The House

How will the new PM deal with the big issues like social care, welfare spending, immigration, and the economy, with a budget due to be delivered next month? Before all that, Westminster heads out on tour for party conference season, starting with this weekend's trip to Birmingham for Reform UK.

Joining me to discuss all that, I'm delighted to have Joshua Reynolds, Liberal Democrat MP for Maidenhead, along with two top colleagues, the House Magazine's Deputy Editor, Sienna Rogers, and our Editor here at Poll Home, Adam Payne.

So Sienna, starting with you then, obviously it was Andy Burnham's first week in Parliament as back as Prime Minister.

What have you made of his performances? He obviously gave a statement to MPs on Tuesday and we had his first Prime Minister's question session on Wednesday.

They've made a series of announcements during the summer around, I don't know, economy, welfare, and haven't really made an impact, to be honest.

And I think reform was always, well, I feel, was always going to struggle keeping up their anti-establishment, outsider... kind of image, the more they're on television, the more that they're just seen by people, because eventually I think you become the establishment, whether you like it or not, to some degree.

So I think reform's big challenge is just to work out how not just to adapt to Burnham, who Lee Anderson, their party chairman, admitted to me in an interview with the House magazine, is a different challenge to Keir Starmer.

It's just how do they get momentum going again? How do they dictate the narrative? So it'll be interesting to see whether they can do that at this conference in Birmingham, where I will not be going, but Sienna and yourself will be going.

We were colleagues for a long time.

He's now editor of the House magazine.

How are you, Francis? I'm

very well, thank you.

Darwin Quinn, former Conservative advisor who used to organise events and conferences for the Tories.

Jane Azim, who was a Labour Party member, went off to conference again.

And Francis Elliott, former political editor of the Times, now editor of the House magazine.

And Michael Crick, of course, formerly of the BBC and Channel 4 News as well.

Including her parents, who struggled initially, money tight, jobs hard to find.

Midgley telling Parliament's The House magazine, she often had to go round to her nan's in order to get fed.

Things improved when her dad got a job on the production line at Ford's Halewood car plant, became a union rep and made enough money for the family to move to a house close to Liverpool's Penny Lane.

Sounds like a cue for a song.

in London, in Westminster.

I used to work for, um, a magazine called The House Magazine and then their competitor, Total Politics Magazine.

So I used to run around Parliament looking for stories.

Mm-hmm.

I, I love the, um, obviously there's a lot of agencies out there that focus in various different industries and, and I know from Climate Week NYC that, that fashion is a really interesting space.

Um, I'd, I'd love to delve in- into a little bit more detail on the journalism side because, of course, you know, how I know you is going all the way back to I think 2010, so the 16 years ago is, you know, we were both working in UK Parliament in Westminster.

I was working for The House Magazine.

You were the political editor of, of, of The Metro.