Burnham's German plan: Why Britain's new PM is looking to Europe

Britain has a new prime minister, so why are we talking about him here on Berlin Briefing? It's not London Briefing.

Because Andy Burnham has put Germany at the heart of one of his biggest ideas, that Britain should borrow lessons from the German federal system to make life better.

And that is a compliment that Germans don't often hear from British politicians, and it does raise an obvious question: Is he right? Where are similarities? Where are differences? And what else might change? Hard to say on day one, but what will Andy Burnham's foreign policy look like? And I've got three brilliant guests with me.

Richard Walker is here, DW's chief international editor, and a familiar face for all of you out there who are regular Berlin Briefing listeners and watchers.

Thank you so much for coming back to our studio, Richard.

And Birgit Maas joins us from London, DW's UK correspondent who's followed British politics for us for many, many years and regularly travels the country.

And a long-standing London correspondent, Aneta Dietert joins us.

Aneta, you've won awards for your Brexit coverage.

You live in London on a houseboat.

You've actually now adopted UK citizenship, so who was your first prime minister as a political journalist?

Uh, I came to London in 2008, so it was Gordon Brown for a very, very brief time [laughs] before then, yeah, the others took over.

Okay.

So we're now talking about Andy Burnham.

That's several generations later.

[laughs]

[laughs]

Um, and let's just look at the man.

Let's just, uh, look and listen to what he said when he came back from the meeting with the King where he had officially been invited to form a government.