Andy Burnham is heading to Downing Street as the eighth Labour PM in history and the seventh UK PM in a decade. Labour do not historically move against and dislodge leaders but MPs finally reached for the ejector switch with Keir Starmer – the first Labour leader to be removed since George Lansbury in 1935.

Much commentary has been written about what political instability says about the UK. Is it the Italianisation of UK politics? The influence of social media? The rise of short-term attention spans? Or the age of transformation we are living through -economically, socially and culturally – which politics are struggling to keep up with? Or, more likely, a mix of all of these and more as we transition from one kind of politics to another?

Burnham starts with some positives. He has an engaging personality which informs his emotionally reflective leadership. He can engage with people and has good communication skills that help him relate to them. These qualities were on show day after day in the Makerfield by-election, and although they might seem basic, few politicians in the UK today have such abilities.

Combine that with the political style demonstrated in his time as Greater Manchester Mayor which was collegiate, coalition-building and pluralist – aptitudes many say are needed for leaders today. Although Burnham has also in this period earned a reputation for not wanting to make enemies and to saying yes wherever he can to requests.

With the above characteristics, besides his long record in public life, there is a degree of ambiguity about who is the real Andy Burnham, and what he offers in substance, vision and politics. In Makerfield, Burnham ran as an insurgent and outsider – which he is not – and as a challenger to Westminster and Westminster-ism, and as the embodiment of Manchesterism – an expression of local championing, ambition and achieving results.

Neal Lawson, head of the cross-party Compass campaign group, thinks that the stakes are high: “Through Burnham and this by-election the Labour Party has been handed a lifeline. But it is a final chance for Labour to overcome its existential crisis. Labour must now deliver big systemic change and real-life benefits to people across the country. It will not get another chance.” 

Burnham’s inheritance restricts his room for political manoeuvre. There is the economic backdrop of a failing UK economy. There are the constraints on public spending – demographic, tax wise, and in expectations – with pressures everywhere, including on defence spending. Alongside this is the self-harm of Brexit, the punitive egotism of Trumpism, and the opportunist brazenness of Nigel Farage and the populist right.

The Seven Missions of Burnham

Burnham must prioritise, set a direction and vision, make choices and communicate them clearly; something that Starmer failed to do and no Labour leader has convincingly done since Tony Blair. 

First, he must understand what it means to be UK Prime Minister and use it to be a catalyst for change, a political communicator and storyteller. This may seem obvious, but few politicians have done this in recent decades – the only ones being Margaret Thatcher and Blair.

Being UK PM has become, in the words of Anthony Seldon, “an impossible office” whereby the demands are incessant, and the PM must be seemingly ever present while offering an over-arching story of their goals. This mixture of omnipresence, delegation and setting out a direction is a difficult and exhausting balance.

Lawson thinks that “every element of communication, every policy and appointment must strengthen the hand of Burnham and his new government to be insurgent agents of change, willing and capable of transforming our democratic and economic systems. Otherwise it will be the return of business as usual.”

Second, recognise the dysfunctional political centre of the UK and act accordingly. Much political commentary now looks upon the UK political centre as “weak” and the solution being to empower Downing Street. This is the prognosis put from the Brexit and Tory right to The Economist which says the centre must be freed to make the bold decisions the UK needs.

This is a complete misunderstanding. For starters, the UK political centre has few formal constraints on it – whether legal or political. What it lacks is strategic capacity, intelligence and resources to understand the complexities and varying needs of different parts of the UK and to set a macro-path of travel. The UK central government is disfigured by overload – and in particular the micro-management of politics and policy across the UK and particularly England.

A fundamental point in all this is that talk of “rewiring the British state” is not about the far-off provinces or “the North”, but about transforming the nature of the dysfunctional centre, the values and nature of the relationships with the other parts of the UK, and changing how the centre holds power and how it is held and dispersed across the nations and regions of the UK.

Third, address the English dimension. England is the last part of the UK without a collective political voice – the last nation directly ruled by Westminster. This informs nearly everything about what is wrong with British politics: England being seen as synonymous with Britain; the left’s fear of invoking England and Englishness; and the right’s appropriation of English grievances and the English flag.

Labour and the centre-left’s self-denying ordinance on England has driven and produced a potpourri of increasingly radicalised, racist right-wing politics which invokes civic disorder and even civil war – as Farage and Reform, along with Badenoch and the Tories, pull politics further towards the extreme right.

John Denham, former Labour MP and minister turned academic suggests: “In England Burnham should complement radical devolution with steps to delineate the governance of England from that of the UK. By creating civil service and ministerial structures to develop and oversee policy for England this would enable England to be governed as nation”. 

This could have wider consequences: “It would have the added benefits of reducing the micro-management of English policy by the UK Treasury, and enable a re-set of inter-governmental relationships in which England’s interests would no longer be confused with those of the UK.”

