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Notes -
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.
Both your links about why "people familiar with Andy Burnham's political career are unimpressed" are to articles by London-based right-wingers. They may be correct on the merits about Burnham's character (and I think Leslie is), but they are not familiar with the facts on the ground in Greater Manchester.
Burnham's constituents in Greater Manchester are impressed - he has won three elections with 60+% of the vote in territory which while Labour-friendly is not that Labour friendly - Labour only won 43% of the vote in Greater Manchester in their 2024 General Election landslide. And then he wins the Makerfield by-election comfortably, beating Reform in one of the to 10% most Reform-friendly seats* in the country with a campaign that focussed on bringing out his personal vote. And the rest of the left are impressed with Burnham precisely because he is popular in his turf. You can't do what he did without being either a more effective governor or a dramatically better communicator than your opponents. Part of what he has done is allowed Manchester proper to get richer** - there is a common cynical view that the structure of local government in the North of England was deliberately set up by Thatcher to encourage northern cities to fight with their suburbs rather than allying with them for regional prosperity (and potentially against London-based Tories). Burnham has managed to convince the rest of Greater Manchester that a successful Manchester is good for places like Makerfield, and delivered on this.
I don't think anyone can fix Labour's problems now - the Tories left the country in enough of a mess that the only workable approach was to double down on (mostly correctly) blaming the Tories (similarly to the tactics used by the incoming coalition in 2010). Within the first 100 days there should have been a big speech with the gist of "Sorry. The Tories ruined the country more than I thought. I am afraid you are going to be suffering the consequences of Tory failure for the next few years while we try to fix the problems". To do that now requires Burnham to turn on Starmer as well as the Tories.
And I don't think Burnham is the kind of politician who would do that if he could, for similar reasons to Ian Leslie. I think there is a "Burnhamism" that could improve the UK in the same way it has improved Greater Manchester (see the writings of Tom Forth for an idea of what it would look like***), but it isn't the left-populist message that Burnham is selling to London-based lefties, and in any case would need a full term without getting blown off by events to deliver benefits on a national level.
* Makerfield isn't just the kind of seat Reform need to win if they want to form a government after the next election, it's the kind of seat Reform need to win if they want to remain politically relevant. On uniform national swing, it is the 29th Reform target seat.
** Opponents of Burnham say that credit for the economic improvement in Manchester should go to Richard Leese who led the City Council in Manchester proper from 1996 to 2021, not Burnham. This is mostly correct, but it is significant that Burnham supported Leese rather than sabotaging him in order to appeal to left-idiotarians who don't like sensible pro-business local politics and pensioners in the burbs who don't like change.
*** Short summary: A diagnosis of the British Problem as "the potential of the North of England, and particularly cities like Manchester proper, is being wasted" and a programme of promoting local and regional initiative in the North (including normal pro-local-business boosterism from local Labour politicians like Burnham who might otherwise be business-sceptical, although Burnham personally won't be the face of this any more once he is PM), soft YIMBYism (you don't need to "crush the NIMBYs" in the North - they are a lot less organised and powerful than in the Home Counties), and targetted investment in fixing the biggest transport problems in the region. But even though this sounds milquetoast, it isn't compatible with low-energy managerial politics in a geronto-democracy.
I agree with your critique of the OP, good to have the Manchester context in there. I would strongly caveat the Makersfield point: besides Burnham being a good campaigner and having the party apparatus focused on it, voters just really really like having the PM be their MP. Wouldn't you like it if your House rep was the President? Reform also ran a disaster-class of a campaign (possibly a sign of the future, possibly a one-off).
Re: a working Burnhamism, I think the London class are a problem for him in a different way than pure opposition. A working Burnhamism would be purely pragmatic, but the London types are already surrounding him with a "brain trust" that will try to make some ideology out of it, and that ideology will always happen to favour the status quo and the QUANGO/NGO/Civil Service/media blob who provide the "brains". I doubt that Burnham has the ability to bulldoze through court politics like that.
They had a candidate who was as thick as pigshit (believing that "let's nominate the local plumber" was a simple way of hacking by-elections in the Manchester suburbs) and had a history of obnoxiously sexist social media posts. But I didn't notice the campaign as such (which, like most potentially winning by-election campaigns, was run by Farage's people) going badly wrong in ways which weren't simply candidate quality.
If he can, it will be by enlisting the Labour Party in the country outside London as an ally against the Deep State. Some of Starmer's silliest failures, with the Chagos deal being the one that gets talked about on the Motte, involve not pushing back against dumb ideas coming out of the Deep State. Five minutes talking to backbenchers representing provincial seats would stop a PM who was in touch with his Party making those mistakes.
Apologies for being unclear - standing a terrible candidate, then realizing it and trying to hide them, was what I meant by a disaster-class that might be a one-off (because it doesn't generalize to races with better candidates). I can't speak to the mechanics of the campaign.
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