Andy Burnham should enjoy his honeymoon while he can – voters will soon see through him.VA
Andy Burnham has a very short time to convince the people of Britain he’s more than talk, says Jonathan Walker
Andy Burnham is proclaimed Labour leader (Image: PA)
In public, Labour MPs will be jubilant as Andy Burnham enters Downing Street on Monday. The handover will take place around lunchtime, as Keir Starmer meets the King to resign officially, before Mr Burnham is appointed to replace him. Then it’s off to Number 10, where the new PM will make a speech outside the famous front door.
And there are some signs that voters like the new Prime Minister. One poll, by Opinium, has already put Labour neck and neck with Reform – ending months of surveys showing Nigel Farage’s party firmly in the lead. Of course, nobody should get too excited about one opinion poll. But Labour MPs can dare to dream that, maybe, there is a chance to turn their fortunes around and put the disasters of the past two years behind them.
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In particular, they are hoping that voters will blame Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves for recent disappointments – but maybe the reputation of the Labour Party itself has not been completely ruined, and people will give them a chance now that they have a new leader.
Behind the scenes, however, the Labour Party is a mess.
Old wounds dating back to 2015 have been reopened by debate about who Mr Burnham should appoint as his Chancellor.
Some people want Ed Miliband to do the job.
But others loathe Mr Miliband – because they blame him for Labour’s election loss in 2015, when he was party leader, and for allowing Jeremy Corbyn to replace him in the leadership role.
Labour Deputy Leader Lucy Powell appeared to blame the media for the row today. She told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “There’s been a lot of speculation in the media about various individuals, which has been really quite horrible, to be honest, and unedifying.
“I know that, as political journalists, maybe you’ve not had the story of the Labour leadership crisis to write about for the last few weeks, because actually I’m really proud of the way in which the Labour Party has handled this transition and come together in a consensus around Andy Burnham being the next leader, and I think we’ve given a really good account of ourselves over these last few weeks.
“And maybe because political journalists haven’t had all that to write about, they’re looking for other personalities and other disagreements to write about.”
But those huge disagreements exist. The media haven’t created them.
She told the BBC: “We were invented to represent the interests of working people and be on the side of ordinary communities right round the country. And to rebalance the way the country is run … we are for opportunity, we are for justice, and it’s being really clear about those things.”
But there was an uncomfortable silence when Laura Kuenssberg tried to get her to explain what exactly that all meant in practice.
Perhaps Mr Burnham will tell us tomorrow. But he doesn’t have long.
He actually has a fair bit of experience in government, after serving as a Minister under Tony Blair and a Cabinet Minister under Gordon Brown. But that ended 16 years ago.
Many people today don’t know much about him, except that he’s been mayor of Manchester. They are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but will soon make up their minds.
Mr Burnham needs to explain in concrete, practical terms how he will improve our lives. Otherwise he could soon find he is just as unpopular as Keir Starmer ever was.
