Ten Things I Have Learnt About Andy Burnham’s New Director of Political Strategy

Over the last week there’s been a lot of interest in Andy Burnham’s new Director of Political Strategy, Matthew McGregor, who was the director of campaigns and communications for Hope Not Hate between 2018 and 2021 and, since then, chief executive officer for 38 Degrees, a ghastly Left-wing pressure group (with a charitable wing).

Ahead of his first day in Number 10, McGregor deleted his X account; clearly he doesn’t want the media trawling through his old posts. However, his digital footprint is far from gone. On LinkedIn you can read McGregor’s “favourite books” for 2025, including How to Defeat the Far Right by Nick Lowles (whom McGregor calls “a brilliant writer to go along with his unique and vital antifascist organising”) as well as confirmation that he wants a wealth tax:

And that’s not all. Various interviews exist with McGregor on YouTube, as recent as in November 2025 when he appeared on Over the Top Under the Radar, a podcast produced by a “Black-owned production company” that values “authenticity and diversity”:

As it took place not that long ago, I was keen to see what McGregor had to say and learn more about the man now given so much power in Downing Street. Here are 10 interesting things I learnt from the two-part interview (mostly but not always in the order they were mentioned).

Politics is simple

“I actually don’t think politics is that complicated,” McGregor tells the host of Over the Top Under the Radar, Carys Afoko. Whether he’s right or not, we shall see. But it’s hard to dispute that McGregor is a simple communicator who clearly wants to make No. 10 messaging easier to understand. He criticises Labour’s use of the term “national renewal” and says “I genuinely think if you have to take multiple minutes to explain what you mean by that, then you’ve already failed”. At 38 Degrees (his former organisation) McGregor says that they use “the pub test” (“Would you say that to one of your friends in the pub without feeling silly? Because if the answer is no, then maybe we shouldn’t put it on the internet.”)

“Climate justice” matters

Although McGregor likes to keep things simple, that doesn’t stop him from using the ghastly phrase “climate justice” at least twice in the interview. Would this pass the pub test?

Mamdani is “inspirational”

McGregor describes the recently-elected Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, as “really inspirational”. McGregor is generally very invested in and attuned to events in the States as he “spent almost 10 years in the US working for political campaigns”, with he and his wife getting jobs on the Obama campaign in 2012. Elsewhere in the interview he talks about “big big wins for the Democrats”, and how a “county in Pennsylvania, Bucks County” got the better of “far-Right activists who are transphobes, racists, misogynists”. It’s difficult to know how accurate his assessment of these people is given his background at Hope Not Hate, which is hardly accurate at applying political labels.

Progressive coalitions work

McGregor believes that “progressives generally need to find coalitions that can unite against far-Right populism”, telling Afoko: “If we are purists about the bit of the progressive spectrum that we’re on and turn our backs on each other, I think we’re going to struggle.” He adds that “lots of Democrats didn’t endorse Mamdani, and I think there needs to be a reckoning about that”.

Disclosing the ethnicity of suspects is a “concession to the far Right”

At one point, McGregor and Afoko discuss whether the ethnicity and immigration status of crime suspects should be disclosed by the authorities, exploring examples when the police have announced the wrong details. Citing the “mis and disinformation that the far Right put out after the Southport incident”, McGregor says disclosing the identities of suspects “creates a whole range of problems for managing information” because the police sometimes get it wrong. “But number two, it misunderstands the far Right and it plays their game. It’s a concession to the far Right”.

Far Right “influences [sic] get on Question Time”

Continuing the discussion about whether the ethnicity and immigration status of crime suspects should be disclosed, McGregor says that information (and misinformation) can be spread “not just from the far fringes of the far Right, but from the kind of far Right influences who get on Question Time, who are quoted in the newspapers”. He doesn’t say who these “far Right” commentators are.

The privileged need to stop complaining

When talking about tax increases, McGregor doesn’t have much sympathy for the privileged:

There is a very, very big difference between ‘I don’t want you to take away some of the disposable income I have’ versus ‘I am being oppressed’. You know… that phrase about ‘when you’ve lived a life of oppression, equality feels like oppression’. When you’ve lived a life of wealth, having your taxes go up a little bit.

I’ve pasted the full quote below as it is a bit garbled, but you get the gist:

Danny Kruger echoes Donald Trump’s plan

Host Afoko tells McGregor she believes Danny Kruger “is a really important and interesting figure in British politics” and “flying completely under the radar of journalists at the moment” (N.B. The podcast focuses on topics “under the radar”, as per its name). She gives examples of how Kruger is trying to restructure the Civil Service. McGregor replies: “I’ve definitely been following what he’s doing, partly for all of the reasons you’ve outlined, partly because the polls suggest that Reform might form the next government, and you know I see a lot of echoes in what he’s saying with Donald Trump’s and the Heritage Foundation’s agenda plan, they were very open about what they wanted to do. That was Project 2025.”

Reform would use the “machinery of the state” for “dastardly” things

Having discussed what Kruger might do in government, McGregor says:

The machinery of the state is just machinery. A lever that is pulled that does something can be pulled by someone using that for good or for ill. Obviously, I think we can all agree that Reform want to use this machinery of state for very dastardly, unpleasant things that will have huge implications for our country and for people that we love. But… we would also want a progressive government who is able to get elected, to be able to make the change that they were elected on on the basis of. And so I think it is really interesting, and I don’t think we should assume that simply because a Reform supervillain is doing this reordering, that it is inherently wrong. What they want to use it for is inherently wrong.

Palantir are baddies

McGregor is extremely scathing about Palantir, in a lengthy discussion with Afoko about the company.

If Palantir don’t live inside your head, just a kind of a quick summary of them: they are a data and analytics company, which is a description that severely understates the actual impact of these people. It’s a data and analytics company, but is run by extremists like comic book level baddies who make Bond villains look like very chill guys who you’d like to have a G and T with. Like these people are really absurdly iffy.

It’s worth adding that McGregor’s past organisation, 38 Degrees, has repeatedly campaigned against Palantir, as has the Good Law Project, which lists 38 Degrees as a supporter in its funding page.

So there you have it: a fairly good idea of what McGregor stands for.

If you want to listen to the podcast yourself, here are links to both episodes: ‘Mayor Mamdani in NYC – with Matthew McGregor‘ and ‘Palantir, The World Cup, Danny Kruger and More Mandelson – w/ Matthew McGregor‘.

Charlotte Gill regularly publishes about the use of taxpayers’ money to fund Left-wing causes and Left-wing researchers in Woke Waste, her Substack. You can subscribe here.