Hours after Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday, Andy Burnham was sworn into Parliament. He is now the only contestant to lead the Labour Party, and he will probably take over as prime minister on July 17 if nobody else enters the race. He would be the seventh prime minister in a decade.
The Associated Press reports that the change from the stolid, unpopular Starmer to the affable Burnham brings a new tone but not necessarily new policy. Burnham, who spent a decade as mayor of Greater Manchester, will be bound by the platform Labour was elected on in 2024, when it ended 14 years of Conservative rule. How he handles those limits is not entirely clear. He is due to set out his economic vision in a speech next week.
Markets and money
Burnham sits to the left of Starmer in the party, and the bond market is watching. He has promised to revive a sluggish economy without exceeding the government’s current spending and borrowing plans. That pledge has soothed nerves still raw from 2022, when Liz Truss announced unfunded tax cuts, then withdrew them and lasted 49 days, Britain’s shortest-serving premiership.
Mark Goodwin, a politics lecturer at Coventry University, said the caution is warranted. “If you are a Labour prime minister from the soft left of the party, the markets don’t need that much invitation to panic,” he said. “They will start from a position of skepticism. So he’d have to be very, very careful.” Burnham must persuade people this is something different, Goodwin added, without the markets concluding it is too different.
Burnham has said he will not raise taxes on workers, keeping a Starmer pledge. He has floated easing the load on businesses, possibly by reversing an increase in the tax employers pay toward pensions, public health care and welfare. Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, said the open question is how he pays for his programs, whether he drops existing priorities and how he meets demands for more defense spending. Starmer’s government committed to a NATO target of 3.5% of GDP on the military by 2035. John Healey quit as defense secretary this month, complaining that Starmer was too slow to get there.
Trump and the world stage
Burnham has less foreign experience. Donald Trump turned on Starmer after the British leader criticized his designs on Greenland and declined to join the Iran war, despite a US-UK trade deal won earlier. This week Trump called Burnham a “town” mayor and said he had heard he was “extremely liberal” and probably would not expand North Sea oil drilling.
Burnham’s own record with Trump is not warm. After the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, he posted on X that “any politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now.”
Rutter said Burnham could hand some diplomatic duties to an experienced foreign secretary. “I don’t think Andy Burnham will want to be ‘never-here Andy’ in succession to ‘never-here Keir,’” she said. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Burnham is “100% behind our unwavering support for Ukraine.”
Manchesterism
Burnham promotes “Manchesterism”, a business-friendly socialism that draws private investment into big projects and gives communities more say over housing, utilities, transportation and education. He is reportedly considering moving part of the prime minister’s operation about 200 miles north of 10 Downing Street.
Matthew Flinders, a politics professor at the University of Sheffield, said Burnham is “almost hailed and held up as a folk hero”, and wondered what happens “when the world suddenly moves against him and he becomes a folk devil.” He expects Burnham to take time building a team and narrative before the radical phase he wants, “exactly what Margaret Thatcher did in the ’80s.” Burnham has talked of an elected senate in place of the House of Lords, proportional representation, and rejoining the European Union in his lifetime, though he backed away from the last during a campaign in a constituency that voted 2-to-1 for Brexit.
Sources
- Andy Burnham distanced himself from UK Prime Minister Starmer, but may be stuck with his policies – AOL
- Andy Burnham distanced himself from UK Prime Minister Starmer, but may be stuck with his policies
