Politics

Class act: The working-class game binding London and Canberra

Published

1 month ago

August 16, 2026

CANBERRA — When a new British prime minister speaks to their Australian counterpart for the first time, it’s a reset of Australia’s oldest and deepest relationship.

The agenda seems obvious: Intelligence sharing. Tariffs. Hot war and simmering conflict.

If the conversation turns to sport, cricket has often been the obvious choice.

But as Andy Burnham began his introductory calls to world leaders, he and Anthony Albanese got to rugby league.

On their July 23 leader-to-leader call, the two men talked animatedly about the sport they have each spent a lifetime inside.

Albanese told Burnham he would love to see the Kangaroos, the Australian national side, tour the United Kingdom soon.

“I used to love watching the old Kangaroo Tours to the U.K.,” Albanese told Blue Light News, reminiscing about “Mal Meninga’s try at Old Trafford in the green and gold” in 1990, in Burnham’s home town of Manchester, one of “those small grounds where the fans are right there on the tiny dead ball lines.”

By the end of the call, according to Burnham’s office, he agreed to support Albanese’s team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. “I’m happy to barrack for Prime Minister Burnham’s Leopards in return,” Albanese said.

It wasn’t just small talk.

The AUKUS military alliance requires London and Canberra to operate at a level of trust that treaties and memorandums can’t manufacture. Delivering nuclear-powered submarines to Australia to ward off Chinese aggression will take decades of shared industrial secrets, shipyard schedules and nuclear technology.

Personal chemistry between leaders is not a substitute for institutional machinery, but it is the lubricant.

Burnham and Albanese have a shared, unfakeable claim to a working-class sport at exactly the moment both left-wing leaders are trying to hold onto working-class voters in the face of a right-wing populist challenge.

Burnham told Blue Light News that deep love of the sport is “one of the many reasons the friendship between our two countries runs as deep as it does.”

“In the North of England, rugby league is in our blood. It is played and watched week in, week out, rain or shine, and I know that is a feeling shared in communities right across Australia too,” he said.

The code of collective action

Burnham’s urgent political mission is to stem the flow of working-class voters who have switched from Labour to Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK, in many post-industrial Northern towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and nearby Cumbria and Cheshire, where rugby league is played.

Reconnecting with these communities is critical for Burnham’s hopes of saving Labour from defeat at the next U.K. general election, which is not due until 2029 but could potentially come sooner.

And the culture of rugby league is one that aligns closely with Labour’s left-wing history and its mission in these very same parts of the country: The sport only exists because of a fight about money and class

In 1895, clubs in the north of England broke from Rugby Union over the refusal of the sport’s authorities to compensate players for wages lost to injury or time away from work.

Wealthy players didn’t need the support, while working-class players decided their only option was to quit, and set up a rival code that allowed them to receive a wage for their efforts.

Players in Australia — formed out of British colonies and still firmly in the British Empire — soon followed suit, and the split never healed. Neither did the class coding.

Union, which was devised in a historic, prestigious private school, remains a fixture of British and Australian fee-paying schools.

Australia’s opposition leader, Angus Taylor, a Rhodes Scholar and former McKinsey consultant, plays Rugby Union. Albanese, who grew up with a single mother in social housing, played league.

Burnham’s Northern assets

League “has a very particular culture,” said Tony Collins, emeritus professor of history at De Montfort University and the author of several books on the sport. It understands itself, he said, as working-class, democratic and inclusive — and reflexively anti-establishment.

That is a useful thing for a politician like Burnham to be fluent in. Their League connections present them, he said, as ordinary blokes voters could have a pint with. “It’s the man in the pub thing,” Collins said.

Burnham’s northern identity is one of the few assets his party has that Farage cannot replicate.

The British leader has decades of involvement in the sport, serving as honorary chair of Leigh Centurions (Now Leigh Leopards), a team dating back to 1895. In 2018 he served as president of Rugby Football League, the sport’s governing body, an appointment he described as “one of the greatest honors I’ve ever been given.”

Burnham’s advocacy for greater investment in community-driven sport mirrors Albanese’s passion.

“Rugby league is about community. It’s about local identity,” Albanese said, and those who see the sport, its teams and its players as commodities to be traded or cut “don’t understand the sense of belonging it fosters.”

The pair talk about rugby league in the way Labor leaders were once able to talk about their own parties: mass movements marked by their sense of tightly-knit community.

Albanese’s 118-year grudge

Named for hawkers who walked Sydney’s streets selling wild rabbits to those too poor to afford other meat, Albanese’s Rabbitohs were founded in 1908 by working men from the city’s factory belt.