Mark Perryman, editor of The Starmer Symptom and observer of Englishness, asks of Burnham: “Does he even want to speak to England? Labour unionism is incapable of any such conversation because it means recognising we are a small island of three nations.” He concludes that: “This is not meant to be specifically critical of Andy Burnham but it locates his ascendance in what more than anything will constrain him, the limits of labourism. The extent to which he is able to break free will determine the scale of his success.” 

Fourth, establish a distance between how the PM acts and Westminsterism – the insider political class take on the UK. This always thinks that the answer to every problem is listening to another smart-ass policy wonk or think-tank.

Westminsterism has grown more incestuous, closed and complacent in recent decades. These have aided Westminsterism by becoming an expression of what sociologist Colin Crouch called “post-democracy”. This is the corporate elite capture of politics, public institutions and public life based on the self-interest of the class of “winners’ who perceive their self-interest as the worldview to which the rest of us should pay homage.

Fifth, know what the best of Labour values are and stand for them. Do not trash them as Blair did; not really understand them as Starmer showed to his cost as Premier; or sing the old-time tunes of the past romantically as Corbyn did. Instead, return to the core values of Labour – solidarity, fraternity, connectedness, the power of public good – and make the case for them in a modern setting. 

This will not be easy. There are all kind of difficult trade-offs in navigating how best to make Labour’s values relevant to voters. These include the balance between younger and older voters, between city and rural communities, and the North and South of England.

Sixth, paint a coherent vision for the future of the UK. Throughout its history Labour has always been pulled in two contradictory directions. The first is to be a party of conservation, defending hard won rights, seen in the defence of “jobs and services” in the 1980s and against Osborne’s austerity, and the party’s stance on the NHS. The second is articulating an optimistic, hopeful vision of the future.

Labour have only periodically achieved the latter: convincingly in 1945, fleetingly in Wilson’s 1964 victory, and even more briefly in Blair’s 1997 victory. In each of these, the party tried to articulate an idea of progress, modernity and opportunity – all with the aim of creating an unstoppable momentum to tear down vested interests and privilege in the name of creating a more egalitarian country.

It is only really the 1945 Labour government which lived up to this promise, with its manifesto Let Us Face the Future and a confidence born of wartime collectivism alongside Labour’s role in the Churchill coalition running “the people’s war”. In 1964, Wilson was blown off course by UK economic weakness, Treasury orthodoxies and how the UK positioned itself between Europe and the US (which sounds very contemporary). Blair’s 1997 landslide witnessed the party inheriting a decade of economic growth which funded public services, while reinforcing the City fuelled finance capitalism and prosperity which ground to a halt with the 2008 crash.

A Labour Party without a vision of the UK’s future will be a prisoner of day-to-day events, alongside being pressurised by bond markets and global capitalism. Burnham, like other Labour leaders who have come to office between elections (such as Jim Callaghan in 1976 succeeding Wilson and Gordon Brown in 2007 taking over from Blair), has the narrowest of windows to begin to sketch such a direction.

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, an academic and a former editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy notes: “To create a story that can connect Labour’s values to a vision of the future Burnham must be able to talk about why he cares about the Labour Party. Why Labour (and political parties generally) shouldn’t just be viewed with scepticism or distain. Labour has no ‘right to exist’, but people in the party have a duty to care about its future because we honour its past. That past isn’t just big national institutions Labour’s created in power at Westminster: not just the NHS but working men’s clubs, Co-op stores, miners’ libraries, feminist childcare centres funded by the GLC in the 80s. Things people built for themselves from the ground up”.

Finally, the above has to connect to an alternative idea of the British economy. One which addresses political economy, the shortcomings of British capitalism and how the City of London and finance capital overshadow and crowd out the real economy. This is dangerous territory for Labour leaders – and a terrain that Labour PMs have avoided for decades since Wilson abandoned his critique of short-termism and Treasury orthodoxies in the 1960s.

It is not only low growth, stagnant living standards and the cost of living crisis which needs addressing. It is putting the climate crisis and Net Zero centre stage and taking on the fossil fuel dinosaurs. Aditya Chakrabortty, Economics Correspondent at The Guardian comments: “Andy Burnham must throw everything at one key challenge: the cost of living. By this autumn, food prices will be 50% up from before Putin invaded Ukraine, and energy bills will reflect Trump’s disastrous adventure in Iran. That’s where a new Prime Minister has to start”.

Chakrabortty believes that Burnham “should announce an emergency budget within a month of entering Downing Street, in which he starts to set out concrete measures to bring down bills. One of the knottiest issues of this moment is that our essential services and utilities are starved of investment yet the public feels taxed out. We should move to making our water and energy bills reflect our ability to pay rather than the current system, which is akin to a poll tax”.

The nature of the UK, Democracy and Critiquing Westminster

This brings us to the nature of the union and the Scottish dimension. Burnham has, pre-office, talked a language of disruption, dissatisfaction and frustration at the way Britain works and does not work for the vast majority. How long this lasts remains to be seen, as well as whether Burnham can turn this mood music into a convincing critique and plan for detailed change.

