Could Burnham be the answer to Labour's woes?

By Charles Wawn

Rumours that Andy Burnham, a key figure in Labour’s soft left, is planning to usurp Keir Starmer as Labour leader and Prime Minister have run riot this week as the government’s unpopularity shows no sign of waning and Reform’s popularity has been ticking upward since its party conference in early September.

In August, a YouGov poll put Keir Starmer’s net popularity at –44 points. Furthermore, the resignation of Angela Rayner over her stamp duty scandal and the dismissal of Labour heavyweight Peter Mandelson due to his contact with Jeffrey Epstein have dealt considerable blows to the confidence of the government.

This is the context in which the rumours that Andy Burnham is seeking to capture the Labour leadership have emerged. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham is one of the few well-known Labour politicians with a net positive approval rating. With Manchester’s growing economy and expanded transport network Burnham would have a solid foundation of achievements from which he could launch a leadership campaign. The committed devolutionist is dubbed ‘King of the North’ by the media, which alludes to his regionalist credentials, as someone who would have wide appeal to the former industrial heartlands in Northern England, which Reform for a general election win.

But this “what if” scenario is only theorising unless Andy Burnham becomes a sitting MP. For a chance to succeed Starmer before 2029, an MP in a winnable area for Labour would have to vacate their seat. Burnham’s efforts to be selected as a Labour candidate may create an internal battle with the leadership, given Starmer’s weariness of challenges to his authority. There is precedent for this; At the last election, Labour central office parachuted many moderate candidates into constituencies to block out left wingers and the leadership aggressively suspended seven MPs in one go last year.

But Burnham belongs to the soft left, not the hard left and carries a lot of goodwill from across the party, which makes him an ideal unity candidate.

Support aside, Burnham must serve his entire term which ends in 2028 or resign prematurely if he wants to be an MP. Resigning prematurely would be a risky move as Burnham could be dislodged by a candidate endorsed by Starmer, leaving Burnham without any public office at all. But if his gamble were to succeed, he could quickly mobilise Labour MPs concerned about their jobs to mount a coup against the current leadership.

Finding the ideal seat would prove tricky though; Andrew Gwynne, who lost the whip, was touted as a possible fall guy for Burnham, but he has said that he wishes to “serve a full term.” Burnham would have to be lucky by seeing a winnable seat vacated due to an MP’s death or unrelated resignation of an MP, which is beyond his control. Alternatively, he could wait for an event to hurt the government’s authority enough to convince a sympathetic colleague in Westminster to step aside for him.

The devolved elections in Scotland and Wales and local elections in much of England may be the opportunity. Labour’s UK-wide unpopularity has erased the progress that Scottish Labour had made towards seriously challenging the SNP for control over Holyrood. In Wales, Plaid Cymru and Reform are neck and neck in the polls, pushing Labour into third place. Should Labour do poorly across England, Scotland and Wales next year, the bundle of losses could serve as fuel for an intraparty campaign to flush out Starmer with someone who would have the vision, judgment and skill to pivot the party into a position to win the next election. It would not be impossible to pull this off, as Mark Carney’s Liberal election victory in April proved.

To launch a takeover, Burnham would be especially reliant on supporters of the recently formed group ‘Mainstream’, a Starmer-sceptic campaign group which has the ears of people in multiple wings of Labour. It is heavily associated and supports more nationalisation, abolishing the two-child benefit cap and expanding devolution. Burnham champions all of these and others.

If Burnham became Prime Minister, Britain would almost certainly undergo a leftward tilt, as Burnham hails from the ideological centre or “soft left” of Labour, in contrast to Starmer, a convert from Labour’s soft left to its right.

Labour could recover support from traditional heartlands in the Reform UK-threatened Red Wall and green-leaning voters yearning for more state intervention in the economy. Though this leftward pivot may lose support for Labour in wealthy Southern seats, plenty of Labour supporters would be very willing to pay that price.

The Tory Party has often snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by intermittently replacing unpopular leaders, no matter what victory they may have brought the party previously. Thatcher and Johnson were obvious victims of this. Labour’s history lacks similar precedent. The coup against Jeremy Corbyn initiated in 2016 after the Leave vote failed as Corbyn was the most popular candidate for Labour members.

The difference between the 2016 challenge and a hypothetical challenge by Burnham is that the challenger would be to the incumbent’s left and probably be the natural candidate of the leadership. Whether or not Burnham really wants to become leader, which he will not rule out, he symbolises growing discontent in Labour ranks who with an ever-diminishing reason to keep supporting the current leadership.

Image: Inkl