Saving Britain from Andy Burnham?

If Starmer is the question, Burnham is not the answer

He craves popularity, bends to prevailing winds and lacks a programme for government. Andy Burnham’s successful campaign in the Makerfield by-election confirmed what was known about the self-crowned King of the North. Generous to a fault, he is now offering Keir Starmer a dignified exit from Downing Street.

The charge sheet against Starmer is that he has not set a clear direction. Blessed with an impregnable parliamentary majority, he dithered rather than governed. He has stepped back from cabinet infighting rather than stepped in to settle it - witness the debacle over defence spending. He lacks the emotional touch to connect with voters. Above all else, he is unpopular.

The critics are not entirely unfair. Starmer has too often seemed a prisoner of his office, in the thrall of the Treasury and afraid to break things. He struggles to generate excitement or optimism.

Burnham’s pitch is that voters are comfortable in his company. He has a clutch of opinion polls, and now a strong by-election victory, to prove it. As far as actually doing things - you know, governing - is concerned his answer has been to a laundry list of promises calculated to court the Labour MPs and activists who decide the outcome of leadership contests.

The pose is leftist and northern, promising to wrest Labour from the control of metropolitan (read London-based) progressives such as Starmer and push back the advance of Nigel Farage’s far right Reform party in northern “Red Wall” seats. In short, he would reclaim the party’s working class roots. Whatever that means.

So far he has promised to take control of utilities such as energy, water and transport, tocut or remove business rates for pubs, cafes, hairdressers and high street shops and to offer compensation to the middle aged women - so called “waspies” - who lost out from a change to the pension age.

There is more. He would lower taxes for small businesses and cap bus fares. He would issue an IOU against presumed future reductions in the state welfare bill to pay for higher defence speanding. He would guarantee the “triple lock” which provides hefty state pension increases an a throw a cut in income tax for the same voters.

How it all would be paid for in unsaid. On Mondays Burnham doffs his cap to the markets. He would stick to manifesto pledges not to increase rates for income tax, national insurance and value added tax, and don the fiscal straitjacket that has got Starmer into trouble. On Tuesdays, though, the new MP for Makerfield dreams up novel ways of increasing public borrowing - as if the bond traders would not notice - or says he would grab more money from Big Tech.

True, there are also some grand political pledges - scrapping the House of Lords, banishing narrow party politics in favour of something called the “politics of place”, and shifting power from London to the regions. He would “do politics differently” his cheerleaders declare. What unites such promises is that they tend to dissolve under scrutiny.

What’s missing is a coherent strategy - an enunciation of how, beyond handing out populist baubles and a adopting a leftist tone to win back blue-collar voters who have defected to Reform, a Burnham government would strike out in a different direction.

Where is the prospectus to confront the long-term challenges facing Britain at home and abroad? On two of the big issues - how far should Britain go back into the EU to revive faltering trade and investment, and where does the balance lie between economic demands for immigration and the fears of Reform-minded voters - Burnham has kept a Trappist silence. As for tumultuous events abroad such as Putin’s war against Ukraine and Trump’s against Iran, he has not paid much attention.

Starmer has not been the best of prime ministers. Beyond the No 10 fumbling and U-turns, his failure of leadership to properly fund Britain’s armed forces against the real and present danger from Putin’s Russia is a stain on his premiership. But is any of it enough to turn out a sitting prime minister three years before a general election? And do so the claim of the leading pretender him is that he holds his own in the local pub?

In their present state of unbridled panic geniality may be enough for many Labour MPs. And there are some who say that Burnham’s popularity is - the government needs a change of prime minister rather than a policy swerve. But there are also those who think Starmer could yet do the nation a service. By saving it from Andy Burnham.