Andy Burnham is auditioning to replace Keir Starmer as First Algorithm to the Treasury. In service of this strange ambition he is going to give up the Manchester mayoralty and re-enter the Commons after finding a safe Labour seat. He is confident that such a thing exists, empiricism notwithstanding. Bless him. You have to suspect that whenever Andy is punched in the mouth he still puts the tooth under the pillow, and that he gets excited when Christmas is only 23 big sleeps away.
I’d have wagered you’re more likely to find the elusive Moss Side Unicorn than a safe Labour seat, but we are told that Burnham has worked miracles in Manchester so maybe he’s done just that and the pursuit and capture of that whale safe Labour seat is small beer by comparison.
You have to wonder what the voters of Manchester feel about being dumped on like this. Although to be fair he’s been Mayor since 2017 so a break-up now wouldn’t be too egregious. A bit of “it’s not you it’s me” with a smattering of “we’ve gone as far as we can together” to the tune of Don’t Look Back In Anger and it’ll be fine. Andy will be released from his obligation and Greater Manchester can briefly lick its wounds and “move on” via Tinder.
It was said by some <cough> political strategists that if he hadn’t been processed out of contention by Starmer that Burnham would have won in Gorton and Denton.1 This seems fanciful. In a contest between underlying political fundamentals on the one hand, and Burnham’s personal charisma on the other, I’m going with the former every time. This is not one of those thought experiments in which there are arguments on both sides; it is not a “who would win a fight between Bruce Lee and Mohammed Ali?” thing.
As usual Starmer got this wrong, and did the rest of us a disservice. The public humiliation of the insufferably smug is one of the few pleasures yet to be taxed. Had the PM let things take their course he’d have neutralised the Burnham threat and given the rest of us a good laugh. Perhaps that latter possibility horrified him.
It’s all a bit depressing though, this anti-historical mindset which assumes that things are within the control of the relevant expert class, and that neither God nor chance have any say in the matter. And what is Burnham saying to local Labour canvassers who have natural affection for the traditions, services and quirks of the places2 where they happen to live?
Burnham likes to play the Northern card, but when it comes to his own advancement he is one more career politician, for whom constituency and mayoral seats are just transactional, fungible units of currency in the seedy economy of internal Labour machine politics.
I’m not saying the Tories are any better, but when it came to questions of who the leader should be they at least used to have an impeccable system, one which exploited the twin merits of aristocracy and senility. Tory leaders way back when would just “emerge”, mysteriously, in a way which showed no concern for something as vulgar as process. Nobody could say quite how this toff rather than that one had emerged as Prime Minister and it was not always clear that this person even knew they were now in charge of the country.
Seems to me that these were better times. Except for the Suez thing of course.
Speaking of toffs, the Burnham plan reminds me of the Dennis Price character in Kind Hearts and Coronets, who out of a sense of entitlement plots and murders his way almost to a baronetcy, only to be up-ended by an unnecessary exercise in personal vanity.
Hilarious and preposterous in equal measure. As was the film.
- I was surprised to hear this was a place; I’d always thought it was a trades catalogue.
- The “comm****y” word is now cancelled on this Substack, just to clarify.
Sean Walsh is Associate Editor of Country Squire Magazine. You can follow him on Substack.
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“…a safe Labour seat…?”
Good luck with that one…
Beat me to it! ;o)
The only way you’re going to persuade a ‘sitting tenant’ to stand aside for Rape Gang Enabler Burnham is the offer of a lifetime sinecure on the red benches. However, things are not so cut and dried as the Labour top table are frantic to stop Catherine West MP mounting a challenge to Starmer as Burnham would not be able to throw his hat into the ring as a non MP. Get the popcorn out!
Sorry, had to look twice at this:”Burnham’s personal charisma”
He has all the charisma (and probably a lot less) than that other perennial backstabbing little fuckrat, The Slithy Gove.
Puhleeze get your facts right! Two-Tier Queer may well have finally got rid of the hereditaries in the Lords a couple of weeks ago, but to confuse a baronetcy with a dukedom really is a poor show. Dennis Price was after the Dukedom of Chalfont, not a mere baronetcy. If you remember at the beginning of the film the hangman, who was about to retire, was looking forward to seeing off his last ‘customer’ using the silken rope reserved for the peerage. Oh dear, I shall now have to watch the film again, if only to see the dotty old rector say, “I always say my West window has all the exuberance of Chaucer without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities of his period.”