The club went on to win 20 premierships between 1908 and 1971 — still a record — the year Albanese’s mother took her starry-eyed 8-year-old son to watch the sport’s Grand Final.

Albanese played the sport for practical reasons: he could reach the training ground at inner Sydney’s Redfern Oval by bus — his family could not afford a car.

His days ended after school as he climbed the Labor ranks, becoming one of its youngest officials and an MP from his early 30s. Then came Rupert Murdoch.

In 1996, the newly-elected Albanese rose in the House to condemn a Federal Court decision clearing the establishment of Super League, a breakaway Murdoch-funded competition.

Calling it a battle between the community history of the game and the “private domination of this game by an individual,” Albanese risked his political career in labeling Murdoch’s venture “un-Australian”.

Famous for brow-beating Labor politicians, Murdoch’s newspapers controlled more than 70 percent of Australian news print circulation and set the daily agenda.

While Super League eventually collapsed back into the non-profit National Rugby League, the Rabbitohs did not survive the wreckage. Administrators cut the club in 1999, seeking a leaner competition and clubs with bigger fan bases and deeper pockets.

Albanese used his office to cultivate a backlash that became the largest sustained sports protest in Australian history.

As a Rabbitohs board member, Albanese tabled motions in Parliament, helped organize rallies and joined nearly 100,000 people marching through Sydney demanding their team back.

“This debate goes to the very heart of the alienation which people are feeling about our society,” he told the House in Nov. 1999. He was in the Federal Court in 2001 when it ordered the Rabbitohs readmitted to the competition, finding their exclusion breached the Trade Practices Act.

Authenticity dividend

While many would find it hard to outdo life membership of their favorite team — an honor Albanese received in 2013 — he took his fandom a step further: marrying a Rabbitohs fan who shouted the club’s battle cry from the audience during a speech by Albanese.

A first date with pension fund executive Jodie Haydon followed just before Covid lockdowns, and the pair married in 2025.

Businessperson Peter Holmes à Court in 2006 bought a 75 percent stake in the Rabbitohs with actor Russell Crowe, with Albanese’s blessing. He argues the prime minister’s obsession is the rare kind voters detect as genuine.

“His love for the Rabbitohs is absolutely authentic,” Holmes à Court told Blue Light News. Instead of seeing a politician looking for photo opportunities, with Albanese his team pride is “like an organ, another arm.”

Albanese’s fandom occasionally overwhelms his official role.

In March 2026 he joined an on-field invasion draped in club colors after the Rabbitohs’ Alex Johnston broke the NRL’s all-time try record, telling Nine Television “it was worth it to be part of history.” In July he told comedian podcaster Nikki Osborne that a Souths win is “always a good aphrodisiac.”

“Anti-snobbery is the new movement, right? You can’t be too woke, but you also can’t be too elite in a populist revolutionary world,” Holmes à Court said.

Albanese rallies to the defense of his sport at the dispatch box on the floor of Parliament, and promises to use his relationship with Burnham to “discuss getting more kids off screens and onto sporting fields in our two great countries.”

Burnham keeps it similarly practical: “Together we are delivering good jobs through our AUKUS programme, ensuring young people get a good start in life, and driving down the cost of living. I know as two progressive Labour leaders we have a close friendship ahead of us.”

Albanese won’t be getting his desired Kangaroos tour of the U.K. this year.

England’s team is headed Down Under instead, for the Rugby League World Cup, beginning Oct. 15.

Politics

The art of dealing with Trump

Published

14 minutes ago

September 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Mayor Zohran Mamdani will meet with President Donald Trump at Gracie Mansion this afternoon.

ALL EYES ON GRACIE: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to sit down with President Donald Trump at Gracie Mansion this afternoon, their third in-person meeting in less than a year and the latest wrinkle in one of the strangest relationships in American politics.

Since Mamdani’s first, shockingly cordial meeting with Trump at the White House last November, political observers have scratched their heads about the democratic socialist mayor playing nice with the Republican president despite their deep disagreements on … just about everything. Ostensibly, Mamdani is putting his personal distaste for Trump aside and betting it’s best for New York City to keep things cordial so as to avoid drawing the president’s ire.

But as resistance to Trump remains animating for Democrats nationally ahead of November’s midterms, Mamdani’s strategy for engaging with him stands out.

Earlier today, Gov. Kathy Hochul made clear that she, for one, has no plans to meet with Trump while he’s in New York. “I speak to him on the phone whenever I need to,” she told reporters in Manhattan.

