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“We will change politics, to make it more collaborative, more about problem solving,” Andy Burnham declared on Monday with his best Man-of-Destiny profundity. Within hours, the pledge looked to be the shortest-lived commitment of any premiership.
Lacking a coherent plan for government, Burnham spent weeks promising cultural revolution – less briefing, more civility, an end to tribalism. They were admirable sentiments from a man engineering a putsch. For all that our new Prime Minister might protest that events were thrust upon him – cometh the hour and all that – loyal lieutenant Louise Haigh rather let the cat out of the bag last week when she disclosed that plans for Starmer’s political demise had been under way for a year.
And still, Burnham has stumbled in his first great test of leadership: forming the “unity” Cabinet that could usher Britain into his new golden age of kinder, gentler politics. As Monday afternoon wore on, there was growing disquiet that the reshuffle was not going to plan. Rachel Reeves may have rejected a lesser ministerial position. The resulting domino effect ended with John Healey in Number 11. Whatever the precise choreography, the outcome was unmistakable: a Cabinet devoid of Starmerites. Reeves, David Lammy, Darren Jones and Steve Reed were all shown the door.
Burnham allies will argue that every incoming prime minister embarks on a purge, but there is a distinction to be made between promoting loyalists and creating an identifiable cohort of losers. Even Starmer’s original Cabinet contained figures from the soft Left. Rishi Sunak’s included Suella Braverman and Andrew Mitchell.
The consequences were immediate: Steve Reed published a venomous resignation letter which may or may not have preceded a boot in the pants. His parting shot? “I hope those who did not show loyalty to Keir Starmer will now show it to you.” Darren Jones has publicly dismantled Burnham’s flagship proposal to abolish VAT on domestic electricity bills by pointing out that Healey cannot finance the policy by cancelling expenditure – the digital ID scheme – that had never been budgeted for in the first place.
This won’t be the last political landmine carefully laid for the incoming PM. The defence investment plan committed Burnham to billions of pounds of additional spending before he’d even appointed his own Chancellor. Just as few people felt inclined to warn Liz Truss about the hidden leverage embedded in Liability-Driven Investment funds after she summarily sacked Treasury permanent secretary Tom Scholar, so few Starmer loyalists are likely to volunteer advice to the man who connived to replace their leader.
Among Labour MPs there is also discernible frustration that, after all the upheaval, the Cabinet appears remarkably stale. Where, they ask, are the younger ministers who could embody the “change” Burnham is promising? Where are the rising stars in his Cabinet of “all the talents”, including those elected on Starmer’s coattails? Instead, the Manchester Magician has largely assembled a government dominated by familiar names whose reputations, such as they are, were forged in yesterday’s internal battles.
This won’t help with managing the parliamentary party. Most Labour MPs owe their seats to the landslide achieved under Starmer, were selected during his leadership, and formed their political allegiances long before Burnham’s name started ringing through the corridors of Westminster. Even then, look at how quickly they became the great dispossessed of Starmerism.
A Labour government’s enemies have rarely been confined to the opposite benches; the Left has always been fissiparous. Bevanites feuded with Gaitskellites in the 1950s over nuclear weapons and nationalisation, Bennites with the soft Left, Blairites against Brownites, Corbynistas against each other. Divisions became so profound by the early 1980s that 28 Labour MPs broke away to found the ill-fated SDP.
There have been too many splinter groups to count, and even those factions can subdivide: today’s soft Left is less a coherent faction than a loose coalition of politicians who frequently disagree and often seem to dislike one another more than they do the nasty Tories. This probably isn’t a historical coincidence: it signals something in the Left’s psychology and obsessing over what Sigmund Freud termed the narcissism of small differences.
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Labour's hypocrisy over Reform's millions is breathtaking
The Tories have generally viewed politics as the management of competing interests in which compromise is unavoidable and loyalty a practical necessity. It’s why they’ve veered Left and Right whilst convincing themselves it’s what they’ve always believed. But the Left thinks of politics as a contest between moral positions and a zero-sum battle for ideological purity.
One truism when a new prime minister selects their first Cabinet is that these are their easiest appointments, made long before political capital starts to depreciate. But Burnham is being too factional. He may not pay much of a price now, but the cost will become apparent when the inevitable turbulence arrives.
