(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/nq1yLRxvlY4) With Andy Burnham poised to pick up the keys to Number Ten we’re all set for a new style of government. A new vibe. But as yet there’s no way of knowing whether that’ll translate into a new and better deal for the rest of us. It’s not like we’ve had any say in the matter. Half a century ago the Czech writer Milan Kundera was penning his seminal novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which explored the impact on the li

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/DfQvq0ANIiA) Our incoming Prime Minister’s got a lot on his plate. Even more than he bargained for, thanks to the gristly leftovers scraped onto it from the outgoing guy’s not very tasty treat. Andy Burnham’s got to gulp it all down somehow, but it’ll take all his fabled communication skills to avoid leaving a nasty taste in everyone else’s mouth. ‘I’m afraid there’s no money.’ That scrawled note left by a Labour Treasury minister for

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/PkChAbgN6xU) It’s now all but certain that in under three weeks’ time Andy Burnham will be Prime Minister. A mere month after the by-election that got him back into parliament. A staggering turnaround even by today’s excitable standards. Point of fact, it’s thought that he would have preferred to have had a bit more time to sort himself out. As it is, rather like Lenin stumbling back to Russia from his Swiss exile in 1917, he’s got to

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/WQ1V4rRsnhI) Andy Burnham’s win in the Makerfield by-election, historic by any standards, means all bets are off. Keir Starmer still seems determined not to go down without a fight. But his options are narrowing by the day. ‘In office but not in power.’ That barb, hurled at a one-time Tory Prime Minister in his Chancellor’s oft-quoted resignation speech is as relevant today as it was back then. Even Starmer’s closest allies accept that

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/8mKmxaiF7Pw) If he thinks he’s in trouble now, the Prime Minister doesn’t know the meaning of the word. With the by-election in Makerfield just days away and the polls telling us Andy Burnham will win it, it looks like Starmer’s toast. The twin resignations of his Defence Secretary and Minister, albeit gobsmacking, were little more than an warm-up act. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, the only question left is how

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/ayg8PFm9gk8) Maybe it’s the heatwave. But an awful lot of folk who’re supposed to be on the same side are now at one another’s throats. Notably ex Prime Minister Tony Blair and the man who’s pitching to be the next one. And if Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham does get his way the impact on all our lives could be profound. Voters in the upcoming Makerfield by-election really do hold the nation’s destiny in their hands. So many words, so l

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/H65rGr-WS2I) Try as he might to wrestle the agenda away from his own career prospects, the Prime Minister’s getting nowhere. The media focus remains relentlessly on where he’s going wrong and how nigh-on impossible it is for his party to put any of it right. In many ways that’s seriously unfair, but there’s little sign of the problem going away. To deal with the Labour leadership crisis first, no one seriously disputes that Keir Starm