Andy Burnham – former mayor of Manchester, recent winner of the Makerfield by-election and pretender in chief to No 10 Downing Street – rolled into London Euston on Monday morning on an Avanti West Coast train. He was on his way to be sworn into parliament for a second time having first left office in 2017. This was apparently a moment so seismic, so world-altering, so serious that Sky News followed the journey by helicopter. Here he is, Andy Burnham: the communicator, the everyman, the fixer, the northerner, the silver bullet, the mayor, the winner.
Keir Starmer was the great disappointment. This was the Labour leader who led his party to its second largest parliamentary victory. After 14 years of Tory mismanagement – so goes the refrain – Starmer was ready to clean up the mess, with a giant majority behind him and all the goodwill in the world. Yes Britain was facing a crisis – destabilised, still, by Brexit and facing complex security decisions about Europe’s eastern frontier. But finally – to use the worst phrase in the modern political lexicon – there were “adults in the room”.
Talk about magical thinking. Within moments, it all unravelled – and soon Starmer conspired to make himself among the least popular prime ministers the United Kingdom had ever seen. Perhaps Liz Truss was just never in place long enough. Perhaps it was not all his fault – maybe there is just something in the atmosphere that would make any leader in 2026 so roundly, comprehensively disliked. The reality doesn’t actually matter. The premiership was unsustainable and with Reform lapping at Labour’s ankles, something had to give.
Starmer is overly hated but he did make a series of mistakes – he failed to take his party with him on tricky but necessary welfare reforms, he never told a straight story about the ambassadorial appointment of Peter Mandelson. It wasn’t his policy brain, really, that everyone was so suspicious of. Rather Starmer failed the sniff test on basic facets of his character. He was uptight, legalistic, frigid, inflexible, boring, a charisma-void and obsessed with process over personality. These traits might have made him a good barrister and a better head of the Crown Prosecution Service. But to lead a country like the United Kingdom in a world as it is today? He just didn’t have what it takes.
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So goes the argument anyway. Andy Burnham has the political class in rapture not because he has his own great policy brain – there is scant evidence of that. But because he is supposed to be everything Starmer isn’t. He is warm, affable, smiley, funny, a popular mayor and ideally – though we do not know yet – a looser and more adaptable character than Starmer ever was. The camera loves him. The party seems like it is behind him (it was behind Keir Starmer once). Nevermind, salvation at last and all that.
How plausible is any of this? We must think straight about the problems Britain faces, and then ask: is being northern or an Everton season ticket holder sufficient?
Britain’s is a low growth economy with an unsustainably high welfare bill and a parliamentary Labour Party unwilling to slash it. It is locked out of the giant trading bloc on its doorstep and all the GDP benefits that supplies – without a single mainstream politician brave enough to actually make the argument for rejoining (Burnham briefly did, and then chickened out). There is an unemployment crisis among graduates – nearly 23 per cent of all under 24s in London cannot find a job. And there remains the small matter of Russia in Ukraine, and Trump in the White House.
Net migration is lower than it was but it is still too high for the median British voter – this sometimes metastasises into something much darker than cavorting with Nigel Farage and Reform at the ballot box. Just look to all the anti-migrant rage in Britain, bubbling over into outright violence on the streets.
And so, the problem with Britain is not that it has the wrong leader, per se. But that it does not have any strategy. You can ditch Starmer and swap in Burnham but to what end? Burnham talks about public ownership and “business friendly socialism” but the first is a tactic and the latter is a buzzword.
What is the bigger story? What is Britain’s place in the world in 2026 and how does Burnham plan to take it there? You could argue for Britain becoming a hyper dynamic, low corporation tax, Singaporean style economy – that’s a strategy. Or for succumbing to Chinese imperium and reaping all the benefits (while accepting the trade offs) that could bring. Bad idea, maybe, but a strategy at least. Someone has to come up with something. Complaining about “40 years of neoliberalism”? Running good bus services? Not a strategy.
The strongest case people make for Burnham is that he will make the patriotic argument against Reform at the election. I am instinctively drawn to that. But then I wonder why? What’s the point of keeping another party out of government if you have no programme for government yourself? A Labour government is not a solution in and of itself. And so I have to ask again, Labour is in power to what end?
