Is this it? Have they finally come up with a way out? For the last few months, it’s felt like the Labour Party has been growing increasingly convinced of two antithetical beliefs. The first is that, after this year’s local elections, it would be in urgent need of leadership, and that no one was in any position to offer it. It can’t be Angela Rayner, because of lingering questions over her tax affairs. It can’t be Wes Streeting, because the members can’t stand him. And it can’t be Andy Burnham, because of the slight impediment of his being 200 miles away without a parliamentary seat.
That seemed to be it for the candidates anyone believed had a chance. Then, there were the several months spent navelgazing at a moment of acute strategic and economic crisis. The most likely result was an impasse. Everyone knew we couldn’t go on like this; nobody knew how to stop. The Labour Party had become a model of the country.
This week, though, MPs seem to have realised that one of those things is not like the others. The barriers to a Burnham coronation are practical, not political – and administrative barriers, unlike electoral preferences, can be circumvented. “Here’s how it will happen,” Patrick Maguire wrote in the Times, before laying out a version of events in which Starmer announces a resignation date far enough in the future for Burnham to book an affordable seat on Avanti and find his way back to London. The Guardian offered more details, and the noteworthy quote: “MPs have coalesced around Burnham in a way they hadn’t before.”
That, anyway, is the plan. Is it any good? The barriers are sizeable but not insurmountable. It involves persuading a stubborn prime minister his time is up, finding a northern MP to shove off, thus clearing the way for the prince across the water, and getting Burnham’s nomination past a previously hostile NEC. Switching leaders while the world stands on the brink is not ideal, but neither is being led by a man who seems to think that governing the country is someone else’s job, preferably someone who can then take the blame for his failings. Anyway, a coronation surely beats a leadership election. It all worked out fine in 1940, right?
That’s the practical Labour Party bit of the question disposed of. Is the plan any good in the other, trifling sense of what will it do for those of us who actually have to be governed by these people?
There are reasons to be excited about the return of the king, certainly. He’s impressed as mayor of Greater Manchester, bearing down on homelessness during the pandemic, and sorting out the region’s long-neglected transport. He’s also personable, well-liked and talked of with warmth and respect by those who’ve worked with him in a manner that is far from universal in politics. In three mayoral elections, each contested by multiple candidates, his worst vote share was 63.4 per cent. After two years of a PM with personal ratings of which the most flattering review is “okay, but other polls suggest he’s actually more popular than Liz Truss”, these are not small things.
On the other side of the ledger, though, it’s hard to shake the suspicion that the reason Burnham is ranked by YouGov as the most popular Labour politician in Britain is connected to his having spent the last nine years outside parliament. To be blunt, it’s much easier to convince people you’re on their side when you can channel their frustrations with the bloody national government. That is not easily done from inside Downing Street.
Fixing many of our problems, indeed, will require a level of honesty with the public that our leaders have not recently been keen to express – about energy prices, declining British influence, the gap between how much tax we pay and how much we need to pay if we’re actually getting out of this mess. (In 1940, it’s worth remembering, Churchill promised blood, toil, sweat and tears.) Few would disagree with Burnham’s assessment that Britain should not be in hock to the bond markets, but until someone gets us out of hock, the unfortunate fact is that senior politicians commenting on this can do horrible things to yields. To put it gently: it is not clear that Burnham’s political instinct is to tell people things they don’t want to hear.
And yet. If we’ve learned anything from Starmerism it’s that, if there’s one thing worse than not telling the voters what they don’t want to hear, it’s never telling your voters anything else, because sooner or later they all stop voting for you. The specific bits of politics Andy Burnham is good at – the messy, boring work of making policy, bringing people together, showing that government actually can and will make life better – feel a lot like the bits that have been so entirely lacking from the current regime.
Most importantly, it’s a plan. A plan that isn’t sinking further into despond, and awaiting the inevitable rise of Nigel Farage! Screw it, roll the dice. It can hardly be any worse. Can it?
[Further reading: Would Keir Starmer agree to step down after May?]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to commentChurchill actually promised “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”