Back in 2015, Andy Burnham told me of the Labour leadership: “I’m not planning to run again – this will be the second time. I think there’s only so many times you can put your case to the party.”
It’s fair to say that matters have evolved since then. Speculation that Burnham will return to parliament, enabling a third leadership bid, has now persisted for months. One ally tells me that the Greater Manchester Mayor is “pursuing a couple of options” – Andrew Gwynne has again denied that he intends to stand down – but MPs remain divided over whether Burnham has a route back.
Starmer loyalists on the National Executive Committee maintain that they have no intention of approving the candidacy of a declared rival of the Labour leader – triggering an expensive Greater Manchester mayoral by-election in the process. The party machinery, one told me, will not “just roll over and let things designed to destabilise the PM happen”. Yet rebel MPs riposte that Starmer blocking Burnham would be an “act of cowardice” that would be tantamount to conceding his premiership is all but over.
Whichever view you take, it’s worth exploring why Burnham continues to command such attention. First, there’s his popularity. An Ipsos poll of voters over the weekend provided another reminder of that: Burnham was the only senior politician to lead Starmer as a preferred prime minister (by 13 points) as well as Nigel Farage (by four points). Even Jeremy Clarkson, not someone prone to praising Labour figures, feels moved to describe Burnham as “a leader who seems to know what he’s doing”.
Second, the soft left still lacks an agreed candidate. MPs close to Angela Rayner still question whether she truly wants to be leader and fear her cabinet resignation for underpaying tax damaged her standing among the public. Ed Miliband has all but ruled himself out and bears the legacy of defeat in the 2015 general election. The soft left’s view, as one senior figure put it to me, is that they need to keep as many candidates “in play” as possible. For that, they need Burnham on the pitch.
Third, as a non-cabinet member, the mayor has enjoyed the freedom to outline an alternative programme – as he did in his interview with the New Statesman – encompassing “maximum devolution”, public ownership and proportional representation. For MPs craving a radical change of direction after Starmer’s ideological ambiguities, this gives Burnham another advantage (others worry that it would make it harder to reject calls for an early general election). In a contest that will be defined by the “what” as well the “who”, the challenge for all contenders in 2026 will be explaining what they would do differently.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: Inside the agency building Keir Starmer a TikTok army]
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