Aug 3, 2026 · 51 min · 20 segments
British politics has become a farce, with Andy Burnham now the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade. And no one knows what he really stands for or if he’ll even outlast the last six, as…
Daniel HannanGuest
Brian LilleyHost
There was a headline the other day, "L'italianizzazione del Regno Unito." I don't really speak Italian, but even I could understand that.
Um, [laughs] h- honestly, the, the, the basic problem, Brian, is that we've been spending more money than we have.
Uh, the state has gone from spending about a third of our economy, £1 in 3 in the Blair years, to closer to 1 in 2 now, and no one wants to admit it.
And no one wants to take the tough short-term decisions that will put us back on a path to long-term prosperity.
And so a frustrated electorate keeps r- running through one after another prime minister until eventually they will either run out of money and we will collapse, uh, you know, in, in the manner of Greece or Ireland in the Euro crisis, or, uh, we finally have somebody who is prepared to tell us what we don't want to hear, which is that we can't carry on living beyond our means.
Uh, it's amazing how far you can go in politics just by not saying anything, you know, and smiling.
What was her secret? She never gave interviews, right? And it allows you to, to project...
It allows people to project what they want onto you, and Andy Burnham has been doing that.
But, of course, to govern is to choose, and eventually we're gonna see, is it gonna be more rearranging of deck chairs? Is it gonna be, which is what we've had so far, you know, a cap on bus fares and a slight tweak on the, uh, VAT on electricity and so on? Now very, very small stuff that, that, uh, is, it's mildly expensive but doesn't, uh, particularly accelerate our decline.
Or is it gonna be really radical socialism? He talks about reversing 40 years, i.e.
Or is it actually that he, he may see what needs to be done, and under all this rhetoric, he'll, he'll do... he'll, he'll take rather than talking about tough decisions? Nobody really knows.
There was a headline the other day, "L'italianizzazione del Regno Unito." I don't really speak Italian, but even I could understand that.
Um, [laughs] h- honestly, the, the, the basic problem, Brian, is that we've been spending more money than we have.
Uh, the state has gone from spending about a third of our economy, £1 in 3 in the Blair years, to closer to 1 in 2 now, and no one wants to admit it.
And no one wants to take the tough short-term decisions that will put us back on a path to long-term prosperity.
And so a frustrated electorate keeps r- running through one after another prime minister until eventually they will either run out of money and we will collapse, uh, you know, in, in the manner of Greece or Ireland in the Euro crisis, or, uh, we finally have somebody who is prepared to tell us what we don't want to hear, which is that we can't carry on living beyond our means.
Uh, it's amazing how far you can go in politics just by not saying anything, you know, and smiling.
What was her secret? She never gave interviews, right? And it allows you to, to project...
It allows people to project what they want onto you, and Andy Burnham has been doing that.
But, of course, to govern is to choose, and eventually we're gonna see, is it gonna be more rearranging of deck chairs? Is it gonna be, which is what we've had so far, you know, a cap on bus fares and a slight tweak on the, uh, VAT on electricity and so on? Now very, very small stuff that, that, uh, is, it's mildly expensive but doesn't, uh, particularly accelerate our decline.
Or is it gonna be really radical socialism? He talks about reversing 40 years, i.e.
Or is it actually that he, he may see what needs to be done, and under all this rhetoric, he'll, he'll do... he'll, he'll take rather than talking about tough decisions? Nobody really knows.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
