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The ritual of the UK prime ministerial resignation is now all too familiar: the lectern in Downing Street, the premier blinking in the daylight; the catch in the voice as they finish their statement. That Sir Keir Starmer is the fifth British leader to have stood down midterm since the Brexit vote 10 years ago displays how deeply the country has fallen into a damaging habit that it badly needs to break. The effort to do so now shifts to the man set to succeed Starmer: Andy Burnham.
A root cause of the leadership carousel is the stagnation in living standards and deterioration of public services since the 2008 financial crisis, exacerbated by Brexit and the Covid pandemic. Recently it has often stemmed from party members electing leaders based more on their grassroots appeal than their likely capabilities in office.
Starmer’s tragedy is that he was supposed to represent a reassertion of competence over charisma. History will remember his achievement in purging the Labour Party of its hard-left Corbynite wing within a single parliament after its 2019 election rout. But in his determination not to unsettle voters or financial markets he came into office with too narrow a plan to deal with the trickiest inheritance since Margaret Thatcher’s in 1979, and without a narrative to carry voters and his own MPs with him.
Though dogged by his ill-judged decision to make the Jeffrey Epstein associate Peter Mandelson his ambassador to Washington, Starmer is resigning not, like Boris Johnson, because of a string of political scandals or, like Liz Truss, because he crashed the economy. His MPs are deserting him because he has been found to lack the political judgment and party management skills necessary for the highest office, with Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK now topping the polls.
In Burnham, Labour is reverting to a figure whose charisma has been demonstrated by his popularity as Greater Manchester mayor and a thumping victory in last week’s Makerfield by-election. It is far from clear, however, that he has developed a proper plan to succeed where Starmer failed. The decision by potential leadership rival Wes Streeting to endorse Burnham means he may now face no contest — regrettably leaving little time for him to flesh out a programme and for it to be scrutinised.
Burnham must answer three questions above all. One is whether he is as committed as he has claimed to fiscal discipline. He will need the vision and skill to fund necessary spending increases, such as on defence, while trimming welfare commitments, to stay within Labour’s fiscal rules. Burnham has attempted to clarify earlier remarks about not being “in hock to the bond market”. But a recent suggestion that the “Waspi women”, who claim to have lost out owing to changes to the state pension age, deserved some “recompense” unnerved investors.
The second is whether he is committed to the private sector and not just to expanding the state. Burnham has talked of greater public control of utilities, transport and housing, as well as a wave of “re-industrialisation”. The success of “Manchesterism”, the economic policies of his city-region, has relied on collaboration with business. But he has also spoken of rolling back “40 years of neoliberalism”, leaving business unsure of his commitment to driving the vital motor of economic growth. A third question is who he will name as his chancellor of the exchequer, the most pivotal role in his cabinet.
The lesson of the Starmer era is that for all the talk of Britain needing managerial leadership, this is insufficient without a dash of charisma, a credible plan and a sure political touch. If Burnham is not just to survive the rest of this parliamentary term but stand a chance of taking Labour into a second, he will need all these attributes and more.
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