Hochul, who’s facing reelection in November and tends to directly criticize Trump more frequently than Mamdani, said it was her understanding that the mayor agreed to host the president at Gracie Mansion during a previous conversation at the White House.

“The mayor and [Trump] said that when he’s back in town again, he would go to Gracie Mansion,” the governor said. “I don’t have a Gracie Mansion to invite him to.”

Still, Hochul said there’s an opportunity for Mamdani to use the Gracie confab to push Trump on releasing federal funding for New York, including for law enforcement, that she said the president’s administration has been withholding.

“We have to continue fighting for what New York needs,” she said.

Mamdani’s office wouldn’t say who requested today’s meeting or share specifics about the expected focus in advance, only saying the mayor will talk to Trump about “issues affecting New York City.” A Mamdani spokesperson said the mayor will elaborate on what was discussed at a post-meeting press conference that Trump isn’t expected to attend.

After the appointment at Gracie, Trump is slated to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron before headlining a couple Republican fundraisers. By contrast, after his Trump tête-à-tête, Mamdani will have dinner with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s in the city to headline a United Nations Charter event this evening that will also feature pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a person familiar with the plans who was granted anonymity to discuss them told Playbook.

The Queens-born Trump is in town ahead of his Tuesday address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Maintaining a relationship with Trump isn’t without risk for Mamdani.

As Trump remains deeply unpopular amid the war in Iran and other controversies, some Democrats are privately questioning why the mayor sees a need to keep interacting with the president. But so far, Mamdani hasn’t faced any significant pushback from his hard-left base over his engagements with Trump, with leaders of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America largely viewing it as the mayor acting in the city’s best interests. — Chris Sommerfeldt and Madison Fernandez

From the Capitol

Governor Kathy Hochul spoke about New York's AI safety laws at a Monday event in Manhattan.

EYES ON AI: Hochul floated requiring safeguards like an artificial intelligence “kill switch” as part of state-level interventions to address the rapidly evolving technology.

During a Monday event in Manhattan rolling out next steps for enacting the RAISE Act, New York’s landmark AI safety law that is set to go into effect in January, the governor said she’ll “look closely at additional ways to build on” the legislation — including AI kill switches “if they’re deemed feasible and in the best interest of our state.”

The governor in recent days has vowed to take additional AI-related actions beyond the RAISE Act, but has not specified what that might look like. Her suggestion of a kill switch comes days after California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to explore such a requirement for AI companies’ most-advanced models.

Some in the tech industry have argued implementing one is not technically feasible. Federal legislation to enact a kill switch requirement is currently stalled in Congress.

When asked to expand on the prospect of requiring a kill switch, Hochul said that “all options are on the table,” but wasn’t making a commitment.

“We’re going to do the research and make the decisions that are thoughtful to protect New Yorkers,” she said. “We’ll go as far as we need to to protect people of this state and ultimately this country in the absence of other leadership.”

MORE BLAKEMAN MONEY: Billionaire former casino developer Steve Wynn has donated $1 million to the main super PAC supporting Republican Bruce Blakeman’s gubernatorial bid, records filed with the state Board of Elections this morning show.

The committee, Strong and Safe New York, has now raised $5.3 million since July.

Wynn has been a top donor to national Republican causes for over a decade. His most recent large donations in New York came last year, when he gave $361,000 to the state GOP and $500,000 to a super PAC boosting Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral bid. — Bill Mahoney

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

GOP Rep. Mike Lawler picked up an endorsement from his Democratic House colleague, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine.

ENDORSEMENT CORNER: Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) endorsed GOP Rep. Mike Lawler in his reelection campaign in suburban New York, Golden wrote in an opinion article published Monday.

Lawler is facing a tough reelection campaign against Democrat Cait Conley in one of the biggest House battlegrounds this November. The lawmakers have previously collaborated to advance the Northeast Lobsterman Protection Act, and are both members of the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus.

Golden, who is not running for reelection, was one of two House Democrats to break with the party and twice vote in favor of the Republican legislative agenda earlier in September.

“Mike Lawler has been a true partner to me and a friend to fishing families he will never represent,” Golden wrote. “I strongly back him, and I hope voters send him back to work. Wherever you live, find the members who pass laws with the other party, and keep them.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the cross-aisle endorsement a “smoke and mirrors ploy” that “will do nothing to change the outcome of the race.”

“In desperation, [Lawler] is peddling an 11th hour endorsement from a retiring Congressmember who represents an out of town district more than 400 miles away,” Jeffries said in a statement. “Mike Lawler is an unadulterated phony who has never shown bipartisan courage when it matters.”

