In The Room

In The Room hits Liverpool for Labour Party Conference. Cleo heads into the hall, fringe events, protests and the media pen, talking to delegates, campaigners and lobbyists to get a feel for Andy Burnham’s Labour. Helen takes a different route, moving between Shelter, the Future Governance Forum and the receptions where senior figures are talking about what comes next. The mood is unusually upbeat...

The Liberal Democrats are the third-largest party in the Commons, but where do they fit into Andy Burnham’s Britain? Following Ed Davey’s Brighton conference speech, we ask what the party actually stands for and uncover a surprising connection to Cleo’s political past. In New York, Burnham faces his first meeting with Donald Trump. With Ukraine, Iran, AI and even the Falklands potentially on the a...

Reform’s money trail is still dominating the headlines, with two billionaire donors handing the party £72m in just 48 hours. Meanwhile, the Representation of the People Bill is making its way through the Lords. We look at why attempts to curb big money in British politics keep failing, and why Labour’s own position is more complicated than it seems. Across the Irish Sea, President Trump has reigni...

Westminster is back, and so is conference season, beginning with Reform’s scandal-hit gathering in Birmingham. Helen was there, and gives her verdict on whether Nigel Farage’s party still feels like a government-in-waiting after a bruising week. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s decision to stand down in Holborn and St Pancras has triggered the sixth by-election of the year, with Green leader Zack Polansk...

Being prime minister can be a lonely job. Everyone wants your attention, your approval and a say in the decisions you make. But when the fanfare dies down, it’s you holding the pen and making the biggest calls. Fortunately, every prime minister has one person at their side: their principal private secretary. Peter Hill was Theresa May’s PPS from 2017 to 2019, as well as her sherpa for the G7 and G...

“It's a comms problem” is the diagnosis politicians, pundits and the public often reach for whenever a prime minister flounders. It was arguably Keir Starmer’s biggest undoing. From the beginning, he failed to articulate what kind of prime minister he would be. In the end, nobody really knew what he thought about anything. For today’s guest Lee Cain, Starmer was a “political vacuum” - but believes...

With the Clacton by-election just days away, In The Room welcomes perhaps Nigel Farage’s most unusual opponent: Count Binface. The intergalactic candidate joins Helen MacNamara and Cleo Watson to defend his manifesto, from capping 99 Flakes at 99p and building “at least one” affordable home to tackling Britain’s badly positioned hand dryers. He explains why housing and homelessness sit behind some...

When Apple chief executive Tim Cook visited No 10, he stopped to admire David Bailey’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Jimmy McLoughlin, then Downing Street’s business director, gave him an impromptu tour and discovered along the way that Cook was also a fan of Netflix’s acclaimed royal drama The Crown . Working under Theresa May, McLoughlin’s role was to help ensure that some of the world’s most...

As Andy Burnham's second week in power draws to a close, his rivals are scratching their heads and plotting their summer challenges – with mixed results. Green leader Zack Polanski is facing heat over yet another social media misdemeanour, it’s far from all quiet for Nigel Farage on the Clacton front, and the Liberal Democrats are nowhere to be seen – time for another Ed Davey stunt? Meanwhile, Ke...

Andy Burnham finally sat down to face some old school scrutiny this week.  After weeks of winning praise for his social-first approach to communications – Britain's first TikTok Prime Minister? – he finally sat down for a proper grilling with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg. Today, we unpack his performance. How did he handle the tough questions on Trump and Putin? Is he talking about Manchester a...

Andy Burnham has survived his first week. The former Manchester mayor turned prime minister is now in his spiritual home – No.10 North – after repeatedly calling it the best day of his life. It's been a week of 6am policy drops, wall-to-wall coverage and Burnham firmly at the centre of every story. But Helen and Cleo aren't just here to admire the opening moves. They want to know whether the presi...

After weeks of speculation, Andy Burnham finally unveiled his first cabinet late on Tuesday, with John Healey the surprise choice as chancellor, Ed Miliband moving to the Foreign Office and Shabana Mahmood remaining as home secretary. Then came his first speech outside Downing Street. Dispensing with the familiar prime ministerial lectern, Burnham promised to end rough sleeping, reviving one of th...

