00:00Well, look, my concern is I want to be a bit careful because we're speaking to an international audience and
00:05I'm a proud Brit.
00:06We have a great democracy in our country. We are, I think, at the moment, the fifth biggest economy in
00:12the world.
00:14Masses of international business and indeed law is carried out in the English language.
00:21We have got so much going for ourselves as a country. We did not collapse after Brexit, as some predicted.
00:28However, look, if you if you ask for my political analysis, I have concerns that Andy Burnham simply hasn't done
00:36nearly enough to justify his march on number 10.
00:41This is a man who successfully ran the city of Manchester. Fine. Good for him.
00:47A cat bus fares, for example. But that doesn't in itself qualify him to be prime minister.
00:52And I am concerned that the same sort of narratives will develop very, very quickly against him, as did against
01:01Keir Starmer.
01:02And there's an extent to which he is trapped, trapped by the same things that Starmer was trapped by.
01:07Not just a hostile media in the majority, not just social media, but also the fact that there doesn't seem
01:14to be much money to go around.
01:15We have got huge debt. We've got the big question of pensions.
01:20We've got welfare more generally that Starmer was not able to fix.
01:25And then you've got the big issues on the international stage.
01:28And Burnham doesn't have much, if any, of that sort of way.
01:31He has some, but not much experience on the international stage.
01:35And so he's going to be hit by a speed train.
01:39And it won't just be a speed train of goodwill that John was referencing in the House of Commons.
01:45It will be a steam train of negativity trying to tear him down.
01:51He's got Nigel Farage to the right of him.
01:54He's got Kemi Badenoch to the right of him.
01:56He's got Zach Polanski to the left of him.
01:58He's got Ed Davey as the leader of the Liberal Democrats.
02:01These are incredibly fractious times politically in our country, as they are around the world.
02:07I'm not saying that Britain is unique in this.
02:09And my concern is that Andy Burnham risks being a disappointment.
02:14But that said, I hope he succeeds.
02:16And as I say, Britain has got an enormous amount going for it.