ON THE AIRWAVES: With fewer than 50 days to go before Election Day, House Democrats’ main super PAC is making its first TV ad buy in support of Conley on Monday.

The House Majority PAC said it is reserving $1.2 million on cable in the Hudson Valley contest. (An additional $1.2 million is going toward fighting Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s re-election in New Jersey, which is also covered by the New York City media market.) HMP said earlier this year that it didn’t include the high-dollar NYC media market in its initial reservations because it was “prioritiz[ing] markets where rates increase significantly.”

Republicans have been largely outpacing Democrats in NY-17 on the ad spending front, thanks to significant buys from super PACs backed by the president and House leadership. From the beginning of September through Election Day, the GOP has placed $15 million on ads across broadcast, cable, CTV and digital platforms, according to ad tracker AdImpact.

The new HMP spend is the biggest from an outside Democratic group so far, but still leaves a large gap between the parties. Democrats have placed around $3 million on advertising in the period between September and Election Day, with the largest chunk coming from the Conley campaign. — Madison Fernandez

IN OTHER NEWS

IN OTHER NEWS:

— JUDGES CASH IN: Brooklyn Democratic Party leaders have raked in $190,000 in contributions from judges and judicial candidates since 2012, raising some ethical and legal concerns. (New York Post)

— AFFORDABILITY AHEAD: Anthony Shorris, the mayor’s new pick for the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, laid out a vision for solving the city’s affordability crisis that goes beyond Mamdani’s vision for five city-owned grocery stores. (The New York Times)

— BUY NOW, PAY LATER: The Mamdani administration is pushing Albany for tougher ‘buy now, pay later’ regulation, as many New Yorkers use the plans to pay for basic essentials, sinking deeper into debt. (amNY)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Politics

Pritzker says he’s lost 80 pounds on GLP-1 since diabetes diagnosis

Published

5 hours ago

September 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

CHICAGO — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker revealed Monday that he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes two years ago and began taking a GLP-1 medication, resulting in an 80-pound weight loss that he says has transformed his health and daily life.

The disclosure marks the first time the Democrat has publicly disclosed that he has diabetes, as well as officially acknowledging that he is on GLP-1 medication, which is prescribed both for diabetes treatment and weight loss. The governor told CBS News he started taking the medication after doctors warned that he would likely need insulin for the rest of his life.

Pritzker is viewed as a likely 2028 presidential candidate and has spent two years batting away questions about his visibly slimmer appearance, though he did hint at his weight loss during the Gridiron Club and Foundation’s annual white-tie dinner in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.

“I’m JB Pritzker, governor of the great state of Illinois, and if you’re seeing me in person for the very first time, yes, I’m the guy who put ‘gov’ in ‘Wegovy,’” he told the high-profile crowd.

The 61-year-old governor said he has struggled with his weight since childhood, dating back to when he was a 7-year-old. That’s about the time his father, Donald Pritzker, suffered a fatal heart attack at age 39 while playing tennis.

President Donald Trump has made Pritzker’s weight an issue, often commenting about it in personal attacks. Asked about his weight loss during an interview with Blue Light News in the spring of 2025, Pritzker said, “How about, just for health.”

In Monday’s CBS interview, the governor said he closely monitored his cholesterol, triglycerides and other health markers for years because of his family history. But after becoming governor, he acknowledged the stress of leading the nation’s sixth-largest state contributed to additional weight gain.

Two years ago, that concern became more urgent when doctors diagnosed him with Type 2 diabetes, he told CBS. “My doctor said, ‘Oh no, you’ll never come off of it. You’re going to have to do this the rest of your life, and I recommend that you take a GLP-1,’” Pritzker recalled about being told he’d have to take insulin.

His wife, MK Pritzker, encouraged her husband to proceed on GLP-1. “I want him to be around for a really long time,” she told CBS.

The governor’s office confirmed that as a result of the GLP-1, plus improved diet and exercise, Pritzker “is no longer on insulin and down to levels that indicate no diabetes/prediabetic levels.”

Pritzker said the effects were almost immediate. Within days, he said, he didn’t feel the appetite urges. “It was the strangest feeling.”

The governor also has gained local attention for taking walks along the Lake Michigan walking path in Chicago. Along with adopting the healthy habit, it’s allowed him to talk regularly to constituents.

During Monday’s interview, Pritzker side-stepped questions about whether he was running for president. “I honestly am focused on what’s best for the people of Illinois,” he said.

The governor also talked about being proud of Illinois’ decision to cover GLP-1 medications for people with diabetes, becoming emotional describing a woman who approached him and told him access to the medication had saved her life.

