As Labour wonders whether it’s time to ditch stumbling Keir Starmer, Fleet Street Fox asks whether the King of the North is really the rightful heir to the throne
Andy Burnham is a man who knows who he is, and that man wears black. Maybe dark blue. On extra-special occasions there might be a suit, but more than likely, and whatever the weather, it’s an upmarket anorak, without symbols or logos.
The look is that of a debadged Aston Martin, classic but with a contemporary cool. Whether the image is carefully-curated or a by-product of natural indifference to the fripperies of male tailoring, it has done a lot to convince many that he looks like he could be Prime Minister.
By recent standards, being Prime Minister involves being an economic dunderhead, with the ethics of an alley cat and all the party-organising skills of someone trying to DJ with a Fisher-Price record player. And in a suit and tie, come rain or a shower of scandals.
But just as Keir Starmer’s government is stumbling in week three of phase two of a government just one year old, which promised an end to the chaos and has now had so many scandals the writers of pub quizzes have to check the answer hasn’t changed even while reading out the questions, it seems Burnham’s time has come. Again. Could he succeed on a third tilt at the party leadership, and rescue Labour from self-combustion?
To some, the success he has enjoyed as Mayor of Greater Manchester is the main appeal. Visitors find a city that is booming, skyscrapers and towerblocks filled with footballers, frequent sightings of £200,000 supercars, a skyline dotted with cranes. All the extra residences mean more council tax, and the place feels awash with money.
There’s a hydrogen project on the way, a bus and tram network that’s clean, on-time, and the route to cleaner air. Between all the modern buildings nestle converted Victorian wharves and warehouses, Roman ruins, and the once-bustling canals that are now places of leisure, wining and dining.
On buildings, bins and transport is the bee symbol, once indicative of the factories that were hives of industry and now emblematic of a city which united in the wake of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombings. In the job for just three weeks, Burnham voiced the rage and grief felt by his 2.9m constituents and then provided the leadership for public inquiries, police investigations and healing. Thousands of Mancunians got a bee tattoo in solidarity; Burnham was one of them.
He has won power three times, each time with around two-thirds of the vote. Only a third of the electorate bothered with a trip to the ballot box, and the rest probably didn’t think he’d need their help. To Labour activists he is The One Who Made It Work, the northern star to whom their very unsatisfied gazes are turning. The trouble is, all of Britain isn’t Manchester, and being a PM is not like being mayor.
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As mayor, Burnham oversees local authorities and billions in spending. He can dream up and push through initiatives on transport, homelessness, climate and education. There is every reason to see it as a pilot project which can be scaled up to the national level.
But Britain includes villages, and left-behind seaside towns. Dorset does not want or need skyscrapers, and no footballer could be tempted to set foot in East Anglia. The spending monstrosity of HS2 is not the Beeline bus network, Donald Trump rarely troubles the Pennines with his presence, and the war in Ukraine makes the centuries of rivalry with Liverpool look like, well, a very minor disagreement about canals and football.
A cynical Tory once told me that “Andy Burnham would demand a public inquiry if his tea went cold”, but he’s been a prominent, and personally-invested, campaigner in numerous injustices, from Hillsborough to the nuclear test veterans, regional power-sharing to Whitehall abuses. He has a reputation as a good egg, but then so did Starmer, and with Nigel Farage elbowing his way to the Dispatch Box ere long, that alone will not be enough.
For someone who’s been in politics for a lifetime, he is remarkably untainted by scandal. Jeffrey Epstein seems not to have bothered. And in a career described as showbusiness for ugly people, he is unusually capable of setting female hearts a-flutter. There’s not a mum in the country who hasn’t thought he looks clean and kind, and you could do a lot worse. And quite a few whose thoughts were a long way from clean.
And that’s his appeal for Labour: he’s appealing. He has the eyebrows of a wise old Labrador, the comforting familiarity of a family car, and the slight edge of an illicit teacher crush. In a TV debate he’d make Nigel Farage look like the nicotine-stained golf club pipsqueak he is, but voting for a PM isn’t the same as voting for your favourite on Strictly. You can do it only once, and what he wins is the ability to kill. Whether it’s wars, terrorists, or just terrible NHS funding decisions, what sets prime ministers apart from other politicians is all the death. That’s why they change, and it’s why loved ones are often reluctant to back a bid for the top job.
For almost a decade Burnham has had vast power and immense popularity. He can’t go to the shops, but he’s also not having Nazis set on him by Elon Musk. To go to Downing Street invites constitutional constraints, the inflexibility of Whitehall, terrorists and the Daily Wail . PMs leave office only when they fail, and it would take a super-cool one to seek the job, shepherd a new Great Reform Act for the 21st century to the statute book, then quit before success is chilled by the course of world events.
There is a cultish feel to those who work for Burnham, an unquestioning adoration which is both impressive and slightly concerning. If he can inspire such devotion in those who feel his presence daily, he must be good. But if he’s surrounded by people who will not tell him what’s wrong, he’ll soon be in the same pickle as Starmer. Those who want him in Downing Street need to remember this isn’t a Netflix romcom: there is no ‘happy ever after’ , even for the most promising of prime ministers. The Man In Black is a protest song, not a national anthem – but if things don’t get brighter, he might be just the ticket.