Andy Burnham has made no secret of his desire to one day lead the Labour Party. The mayor of Greater Manchester has twice run for the leadership – in 2010 and 2015 – and just two years ago reaffirmed his aspirations for the top job, telling The Telegraph: “If the party thinks well maybe it is your time, I wouldn’t turn away from that.”
That naked ambition “has always made him an anxiety-inducing blot on the landscape for the incumbent leader”, said The Guardian, “but the road to No. 10 is a very difficult one”. Burnham may have a vision for his path to the leadership – “but he doesn’t have complete control of how to make it a reality”.
After a disastrous two weeks, “Starmer’s premiership is on its knees”, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper, “with his own internal critics now publicly putting a timeline on how long it can last”. Some are warning he could be ousted after May’s elections.
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The “despondent mood among his MPs isn’t limited to his left-wing critics”. Mainstream figures and grassroots Labourites are “questioning whether the chaotic departures of Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson are fundamental markers of Starmer’s political judgement, his vision for the country, and even his basic competence”.
By contrast, Burnham has been consistently chosen as the next PM in polls of Labour members and his appeal extends to voters who backed Labour in the last general election. Last week, the man dubbed “the King in the North” by supporters launched a new soft-left campaign group, Mainstream, which “many expect to become a Trojan horse for a leadership bid”, said The Telegraph.
Backing calls for wealth taxes, nationalising utility companies and ending the two-child benefit cap, Burnham “would want to lead a government with a strikingly different tone – more sympathetic to dissent, more open to the Liberal Democrats and to the Green Party – a soft-left administration with strong appeal to many Labour members”, that would also be “better at combating Reform”, said The New Statesman’s Andrew Marr.
He has already called for a “reset” at the Labour conference later this month, and No. 10 is “braced for Burnham to pop up in Liverpool as a rallying point for a change of direction”, said Donaldson.
What next?
Under current rules, 20% of the parliamentary party (80 MPs) would be required to challenge Starmer by nominating an alternative candidate, “and it’s far from agreed who that could be”, said Politico.
Burnham faces an even greater obstacle than most candidates as he would first need to fight and win a parliamentary seat in order to stand in any future leadership race. One obvious option would be Gorton and Denton in south Manchester, where suspended Labour MP Andrew Gwynne has applied to retire on medical grounds. But that seat, along with many in and around Manchester, is vulnerable to Reform, according to the latest forecast from Election Maps UK.
“The harsh reality is that there is no realistic route for him to become leader” in the near future and attempting to do so could “hand Farage a huge opportunity in a genuine showdown”, said The Independent. “Even if the Labour Party needs saving, trying to bring back Andy Burnham would be a gamble too far.”
