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A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the UK held an election for local authorities, in which Labour were soundly trounced, losing a whopping 1,375 seats. Almost immediately, Labour back-benchers began clamouring for incumbent prime minister Keir Starmer (he of "two-tier" fame) to resign.
This morning, he followed that recommendation.
Starmer is expected to be succeeded in the role by Andy Burnham, former minister for health under Gordon Brown. I was unfamiliar with him before this morning, but those more familiar with his political career are generally unimpressed:
Similarly, Spiked characterises him as "just Keir Starmer in jeans".
Get ready for the UK's sixth prime minister in a decade. I wonder if he'll stick around until the next general election. At least he'll last longer than Liz "Lettuce" Truss.
Andy Burnham is 100% a "vibes" politician, and it's worked well for him. He's very popular as the Mayor of Manchester, heading up a flagship bipartisan project (devolution to the North), and his absence from Westminster has left him untainted by both the bitterness of internal feuding and the failure of Starmer's government. He hearkens back to an older Labour that working-class voters felt cared about them. It's nostalgic anti-Thatcherism, but with a sense that if you took him round yer nan's for a cuppa she'd like him. "What a nice lad!" I wouldn't underestimate how sticky this could be with the elderly voters who dominate UK politics. If he can avoid substantive disasters like the one that sank Truss, he's Labour's best candidate to fight Reform. "Aw listen luv, it was always that Thatcher, it's like we're back in the old days, Nigel wants to bring 'er back 'e does..."
He does have a basic problem with governing, though. Well, two. The only critically important issues in British politics are the economy and immigration (healthcare and housing being downstream of economics). Burnham wants to be, and sells himself as, different from Starmer on economics. Lots of soft-soap pieces in the New Statesman about him bringing back "communalism". But British economic policy is hitting the hard constraints of the bond markets. Burnham's voters and MPs won't accept anything less than more spending, he's committed to following Starmer's fiscal rules limiting borrowing - rating agencies are saying things which, translated from econspeak, are serious warnings not to break those rules - and there's just not much fiscal room to squeeze the rich without hitting boomer homeowners and thereby committing electoral suicide. Many ways this can go wrong and few ways it can go right. On immigration, I'm sure Burnham is a true believer, but so was Starmer, and organized mobs burning down buildings tends to scare the hell out of politicians. I actually suspect he's more likely to keep tacking softly to the right on immigration, to avoid being on the unpopular side of both issues and to give himself breathing room on economic policy.
This comes to a broader, more speculative point: the UK (not just the YooKay) has become structurally ungovernable. In order to get elected, you have to match the other party's wildly unrealistic promises. When you get elected, you can't deliver, because your room to carry on down the safe path of procrastination is running out, there's no room to give the voters what your promised, and any path that would deliver real growth in the long run carries electorally unacceptable short-term pain (maybe an advantage of a Presidential system which at least gives you two years to act without an immediate leadership challenge). In the words of 2010's outgoing chief secretary to the Treasury to his successor, "Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left." In taking the Blairite road, where perception management is the chief tool of government, and all that matters is the next news cycle, for 29 years, the UK is coming to the end of that road. We're seeing the harbingers: every PM since Cameron's followed the same trajectory, where they get elected, popularity bump, polls crash faster than a shitcoin launch. I see no way out except slamming into whatever reckoning is at the end of it.
That is absolutely hilarious. The Thick of It is a documentary, proven again.
The UK will soon be awash with quiet batpeople.
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