That Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister today is not news. What he wants to do and who he appoints and who he sacks in order to help him, will be.
Burnham has had on his wall for much of his career the picture above, a 1910 Labour Party poster with the title “Forward! The Day is Breaking”. Now Labour’s new poster boy, will, one hopes, be very focused on the risk of the country going backwards because the economy is breaking.
Apart from rumours – some strong some weak – the Cabinet of this evening, whilst it will be undoubtedly different from the one this morning, is still a mystery and has been by all accounts a tricky process. The plan for Burnham’s big change in direction is equally opaque. We still don’t really know which Andy Burnham has turned up in Downing Street bar the whole devolution, warm vibes, sloganeering, and a few tidbits offered out without the nuisance of much scrutiny.
Some masterful gerrymandering of the Parliamentary timetable last week blocked any attempt to make the member for Makerfield face the music, or to be specific MPs, before the long summer recess began, buying Burnham valuable weeks to try and bed in as the new boss, as the old boss starts his day by ending his job. Burnham of course has started one job already, that of Leader of the Labour party, with a call for – no, more a demand of – ‘no more factional fighting’ whilst his team briefed about Ed Miliband, almost certainly not his Chancellor, and others briefed about Shabana Mahmood, who’s widely expected to be.
It reminds me of how Starmer pledged an orderly and graceful transition whilst his loyalists quietly trashed Burnham’s reputation, and fed ‘what Starmer really thinks of him’ to chosen friendly journalists.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss – but as the Who reminded us “we won’t get fooled again”
And who remains a key point. ConHome’s Oliver Dean will keep you updated, today, on who is out and who is in. Tories may feel a grudging respect for some who go out, but more likely a massive sense of relief that some of Starmer’s least competent frontbenchers are also headed to the exit. None of them can be that good, since it took a Mayor to seriously challenge the man who won a landslide, albeit loveless, and get him to leave Downing Street in just two years.
As Helen Whately remarks in her piece this morning, that landslide was won because Labour weren’t the Tories. Burnham has secured his coup because he isn’t Starmer. That victory may prove to be built on sand if those who bought into the inevitability of it all never really bought into the T-shirt and lashes, and the Northern loveable bloke persona.
Kemi Badenoch, who one senses will give Burnham no quarter when the time comes, told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg:
‘I will score as many points as possible if it means the right thing for the country. What I’m not going to do is give Andy Burnham a blank cheque. This is a man who doesn’t want scrutiny, he doesn’t want anyone asking him tough questions, he just wants to be a people pleaser. What the country needs right now is someone who can take tough decisions, who can face down the Labour MPs that don’t want to do anything difficult. And that is what worries me.‘
Indeed, he’s possibly less willing to be unpopular and make really tough decisions than the man he’s succeeding.
Much has been made of the fact Labour still don’t see any woman as best placed to lead their party but Burnham has a team of strong women advising him. Now nobody should mistake strong as being equivalent to having the right ideas, you can make bad calls forcefully in any party, however the Burnham project does not run on Burnham alone, much as his team like to make out it’s all about him.
Former Minister for Transport and mobile phones (no ok I made the last bit up) Louise Haigh is a key player behind the scenes of today’s events. She admitted that those who saw ‘Andy’ as the answer to Labour failing this badly, this quickly – and a reminder as Badenoch has done several times: if it was all going so well why is Starmer going – started working on this coup over a year ago. I suspect Andy has had it in mind for far longer than that.
Although to hear him the other day deny to Chris Mason of the BBC that he’d really been involved at all, not being in Parliament at the time, and all down to the PLP not him, was such an egregious untruth, and attempted deflection and blame shifting he instantly reminded me of what we’d got used to with Starmer.
Haigh started out as a parliamentary assistant to a Labour MP but is now one of the most influential and powerful people in government.
I have some understanding and empathy for senior civil servants in recent days who have found themselves closeted in a room with Haigh in so called ‘transition talks’ . Seventeen years ago I got locked in a Westminster office with her, a friend back when we were relative nobodies in the Westminster bubble, after she had kindly offered my daughter a gift of s skipping rope that been in her boss’ office. It was both awkward and embarrassing to have to call security to let us out.
Less funny is a point I think some have missed, and I can’t avoid.
If there is a duty, and I think there is, to ask what is the exact nature of the hitherto ambiguous role and advice that convicted fraudster ‘Posh’ George Cottrell provides to Reform leader Nigel Farage? I think there must equally be a question about what is the exact nature of the hitherto ambiguous role and advice convicted fraudster Louise Haigh provides to Andy Burnham?
Sadly I can’t phone a friend. Haigh was the first of the slew of Ministers Starmer lost in a year for transgressions that seemed almost tailored for maximum embarrassment in the their jobs. It is interesting though that the Red Queen that’s closer to Burnham is Haigh not Rayner.
Civil servants desperate to plan within their departments for ‘who they are getting’ and ‘what direction they will be headed in’ have been meeting with Haigh but those talks I’m told have been frustrated by Burnham not having settled on his front bench team. Or unwilling to let them know.
They are used to knowing, because they ‘shadow the shadows’ before an election, but in this case there hasn’t been one – and it still looks likely there won’t be by the way.
The Miliband question had not yet been answered, and I can see why, quite apart from very wary business and City view of the current Energy Secretary, if you were Burnham, why bring in as your number two, in the most powerful department, the Treasury – an institution whose orthodoxy you claim to wish to take head on – a man who had your job as leader once and very much wanted the one you are about to get. I’m old enough to remember when my day job was wading through the crossfire of Brown and Blair, and Miliband was a Brown Eminence. Mahmood may have barely muttered about economic matters but she has
There has been a lot of copy expended on interpreting what Burnhamism might look like, what his vision might be bar easy slogans that are ninety per cent vibe, and seemingly policy and detail free fizzy drinks. We’ll learn soon enough. There cannot, and will not, be a complete activity vacuum until September, Whitehall has been clogged up for weeks after it was clear Starmer was, as the kids say, ‘toast’.
But, I’d remind our new PM, and Cambridge English graduate of L.P. Hartley’s novel ‘The Go Between’ which contains a famous quote:
“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there”
If Burnham really does think Britain’s current problems started because of the Thatcher years, I’m very much afraid he will try to borrow solutions from the past which will not tackle our profound future challenges but make them a darned sight worse.
It just so happens that I had, six months ago, booked this very day to depart for a holiday. Try not let them break things while I’m away.