Andy Burnham is utterly delusional
Andy Burnham has pledged to “value and respect” every member of the PLP and to favour consensus building over point scoring. We’ll see how long that attitude lasts once he faces his first backbench rebellion, says Eliot Wilson
Andy Burnham’s premiership is only a week away. By Friday last week, he had received the backing of enough Labour MPs that it was impossible for another candidate to be nominated, so he will be formally confirmed as Leader of the Labour Party some time this week. Sir Keir Starmer will then go to Buckingham Palace next Monday to resign as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, after which Burnham will have an audience with the King and be invited to form a government (His Majesty’s fourth PM in less than four years).
Despite Burnham’s leadership having been more anticipated and hyped than last summer’s Oasis reunion, it is unclear how much planning has been done for the transition to power. His speech on 29 June talked airily about devolution and promised the gimmicky “No 10 North”; last week he wrote an article in The Times about national security which had the gritty realism of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.
I cannot help but recall every confident statement I heard or read in the first half of 2024 about the meticulous preparation for government Labour had undertaken under Sue Gray’s steely gaze and experienced hand: costed policies, shadow bill teams, a draft KIng’s Speech. It was all imaginary. Starmer’s team approached those vital first 100 days in 2024 as if it was the mystery round in a game show.
Last week, Burnham gave hints in an email to the Parliamentary Labour Party about how his administration would govern and the ways in which it would be different from Starmer. The message leaked to journalists, and if you have a strong stomach for cant, platitudes and schmaltz it repays reading.
Most of the extensive text can be set aside as the clunky but feather-smoothing susurration of a bad HR policy document: “valuing and respecting every member of the PLP”, “working together with the PLP as one team”, “opinions and approaches are respected, even where there’s difference”, “an environment of more consensus building, not point scoring”.
We’ll see how long that attitude lasts once Prime Minister Burnham faces his first backbench rebellion.
St Andrew’s Epistle to the Workers
There are two underlying problems revealed by St Andrew’s Epistle to the Workers, both of them attitudinal but very deep-seated. The first is a trait he shares with his predecessor: both Starmer and Burnham have shown that they think the right frame of mind expressed in the right words, allied with their natural earnestness and virtue, will be transformational.
By saying what he will do and who he will be, Burnham reveals in a photo-negative his critique of Starmer’s government. It failed to make people feel included, to value everyone equally, to respect differences of opinion and to engage widely on policy development. Whether or not these accusations are valid – some of them undoubtedly are – they ignore deeper failures: economic mismanagement which has produced little to no growth, an unconvincing attempt to speak the language and priorities of Reform UK, an inability to cleave to a policy stance for more than a few months and an inflated belief in the economic and industrial power of the state.
Burnham, having misdiagnosed the problem, thinks these failures will be redeemed by a group hug. If he talks about “problem-solving, not point-scoring”, his government can “get Britain believing in itself again”, and prosperity will flow, via the “nerve centre” or the “conduit” (bafflingly, he used both terms) of No 10 North.
This kind of confidence in your own abilities being substantially superior to those of others is a simple-minded arrogance. It always fails, because it is so flimsy and suffers from what I think of as the “Iron Mike Fallacy”. Before he fought Tyrell Biggs in Atlantic City in 1987, a journalist asked Mike Tyson if he was worried about Biggs’s fight plan.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” Tyson responded.
The deeper flaw in Burnham’s approach is that his desire to seem inclusive shows no sign of recognising any distinction between His Majesty’s Government and the Parliamentary Labour Party. Of course Labour backbenchers have a special degree of influence with and access to ministers, but they do not have equal status and privileges, nor restrictions and responsibilities.
When Burnham says that he “expects all ministers and Cabinet ministers to prioritise PLP engagement”, to stipulate that in a formal sense is wrong: frequently ministerial duties must take precedence over party arrangements.
He goes on to say that “correspondence and casework will be a priority”. Again, no: ministers cannot prioritise correspondence with Labour Members over the opposition. A case could even be made that it amounted to obstructing opposition Members in the discharge of their responsibilities, representing a breach of privilege and a contempt.
As for casework, that is not the province of ministers in terms specifically of the PLP. Frequently casework will include campaigns and lobbies against decisions made by HM Government. Burnham blurs this important constitutional line again when he says ministers will be expected to engage with local campaigns “as a core part of their role”.
The email is the credo of a regional mayor. For all Burnham’s Westminster experience, it reads like the words of a man whose understanding of central government and Parliament is fleeting and dismissive. He says that government must be a “team effort”, but not all members of the team are equal.
Burnham’s sloppy delineation of fundamental aspects of our constitutional framework suggests muddy thinking or disdainful indifference
Decisions have to be made, and those making them form a hierarchy, from the Prime Minister down through Cabinet and junior ministers to backbenchers. The text of acts refers to “the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in Parliament assembled”. It is not the Labour Party in Parliament assembled, nor a specified bien pensant cult. Burnham’s sloppy delineation of fundamental aspects of our constitutional framework suggests muddy thinking or disdainful indifference.
At some point Burnham will have to take decisions which his parliamentary party does not like but which are necessary. He will find that uncomfortable, as he always has with controversial calls, but with power comes responsibility.
Eliot Wilson is a political commentator