Burnham may bring fresh momentum, but the same party splits and elite agenda will grind him down, too
Earlier this week Andy Burnham, the popular former mayor of Manchester, forced Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign as leader of the Labour Party in a meticulously planned and well executed bloodless political coup.
As a result, Burnham is now poised to become, in a few weeks, Britain’s seventh prime minister in less than a decade.
Burnham has been stalking Starmer for months. In January he sought endorsement as Labour’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election – winning a seat in the Commons being a necessary prerequisite to challenging Starmer’s leadership. Starmer, however, personally intervened to ensure that Burnham did not become the Labour candidate – and Labour subsequently lost the formerly safe Labour seat to the Greens.
Starmer’s popularity had been plummeting for more than a year – becoming the most unpopular prime minister ever – and the Mandelson scandal, together with Labour’s disastrous results in the May local and regional elections, made it clear that Labour was doomed to electoral oblivion under Starmer’s leadership.
Burnham and his supporters then engineered another by-election in Makerfield, that Burnham won by a colossal 20-percent margin last week – defeating Reform comprehensively in a northern white working-class seat that, in the ordinary course of events, it should have won easily.
The size of Burnham’s victory in Makerfield made it inevitable that Starmer would resign, and that Burnham would be anointed prime minister without the need for a leadership contest. So it transpired this week – with Starmer’s few remaining supporters in cabinet and parliament finally deserting him over the weekend.
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