He wants a rebalanced UK, a more equal, democratic union and decentralised England – informed by a new settlement across the UK which puts limits on the powers of the political centre of Westminster and Whitehall. Taken to its logical conclusion it is a project which would challenge and upset the vested interests and insider class for whom the UK works well.

Many in Scotland and elsewhere will be sceptical of the substance and chances of success. They will point to inconsistencies and flip-flops in Burnham’s previous pronouncements. However, it remains that Burnham’s nascent Premiership should be seen as a potential ally of those who want the UK to break out of the wreckage of its dysfunctional centre and what political scientist Andrew Gamble calls “post-imperial, post-Brexit delusions informed by the ascendancy of Anglo-liberal political economy”.

The union of the UK has always had a dynamic running through it; it has never been static but always changing and adaptive. Hence, Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, and the Good Friday Agreement. The prevailing tone of the SNP and Scottish nationalism post-2014 has been to accept a caricature of the British state and union which was never the full picture and may be increasingly disproven by events.

Labour’s Last Chance Saloon?

The Burnham appeal is a manifestation of deep malaise and crises in the Labour Party, UK and across the West. It is a tough calling to govern and lead in such times. This is an age without UK growth for the past 20 years; with static wage growth for the vast majority combined with the exponential increase in the super-rich and their asset wealth, and a fraying inter-generational social contract leaving an excessive burden on younger generations.

Burnham may be Labour’s last chance. The challenges are huge and the consequences massive if he fails. If the Labour Government led by Andy Burnham fails on the fundamentals – economically and in making a fairer, better country – then the alternative to this is already waiting in the wings.

The alternative future is brutal, harsh, illiberal right-wing authoritarianism fuelled by pouring gasoline on the fires of racist bigotry and prejudice. This would give angry voice to a nasty little Englander nationalism – one which plays into and speaks to significant Scottish and Welsh constituencies. 

Increasingly its radicalisation sees it move from hero-worship of Margaret Thatcher, which has been the norm of the Tories since her fall, to now idolising Enoch Powell and trying to claim as the Michael Gove-edited Spectator did last week that he was not a racist and his 1968 “rivers of blood” speech was not shaped by racism. This disturbing normalising of what was once the unsayable has huge consequences.

Labour come to all this trying to hold together an increasingly fragile coalition of support – one challenged not just from the right but by a radical left filled with fury about politics and economics over the past 40 years.

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite thinks Labour need to steer against the dominant model of politics, public discourse and widespread cynicism: “Labour needs a politics of agency as well as a transactional politics. I’m not at all sure that people do want politics to ‘tread more lightly on their lives’. A lot of people want to know that it’s still possible to take collective action through democratic structures to make the country (and the world) better, and to face down unimaginably wealthy and powerful unelected interests”.

Burnham has the right attitude, mood music and an understanding of how rotten the British state and political system is – born of the Hillsborough tragedy. He has seen the city of Liverpool respond to disdain and dismissal with humility and anger and understands it.

The Burnham Premiership provides a major moment to change government, politics, power and economics. The new establishment empowered and made wealthy by the Thatcher and Blair eras will not give up their status and influence easily. But at least there is now a chance of changing the conversation and challenging the inexorable march to the right of the past four decades.

Radicals, democrats and egalitarians in and out of Labour should embrace and make common cause to attempt to defeat the hubris of the British imperial state and the delusions and conceits springing from it. This is easier said than done as Labour will need to abandon the last tenets of labourism to embrace pluralism and democratisation. Other progressive forces – the Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Lib Dems – will need to get serious about a radical politics of decentralisation, society and economics. This will mean tackling the nature and role of the economy, political economy and the dominance of the City and finance capitalism in ways that the British left has failed to do since the rise of Thatcherism in the late 1970s.

The forces of reaction and privilege, and the entrenched vested interests that benefit from Britain, will not cede their power and status easily. They will not wish to abandon their worldview and ideology, presented in everyday discourse and media as neutral ‘commonsense’ and the opposite of dogma and ideology.

But at the very minimum there is now a window of opportunity where Labour and the wider centre-left have a chance to tell a convincing story of hope and the future. That could not be said during the short-lived Starmer Premiership. Andy Burnham has earned the chance to be heard and must seize it otherwise the consequences could be dire and damaging for generations to come. The stakes are that high. Conservatism, defensiveness and clinging to a slightly centre-left version of the failed status quo of the past forty years are not enough and unless a new path and politics breaking with these is adopted and followed through on the dark storms and forces of the emboldened right will continue their remorseless progress.

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Dr. Gerry Hassan is a writer, commentator and academic. He is the author of numerous books on Scottish and UK politics. These include The Strange Death of Labour Scotland, The People’s Flag and the Union Jack: An Alternative History of Britain and the Labour Party and the collection in association with Compass: Britain Needs Change: The Politics of Hope and Labour’s Challenge