Burnham saga unlikely to be last act in drama of Starmer’s leadership

me the other day He compared Andy Burnham’s saga, his ambitions and the upcoming by-election A long and winding marble run in Greater Manchester.

If the ball had rolled all the way to the bottom, and that was a big “if”, it was possible to imagine Burnham as prime minister before the end of the year.

However, as I said at the time, it was also possible for the marble to fly away spectacularly; That’s exactly what’s happening right now.

In an exercise of brute force that also showed how they perceived their own weakness, No 10 thwarted Burnham’s bid to run from Manchester to Westminster and perhaps Downing Street.

Yes, this was a decision made by a committee of the Labor Party, but Sir Keir Starmer’s allies make clear he attended the remote meeting on Sunday morning and voted to block Andy Burnham.

The relationship between the two men has long been fascinating to observe.

Burnham’s first forays into politics were as a creature of Westminster: an adviser, a 16-year MP, a cabinet minister. He had previously stood for the Labor Party leadership twice.

Here he is talking to me more than ten years ago It’s about his desire to become Prime Minister.

He then reinvented himself by defining himself as the Mayor of Greater Manchester against Westminster.

But his ambitions beyond England’s north-west have long been transparent, causing Sir Keir to roll his eyes or raise his eyebrows for a long time.

Burnham’s interventions during Labour’s annual conference last autumn deeply disturbed many within the party. HE He gave an interview to The New StatesmanIt had the not-so-cryptic title “Andy Burnham’s plan for Britain”.

shortly after An interview appeared in The Telegraph“Andy Burnham: MPs want me to challenge Starmer,” he captioned it.

Burnham’s team rightly point out that politicians don’t write the headlines, but more broadly, her desires are very, very clear.

Just the other day, Started at The Guardian How he believes his approach to the mayoralty in Greater Manchester can be replicated nationally.

Of course, it’s noble to aspire to govern the country, but whatever people think of how Labor’s management has gone since then, when Starmer can claim that it was he, not Burnham, who won Labour’s huge majority, it should come as no surprise that the person who now occupies that role has a rather disdainful view of such manoeuvres.

No 10 calculated that Burnham would rather ride out a short-term storm (the storm of backlash for and against this decision now pouring in on social media) than allow a circus lasting weeks and months, with Burnham as the by-election candidate, dominated by a single question: What is your plan if you become Prime Minister?

“I’m afraid no one is convinced that Andy will be a team player and the last thing we need to do is allow this kind of psychodrama,” one senior party figure told me. “We cannot allow insecurity and instability to yield to one man’s personal ambitions.”

Others are angry, arguing that it is absurd and counterproductive to boost the hopes of someone they see as one of the party’s brightest lights.

A senior Labor MP said: “You shouldn’t obstruct democracy. Keir is scared and it’s a very bad look.”

All this means that in just a few months the prime minister’s loyalists have been heavily briefing against Health Secretary Wes Streeting, whose ambitions they also view with concern, and are now blocking Andy Burnham from returning to Westminster.

They claim voters are tired of political soap operas and want to continue governing despite difficult international and domestic backdrops.

Critics inside and outside the Labor Party say both are the actions of a weak prime minister trying to cripple talented rivals who could do a far better job than him in No 10.

This is likely to be far from the final act this year in the drama of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership and what a great future it has.