys\u2019 club\u201d in Government, she tells how the \u201cexercise of power is a thrilling experience\u201d and of \u201cnaivety\u201d among some people that they are \u201cimmune to power corrupting them and power impacting on their behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n
So will power corrupt Burnham? \u201cI\u2019m not sure it will,\u201d says MacNamara. \u201cHe comes across as the guy who\u2019s comfortable in his own skin, and he\u2019s pretty old for a Prime Minister.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watson takes a different tack: \u201cPower will expose whether this is a shtick or not. If he is authentically who he seems to be, then I think he\u2019ll be fine. But this kind of scrutiny and this kind of power will reveal whether this is the real Andy Burnham.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe\u2019s going to get the shock of his life when he sees how degraded and different it is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19306,142532,59,80,57,58,232000,420,1634,195536,50,10365,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-698398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-andy-burnham","tag-civil-service","tag-gb","tag-government","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-helen-macnamara","tag-keir-starmer","tag-labour","tag-labour-leadership","tag-news","tag-prime-minister","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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