Burnham’s defiance over benefits shows Starmer is doomed
What exactly is Andy Burnham playing at? With the Government’s welfare cuts vote on a knife-edge, the mayor of Greater Manchester has told Labour MPs to reject Sir Keir Starmer’s concessions and bring the whole Bill down on Tuesday.
Burnham knows that a defeat in Parliament, or even a narrow victory, would punch a hole in the floundering ship of Sir Keir’s authority. Significantly, Burnham was echoing a rejection of the welfare cuts policy by Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.
Burnham and Sir Sadiq are the two most powerful elected Labour politicians outside Parliament. The fact that they are being so disloyal to their party’s leader will quite rightly lead to speculation that they think they could do a better job.
But where Sir Sadiq has insisted (however truthfully) that he is “not at all” interested in becoming Labour leader - insisting a woman should succeed Sir Keir - Burnham has never ruled out a tilt at the Labour leadership. When he ran for his third term as mayor, his comments about Labour’s future were revealing.
He said: “I’m not going to say that I’m going to rule [a leadership bid] out. I mean, having been in Westminster all of those years, and now having done this for almost six years, I feel I know a lot of the changes the country needs.”
King of the North
Of course, for the so-called King of the North to become Labour leader, let alone prime minister, he would first need to return to Parliament as an MP, which would mean winning a by-election. Is there a realistic prospect of that happening?
Burnham was re-elected as mayor of Greater Manchester in May last year, meaning his third term in the job is due to come to an end in 2028. Conveniently enough, that is just over a year before the next general election is due. He could, of course, resign as mayor before his term is up, giving him more time to rebuild Labour and turn around its fortunes nationally.
Labour’s National Executive Committee has the power to shortlist or directly select candidates for by-elections if it chooses to (circumventing the usual process of candidates being chosen by local members), meaning Sir Keir and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, along with candidate selection guru Matt Faulding, would have an effective veto over Burnham being chosen as a candidate. That would cut off his route to a leadership bid.
But what if Sir Keir decides to stand down before the next election? The Prime Minister has already started making excuses for bad policy decisions that sound a lot like the outpourings of someone who is realising the demands of the job are too much for him.
His mea culpa offerings over the watering down of the welfare cuts Bill can only serve to encourage anyone eyeing up his job.
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