The case against Andy Burnham

A New Statesman profile for the issue published in the week before Labour Party conference. A lengthy interview in the Daily Telegraph on the eve of a major international conference of global progressive leaders, including the newly-elected prime ministers of Canada, Australia and Norway. This is your standard press management for a party leader in the run up to the second meeting of the UK Labour family since its landslide victory in July 2024.

Except it’s not Keir Starmer who is being profiled and interviewed, it’s Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, who was already enjoying a good week as the Hillsborough Law was passed. This legislation – the binding of public servants to a legal duty of candour – was Burnham’s response to the scandal of the police cover-up after the fatal Hillsborough disaster and the grief and incomprehension of the families who lost relatives.

What is the message of Burnham’s interventions? He said the government should take heed of the fall in its popularity. Nearly a third of voters of have abandoned support for Labour, and Prime Minister Starmer is as unpopular as Tory PM Rishi Sunak shortly before he led the Tories to their historic defeat. A list of course corrections in key policies were proposed, ranging from lifting the two-child benefit cap to introducing proportional representation. 

There can be no doubt that, in Napoleon’s words, that Andy Burnham has a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. Like almost all senior politicians, he believes he is up to the top job. Unlike most, he has had the courage to break cover.

These are undoubtedly difficult times for the Labour government. In recent weeks Keir Starmer has lost his deputy leader Angela Rayner and his US ambassador Lord Mandelson. In May, at the local elections, Nigel Farage’s party Reform established itself as not just the dominant party of the right, but established a lead in the polls by consistently getting over 30 per cent of the vote. In a system with five viable parties – six including the nationalists – this is a dominant lead. With persistent inflation, low growth, high borrowing costs and a tight Budget coming, there is a shiver running down the collective spine of the parliamentary Labour party. Many new MPs fear being one-termers. 

With Labour conference opening this weekend and an ongoing deputy leadership campaign – itself a proxy debate on the direction of the government – testing days are coming. Yet there are a range of obvious obstacles to Burnham’s challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership:

1. Constitutional objections. There is no vacancy and one can only be triggered at annual conference by a duly nominated candidate, who has to be an MP. Burnham is not an MP.
2. Omar Little’s observation (The Wire): ‘You come at the king, you best not miss.’ If a politician openly makes a move at the leader of their party, there is usually one swift and certain result. The asymmetry in power between the incumbent and the insurgent leads to the end of a promising career.
3. Changing leaders had varied success for the Conservative party. Churning through three prime ministers in as many months did not arrest their decline in popularity, though Labour MPs may be tempted by the memory of how the charisma of Boris Johnson rescued the Tories in 2019.
4. Governments in both Norway and Australia have stumbled and disappointed in their first terms, but recovered and won second terms. It is four years until the next election which is an enormous time in modern politics and certainly too long to make accurate forecasts. (Four years ago the Tories had healthy poll leads over Labour having rescued the country from Covid restrictions.)
5. Finally, no internal critics of Keir Starmer can answer the question of what fundamental changes they would make to the course of the Labour government. The fiscal and economic constraints remain. The geopolitical uncertainties demand the balance of close defence relationships with Europe while maintaining close personal ones with President Trump. Climate transition remains essential. AI looms over the workplace.

A slightly more left-wing Labour government might – in the end – offer a bridge to some left-of-centre voters to return to provide tactical support for Labour, but does it offer the change that voters sought when they supported Brexit? Or gave Corbyn’s Labour a massive increase in votes? Or when Johnson won his landslide? Voters aren’t being fickle – they have been constant in their demand for change.

It is the absence of a transformative policy agenda that meets the challenge of this moment of national, European and global turbulence that undermines anyone on manoeuvres at the moment.