Back in June, as Labour’s soft left assembled at the Compass conference, I reported that Andy Burnham had made his leadership pitch. By August, his status as the party’s “king over the water” was clear. Like Boris Johnson under David Cameron, he routinely dissented on matters of national policy and was increasingly viewed by MPs and activists as an alternative leader.
This is a status that Burnham is now unashamed of (if he ever was). After his much-covered interview with Tom in this week’s NS, the Greater Manchester mayor tells the Telegraph that MPs “contacted me throughout the summer” about a leadership challenge.
Most believe that Burnham, should he return to parliament, could now secure the 80 nominations required to stand against Starmer. “He has the welfare rebels and the frustrated backbenchers,” observes one minister. Though they set another test: “Can he reach out beyond the obvious and build a surprising coalition?”
Tony Benn, another Labour figure who moved left with age, used to say that politics should be about “issues, not personalities”. Burnham takes a similar line, declaring that “it can’t be just a changing of the guard: you have got to change the whole culture”.
There are numerous hurdles for the mayor to clear before any change of leadership: an MP would have to stand down (as neither Graham Stringer nor Andrew Gwynne has been prepared to do); Burnham would have to be approved as a candidate by Labour’s National Executive Committee and selected by a local party; and he would then have to fight and win a by-election (most likely against Reform). All that before those 80 backers even come into play.
So let’s focus on the issues. The line from Burnham that has attracted most comment in Labour circles is this: “We’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets” (the former chief secretary to the Treasury believes that a cross-party coalition, potentially including the Liberal Democrats and Jeremy Corbyn, would better ensure economic stability).
There are few statements more exquisitely designed to dismay Rachel Reeves (who, remember, refused to serve in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet). And the Chancellor will make clear in her conference speech next Monday that she has no truck with such thinking. While hailing the £300bn of extra public spending she has announced, Reeves will warn that this was only possible because “we have been trusted by the country but also by the markets to live within our means”.
Others are more pointed. One leadership ally suggests that an old Westminster joke now needs an amendment: “A Blairite, a Brownite, a Corbynite and a Trussite went to the pub. The barman said: ‘What do you want, Andy?’” They add: “How do you stop being in hock to the bond markets? Borrow less? Tax more?”
Here are the kind of questions that Burnham, who has argued that the UK has “overtaxed labour and undertaxed wealth”, will need to answer as his pitch attracts more scrutiny. But a much wider battle for Labour’s soul, one that recalls the 1981 contest between Benn and Denis Healey, has begun. On one side is Burnham, the former cabinet minister and born-again radical, calling for an economic and constitutional transformation and co-operation with the radical left. On the other are Starmer and Reeves, presenting themselves as the guardians of economic and national security, just as Healey did (the Chancellor, who neighbours his former Leeds seat, has celebrated the Old Right warhorse as a “hero”).
The stakes, one Starmer ally tells me, are far greater than the question of who leads the Labour Party. “National security is dependent on a government that is performing,” they warn of a prolonged contest. “People’s lives are on the line, you can’t just take your eyes off the ball.”
A decade after the 2015 leadership election – one in which Burnham found himself marginalised by the insurgent Corbyn – a new struggle that will shape Labour’s future has begun.
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My Morning Call newsletter yesterday featured new Ipsos polling showing that Nigel Farage was now tied with Keir Starmer as “best prime minister” and that Andy Burnham is the most popular major politician in the country (with a net approval rating of +9).
Today I can reveal new More in Common polling showing that, with Burnham as leader, Labour would take a two-point lead over Reform (30-28), compared to a three-point deficit at present (28-25). Is that shift big enough for Labour to immerse itself in a new leadership contest? There’s a question for anxious MPs to ponder.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: Where is Zarah Sultana?]
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