Andy Burnham got selfies. When he walked into the House of Commons on Monday, Labour MPs who had just put on a show of sadness for Keir Starmer smiled and crowded round him. Starmer had announced earlier that day that he would soon step down as prime minister. Burnham, 56, is due to take the office within weeks.
The Age argues that is where the trouble starts. Labour’s hope is that he can stop the rise of Nigel Farage and Reform UK. The catch is that Burnham has so far said very little to show how.
Popular, but unspecific
Burnham spent nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester, a post he left this week to return to parliament. Admirers called him “the king of the north” so often that the press adopted the label. Born in Liverpool in 1970, he was first elected as an MP for Leigh in 2001, served in Gordon Brown’s cabinet, and lost Labour leadership races in 2010 and 2015, the second time to Jeremy Corbyn. His first Greater Manchester mayoral win came with more than 60% of the vote, and bringing buses back under public control under the “Bee Network” brand earned him praise.
Since coming back, the paper says, he has held no press conference and given no speech. His advisers brief journalists on possible appointments, yet he has said nothing that could be used against him later. One post on X from outside parliament read, “Heading home after a big week in Westminster”. It was Wednesday, and he had been sworn in on Monday.
What Makerfield proves, and what it doesn’t
His best evidence is the Makerfield by-election, which he won six days earlier with 54.8 per cent of the vote. Reform’s Rob Kenyon took 34.5 per cent. The Age cautions against reading too much into it. By-elections carry protest votes, and everyone knew a vote for Burnham could wound or remove Starmer. Hope Not Hate also published social media posts it said came from Kenyon, using sexual and sexist language about women. At a BBC event in Makerfield, an audience member said: “I’d rather have a career politician than a plumber who’s a sexist.” Labour volunteers repeated that line at doors.
A national contest is harder. The latest YouGov poll gives Reform 25 per cent, the Conservatives 20, Labour 18, the Greens 15 and the Liberal Democrats 14. Under first past the post, the leader of the biggest single party has the edge, and Farage is that leader. Labour’s route, the paper says, is to lift its core vote by drawing from the Greens and Liberal Democrats.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has already pushed a rival version of events. She told MPs Starmer was resigning “because of his MPs” and listed ministers she said had let him down, including Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband. “And what for?” she said. “A pair of eyelashes and a black T-shirt.”
Trump and the long game
Donald Trump has barely noticed him. “I think I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday, adding: “I hear he’s extremely liberal, extremely.” Burnham backs the progressive wing of his party, which the paper expects to make relations with Washington awkward. In January 2021 he wrote that “any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now”. That post was still online this week.
Britain also remains scarred by Brexit. A Stanford University estimate from last November put the cut to UK economic output at 6 to 8 per cent, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said on June 19 the hit ranged from 4 to 10 per cent. Burnham will be the seventh prime minister since the referendum.
