STEPHEN DAISLEY: Burnham reeks of entitlement. Labour will come to regret installing an untested leader in these most testing of times

Andy Burnham’s coronation is all but assured after former defense secretary Al Carns confirmed he will not contest the Labor leadership.

This will mean no clash of ideas, no test of courage, no televised debate. For a man so convinced that he is uniquely placed to lead Labor and the country to sunnier days, the outgoing Manchester mayor seems oddly defiant to scrutiny.

He’ll write the odd opinion piece for a national newspaper and even host a Q&A on Reddit, the left-leaning online forum (answering only the questions he wants), but those aren’t legendary broadcaster and Daily Mail columnist Andrew Neil’s literal television debates.

A leader as confident in his abilities as Burnham would surely relish the opportunity to press the Left-wing cause in a leadership contest against some Blairites, refute their policy proposals as the Conservative Party and put forward his own prescriptions.

He can put before members two diametrically opposed visions of his party and win their approval for his vision so strongly that his internal rivals are forced to drop any efforts to align or at least weaken it.

If Burnham is the savior she thinks she is, it’s in her best interest to have a rivalry rather than a coronation.

So why does he grab the crown? Given the ideological nature of the Labor Party membership, there would be little risk of defeat if it faced a centrist challenger.

This risk will be to the ego of a man who smells of authority and sees it as his destiny to be Prime Minister. The fact that Burnham was so hostile to scrutiny as he loitered on the doorstep of No.10 does not bode well for his temperament once inside. Labor will regret appointing an untested leader in these most challenging of times.

The only voters given a say in the Makerfield by-election were his voters, and this in a part of the country very friendly to Labour. This is the case in our constitution; There is no need for a general election or a leadership poll to change the Prime Minister.

However, after a decade of constant change of Prime Ministers, it is clear that some form of contest is advisable, if only to give voters the opportunity to hear their new Prime Minister and see what he is all about.

When Liz Truss replaces Boris Johnson in 2022, there is real competition thanks to Rishi Sunak’s candidacy. The pair quarreled, made claims, made counter-claims and grappled with difficult questions about their intentions, and while membership initially continued with Truss, by the time his tenure ended disastrously there was a bitter rivalry that meant a successor the country felt was adequately tested was ready and waiting.

Burnham’s reluctance to subject himself to even the most cursory democratic scrutiny is a bad sign. For the man himself, this means he will enter Downing Street without public approval. When times get tough, as they will, he won’t be able to rely on that democratic support.

He won’t be able to keep his internal enemies at bay by reminding them that the membership elected him. By refusing to put himself in a competition, he implicitly acknowledges that a competition could restore someone else as leader. This possibility will disappear if his government gets off to a rocky start.

Winning the job brings legitimacy, but it also buys a level of protection from those around the Cabinet table who will do to her what she did to Keir Starmer. Burnham deprives herself of this protection.

Of course, he only gets the coronation because the Labor Party allows it. Without meaning to, Labor is telling the country not that Burnham is the best man for the job, but that she is the only one they are willing to support. What does it say about the failure of the ruling party, which achieved great success two years ago, to produce a single alternative leader to the mayor?

If their aim is to hide tensions within the party, Burnham’s premiership could highlight these divisions.

Among the various reasons why Starmer has failed so badly is that Labor governments always spend more, no matter what they promise.

When Starmer arrived at No 10 he realized there was little in the way of financial space. Without a significant cut in spending or a rise in taxes, there would be no money left to throw at the issues that Labor MPs prioritize.

So Starmer first tried to cut welfare spending but was defeated by angry backbenchers. Burnham will now face the same relief bill, the same backbenchers and the same sense that the Government is adrift and directionless.

The pressure will mount and the momentum in a new direction – another direction – will build and Burnham’s challenge to her post will be rejected among party members.

Finally, and most importantly, the coronation does real damage to the country. Britain faces a much steeper decline than seen in the 1970s.

Slow growth, uncontrolled immigration, compromised defences, runaway spending, the threat of separatism in Scotland and Wales and the rise in Islamic extremism and other internal security concerns; The scale of the challenges the next prime minister must overcome is daunting.

Rejecting a genuine competition of ideas in favor of bestowing the crown on a spoiled, arrogant regional politician just because he wants it now and is prepared to scream to get it is a fatal mistake with national consequences.

That means risking everything, including the future of Britain, if Burnham is as good as she tells everyone.

This is an unimpressive New Labor leader who has lost every competitive leadership poll he has contested, a self-styled political messiah whose only miracle is throwing money and sentimentality into his own backyard.

Few men on the brink of No. 10 have been so shielded from the most basic assessments of competence and fortitude.

If Burnham turns out to be a failure, and she has given us no reason to think otherwise, it will mean another failed Prime Minister and more wasted years.

Britain can’t afford more of these. This nation desperately needs a leader, but instead it is content to settle for just another self-promoting member of the Westminster establishment. A lanyardista is still a lanyardista, even if he likes pies and gravy and has spent time north of Luton.