How useful those talks are can depend greatly on the amount of time available to hold them, as Simon Case found in twenty sixteen when he was principal private secretary to David Cameron.

David Cameron announced his resignation, I think, the day after the referendum, the Brexit referendum, and originally set out a timetable, I think, that would have taken us through to the September.

So it would have been sort of a two-and-a-half month, maybe three-month transition, which would have been ideal, really, from access talks.

That would have been really lots of time to, to, to talk to the candidates.

And so, uh, Jeremy Heywood, who was then the, then the cabinet secretary, led the process and sort of mapped it out that there would be initial discussions with all the candidates.

And then once we got into the final couple, much deeper access talks would begin, and, and at that point I, as PPS, would have joined in.

But, you know, politics being politics, it didn't quite work out that way.

Simon Case felt that justified a more extensive approach to preparation.

Many of the people who become Prime Minister, you know, lifelong dream to have got there.

there.And then in sort of slightly sour and gloomy ways, people like myself and some people from the Royal Navy sit down and say, "Now, I need to talk to you about-- I need you to imagine that a large part of the country and certainly London and Westminster's been wiped out.

I now need you to imagine what your-- what you would want a submarine captain to do in response."

Does Andy Burnham expect that?

Uh, it's a very good question.

I mean, he told me he was, uh, quite prepared for a world in which Donald Trump could disrupt, uh, his, uh, his day-to-day and his, his week-to-week.

But it's a good mor-- it's a good day, actually, if you're into your football, as Andy Burnham does, to have a disarming conversation with, uh, with, with Donald Trump.

They can just talk about Argentina and the trophy for a bit, and Donald Trump will presumably forget why he's called at the end.

I was wondering if you could share where you went to university, what you studied and how you found university.

Yeah, sure, Bob.

Thank you for having me.

Gosh, university feels like quite a long time ago, although it's a real pleasure to be back in the university environment now.

So I did my undergraduate degree in Cambridge and actually first went up to read philosophy.

I was desperate.

Lots of people obsessed with history in my family.

And did your experience as principal private secretary, how, to what extent was that experience super helpful when you then went on to become cabinet secretary later on?