The announcement about his weight comes as Pritzker is taking a more prominent role in the 2026 midterms, chairing a political action committee focused on investing at least $20 million in Democratic House races. The move has added to speculation about a potential presidential bid, where the demands of a national campaign would put his health and stamina in sharper focus.

Politics

Poll: Here’s what really matters for ‘electability’

Published

11 hours ago

September 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Voters are perfectly fine supporting candidates who aren’t white men.

But they do show small preferences for candidates who are younger and Christian, according to new results from The POLITICO Poll. And voters were most likely to penalize transgender candidates in hypothetical matchups, though Democrats were more likely to support them than GOP voters were.

The results cast a new light on a simmering, yearslong public conversation within both parties about what it means to be electable and whether putting forward candidates of varying backgrounds is too politically risky in a close election environment. It’s a debate that defined the last open Democratic presidential primary in 2020 and is poised to play a role in 2028 too.

Democrats have largely focused their debates on whether voters would accept a person of color or a woman, particularly after President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024 — while losing to Joe Biden in 2020. But the poll results suggest the characteristics voters care most about are different, shaped by frustrations over aging politicians and both new and old culture wars.

“The American people, I believe, think about identity way less than the average political consultant does,” said Mike Nellis, a longtime Democratic digital strategist who advised Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. “Obviously there are factors in society that make it harder for women and people of color to get elected, but there are plenty of incredibly talented people out there who are capable of getting over the hump on that.”

To test whether demographic characteristics make a candidate more or less electable, Blue Light News’s polling partner, Public First, showed thousands of respondents a series of head-to-head matchups. In each case, respondents were given basic information about the candidate’s demographics, such as their race, age and gender; their career, with titles such as doctor, attorney general or CEO; and a single-sentence description of their political alignment, either as a progressive or moderate Democratic, independent, or moderate or MAGA Republican.

Respondents then picked which candidate they would prefer, and the results overwhelmingly showed voters cared the most about a candidate’s political ideology. But respondents also revealed more subtle patterns in their preferences.

Voters across both parties were more likely to reject older candidates in favor of younger ones. Republicans in particular favored candidates who were described as Christian or regular churchgoers, even when controlling for the candidates’ politics. GOP respondents picked candidates described as regularly attending a church just under 9% more often than candidates who did not have any faith.

That means that even though Republican respondents usually picked the GOP candidate in head-to-head matchups, for example, they were more likely to cross over and support an independent or Democratic candidate when that candidate was described as Christian.

The results on sexual orientation were more complicated: When candidates were described as “gay,” they were picked about 10% less often across all voters. But when the candidate descriptions describe the candidate as a man married to his husband — without a label for sexual orientation — respondents did not pick them less often in a statistically significant manner.

Voters were less likely to pick transgender candidates, with Democratic voters about 5% less likely while GOP voters were 17% less likely, all else held equal.

The age results were a strong signal that voters want a new generation of candidates after the last presidential cycle was driven by concerns about Biden’s age, fueling a slew of intergenerational primary contests this year and leading major Democratic voices to publicly call for a younger candidate for 2028. Trump is now 80, and Republicans have faced their own conversations about aging politicians, as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) faced serious health challenges earlier this year.

Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run For Something, which recruits candidates under the age of 40, said when the group started its work nearly a decade ago, younger people were often seen as “risky bets” electorally.

“Now I think people are starting to see that that is not true. Voters will judge people one by one,” Litman said. “They’re also really hungry for change and really hungry for someone who didn’t get us into this mess.”

The poll found candidates over the age of 70 were nearly 10% less likely to be picked than candidates under the age of 50, with Democrats slightly more likely than Republicans to disfavor a candidate due to age.

Notably, The Blue Light News Poll didn’t find differences based on a candidate’s race or gender overall, outside of gender identity. That has long been a topic of debate among Democrats thinking about winning the presidency.

When Harris replaced Biden on the top of Democrats’ ticket in 2024, few questioned that she would choose a white man as her running mate. Since her loss, some Democrats have argued that a white male candidate might be the best path forward for the party in 2028.

Harris also wrote in her memoir about the campaign that she thought picking former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as her running mate would have been “too risky” because he is gay, and that he otherwise would have been her ideal partner.

But Buttigieg, who is contemplating running for president in 2028, recently argued that the country is ready for a gay president, saying he wouldn’t have launched a bid in 2020 otherwise.

“What’s on people’s minds isn’t about you, your identity as a candidate,” he told NBC News last weekend. “It’s about them. It’s about their lives.”