Andy Burnham was not even in the chamber. He didn’t need to be. The Mayor of Manchester has already won.
Labour MPs are flocking to him. Keir Starmer, the outgoing prime minister, sat through a humiliating Prime Minister’s Questions session today, flanked by a grim-faced Rachel Reeves.
He insisted he was “very pleased” Burnham is back in the Commons. The mechanics here are brutal. Starmer announced his departure in an emotional speech on Monday.
Today, Kemi Badenoch dissected his demise with mockery. The Tory leader asked the obvious question: if everything is so fantastic, why is he resigning?
Badenoch turned her fire on Reeves, noting the Chancellor did not bother to step out into Downing Street to watch the prime minister deliver his resignation speech. Then Reeves turned up to get a selfie with Burnham. On closer reading, that is a pointed signal about where loyalties now lie inside the Labour Party.
This is how Starmer ends. He dodged making a statement to the Commons on the G7 summit. So today’s PMQs was the first time he was grilled on his departure.
The catch for the prime minister is that he now presides over a party that has already moved on. Burnham is the man expected to replace him within weeks.
The political momentum is firmly with him. Badenoch also took aim at Ed Miliband. Miliband is now tipped by many to become Burnham’s Chancellor.
The Conservative leader called him a failed Labour leader, rejected by the electorate, brought back from the wilderness. When the going got tough, she said, he jumped into bed with the Mayor of Manchester.
She added a brutal snipe about Miliband running for the leadership against his own brother in 2010. “It’s not the first time he’s betrayed someone close to him, is it?” The scene in the Commons today was a study in defeat. Starmer tried to talk up his achievements.
Badenoch cut through it. The prime minister’s own MPs have already shown their support for Burnham. The outgoing leader insisted he is “very pleased” about that.
It is a strange sort of pleasure. This did not happen overnight.
The party has been bleeding confidence in Starmer for months. Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester, positioned himself as the alternative. He waited.
He built support. Now he returns to the Commons not as a challenger but as the presumptive successor.
The mechanics are brutal, but they are also clear. Reeves stood beside Starmer today. She looked grim.
She did not stand beside him when he resigned. That absence spoke volumes. Badenoch noticed.
The Tory leader used it to hammer home the point: the Chancellor is already looking elsewhere. The selfie with Burnham sealed it.
Miliband’s role in all this is complicated. He ran for leader against his own brother in 2010. That history is now being used against him.
Badenoch did not let it slide. She connected his past to his present.
Miliband, once rejected by the electorate, is now being brought back into the fold. He is expected to become Burnham’s Chancellor. The party is reshuffling itself before the change has even happened.
Starmer gave an emotional speech on Monday. Today he sat through the consequences. The prime minister presides over a party that has already chosen its next leader.
PMQs was not about policy or the G7. It was about the end of a premiership.
Badenoch made sure everyone knew it.
