Burnham's German plan: Why Britain's new PM is looking to Europe | Berlin Briefing Podcast

Brexit was supposed to pull Britain away from Europe. Yet 10 years on, Britain's new prime minister is championing ideas that look strikingly familiar to Germans. So why is Andy Burnham borrowing from a model that Germany itself is starting to question? In this episode of Berlin Briefing, Nina Haase and Richard Walker talk to London-based German journalists Annette Dittert and Birgit Maass to decipher why Andy Burnham and Friedrich Merz have more in common than meets the eye, how London may say goodbye to the Westminster System and follow a more Bund and Länder playbook, how Labour’s new social policies are keen to take a leaf out of Germany’s constitutional Basic Law, and what the new prime minister and his cabinet will mean for Britain's NATO allies. 00:00 Why Burnham is looking to Germany 03:34 Why the UK keeps changing leaders 07:02 The cost of living crisis 10:53 A German model for Britain? 15:31 Regional power, the German way 19:05 Shared problems, different leaders 22:29 How Britain and Germany face the far right 26:33 Berlin’s first signals to Burnham 29:21 Meet Burnham’s inner circle 32:03 Defense spending meets industrial policy 34:46 Europe's Trump challenge 37:51 Can Burnham succeed where others failed? Berlin Briefing won the UK’s Publisher Podcast award for Best Political Podcast: https://publisherpodcasts.com/2026/en... DW Berlin Briefing on Apple Podcasts: DW Berlin Briefing - Inside German politics https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: DW Berlin Briefing - Inside German politics https://open.spotify.com/show/07Wp4c6... Subscribe Berlin Briefing Newsletter: https://corporate.dw.com/en/newslette... For more news go to: http://www.dw.com/en/ Follow DW on social media: ►Instagram:   / dwnews   ►TikTok:   / dwnews   ►Facebook:   / deutschewellenews   ►Twitter:   / dwnews   Für Videos in deutscher Sprache besuchen Sie:    / dwdeutsch   Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/deutsche... #dwgermanpolitics