He may be just a couple of weeks away from becoming Prime Minister, so why haven't we heard more from Andy Burnham this week?

It's important to understand the exact reasons why Keir Starmer's premiership got into so much trouble, because those are the things that the next Prime Minister, assuming it's Andy Burnham, has to fix.

But in terms of Burnham, this will have been a massive whirlwind for him.

Under a month is not enough time to do the sort of... prep for government that opposition spend years doing.

So there's probably a lot going on behind the scenes.

It is a problem if there's then a bit of a vacuum, people wondering what he's going to do.

We hear there will be speeches to come.

Is it fair to say then that Keir Starmer will have had longer to prepare for becoming Prime Minister through the kind of institutions of government like the Civil Service, briefings and so on, than Andy Burnham is going to get, even though he's inheriting the job potentially from a politician of the same party.

So why haven't we heard more from Andy Burnham this week?

It's important to understand the sort of exact reasons why Keir Starmer's premiership got into so much trouble, because those are the things that the next prime minister, assuming it's Andy Burnham, has to fix.

But in terms of Burnham, I mean, this will have been a massive whirlwind for him.

Under a month is not enough time to do the sort of... prep for government that opposition spend years doing.

So there's probably a lot going on behind the scenes.

It is a problem if there's then a bit of a vacuum, people wondering what he's going to do.

We hear there will be speeches to come.

How important is the Cabinet Secretary at a time like this?

State paralysis or government paralysis because of over-bureaucratization of the British system.

It's worth saying we talk a lot about retail politics.

Obviously, for retail politics, you've got to have something that you can sell, and without the means for government to be able to sort of spend big amounts of money, that does start to feel like paralysis.

It's interesting, at other times we've talked about consensus, where a lot of governments of different political persuasions ends up somewhere around the same kind of center ground policy.

Brexit obviously threw that up in the air.

But nonetheless, a lot of the problem is that the things Tony's talking about, it both takes time for the state to be able to make changes, especially when you're talking about the quality of public services.

Other issues are often outside of their control or at least feel like it when you think about the international state of affairs and particularly Trump's impact on the economy.

Catherine, what do you think of the Brexit aftershock explanation?

Um, y- now, look, more generally, Catherine, how would you assess the relationship between this government and the civil service?

Um, so I think it's worth going back to the start.

I mean, uh, one of my colleagues put it as like this whole episode is like punching a bruise, and that's not necessarily a bruise that was caused by this government.

This is years of difficult relationships through very challenging policy issues between the civil service and ministers.

We all know if you go back to the Brexit years, you know, there were lots of accusations about are the civil service fully signed up to deliver this policy? Are they dragging their feet? Uh, Ollie Robbins in particular was the, the sort of point man for lots of criticism about is the civil service really up for delivering Brexit, how the Conservative government wanted Brexit to deliver.

And, you know, that added to a very difficult environment, damaged relationships and so forth.

So, um, you know, there has been a sort of declining trust in between the civil service and ministers, particularly the last government.

And it struck me that people watching or listening to what was happening i-in, in, in Parliament, in, in Westminster from other parts of the world might be thinking, well, if the guy at the very top, the Prime Minister, with by definition surely therefore the highest level of security clearance put there by the public can't be told stuff, what sort of a democracy is it?