Andy Burnham has finally been crowned Labour Party leader. Attention turns now to his top team, with home secretary Shabana Mahmood hotly tipped to be named chancellor. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband and Wes Streeting continue to cast a shadow over Burnham’s picks. On Monday, after formalities with the King, Burnham will become the UK’s seventh prime minister in ten years. Today, we tell you what to expec...

It’s Keir Starmer’s final week in office. 739 days ago, after a rejection of the Tories and a sweeping landslide for Labour, he became PM. So where did it all go wrong for him? Today we take a trip down memory lane to summer 2024 and the beginning of Keir Starmer’s rocky first 100 days and ask: can Andy Burnham learn from Keir Starmer's mistakes? Executive Producer: Rod Ardehali Producer: Sam Durh...

Andy Burnham has promised “growth in every postcode”. It is a big, attractive political line – the sort of thing voters want to hear after years of feeling poorer, public services feeling stretched, and wages struggling to keep up with the cost of living. It is also a promise that tells us a lot about Burnham’s politics. He has long argued that Britain is too London-centric, that Whitehall is too...

Nigel Farage got Westminster watchers in a frenzy today. A cryptic tweet promising a statement on “the future of my public life” triggered two hours of fevered speculation: resignation as Reform leader, departure from Parliament, or another act of political theatre. What followed was a scathing attack on the media and political class he routinely rails against - despite his own deep entanglement w...

Nigel Farage has spent decades turning political setbacks into opportunities. Parties have risen and fallen around him, controversies have come and gone, and yet he has always managed to emerge stronger. But this week feels different. Questions over a £5 million gift from a crypto billionaire, lucrative outside earnings, a series of disappointing by-election results and an unusually defensive run...

Devolution – or devo-maxxing – was the order of the day in Andy Burnham’s most significant speech yet on how he would govern. In front of an eager press pack that scrambled up from London, the prime minister-in-waiting set out a bold agenda focused on devolving power, reforming Whitehall and reindustrialising Britain. But devolution is a tune plenty of leaders have played before. Tony Blair turbo-...

Andy Burnham’s camp is caught between euphoria and fear. After his victory in the Makerfield by-election and Keir Starmer’s resignation, the path to No 10 appears to have opened up for the former Manchester mayor. On what would be his third attempt at the Labour leadership, Burnham could be prime minister by mid-July – and the UK’s seventh in ten years. But with the clock already ticking, is his t...

It wasn’t so close after all. Andy Burnham achieved 9,241 votes more than the second place Reform candidate, Robert Kenyon. Even talk of Restore Britain stealing votes from Reform mattered little in the end. The reality of the Makerfield by-election is it’s a thumping win for Labour’s Andy Burnham, and a disappointing night for Nigel Farage, whose attempts to dial up division in recent weeks didn’...

This week, Keir Starmer announced a ban on social media for under-16s. It’s a punchy policy announcement. And it’s a clear sign that he has activated legacy mode. Today, we ask: what will his legacy really look like? And why are prime ministers obsessed about their legacy? On the week of the announcement, Nigel Farage has dialled up his divisive rhetoric with a brand new Substack page. His numbers...

Next week will see one of the most consequential by-elections in UK political history. Journalists, pollsters and politicians are swamping the small market town near Wigan - where the voters of Makerfield could make Burnham king.  At the time of recording, Labour are 10 points ahead of Reform in the polls. To close the gap, Reform must win a battle of ideas on the right, where Restore Br...

After 83 days of waiting, the government has finally released the second tranche of files on the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador to Washington. The first tranche was already heavy on the filler, but the latest set of documents takes it to a whole new level. It features an incredible amount of seemingly pointless material: Mandelson’s resignation letter appears 8 times, there’s...

A Dyson floor lamp, a £4,000 fountain pen, boxsets of Scandi noir TV dramas. These are just a handful of the items that former SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell purchased with the £400k he embezzled from the party over the course of a decade. The full list is even longer. Murrell has been remanded in custody and likely faces lengthy prison time.  Ever since the eruption of the 2009 MPs’ expen...

With the writing seemingly on the wall for Keir Starmer, two contenders have already thrown their names into the ring for his job. Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting has launched an appeal to heartland Labour voters, suggesting he might be vying to initiate a "Brexit 2.0." Meanwhile, Andy Burnham, the "King of the North," has made it clear that if he wins the Makerfield by-election, he wants in...