Remember Gordon! Why Labour should take a beat before parachuting in Andy Burnham

The more we talked about Andy Burnham being crowned prime minister without a contest, the more agitated the cabinet member became. “Remember Gordon! Remember Gordon!” he exclaimed. “Let’s not make that mistake again.”

This was a reference to the last time Labour replaced its leader while the party was in government. When Tony Blair reluctantly departed Number 10 in 2007, Gordon Brown succeeded him without having to fight anyone else for the job. He’d have very possibly won no matter what, having been a dominant chancellor and heir-all-too-apparent for a decade, but his people left nothing to chance. They swore up so many Labour MPs to his cause that the Great Gordo was made to look like an unstoppable juggernaut. It ultimately became mathematically impossible for anyone to compete with him. When he subsequently turned into Bottler Brown and his premiership unravelled, many came to regard it as a terrible error not to have subjected him to a thorough road test before handing over the keys to Number 10.

In the wake of the emphatic victory in the Makerfield byelection, cheerleaders for “our Andy” are trying to create a sense of irresistible momentum behind their man. The contention is that he has demonstrated that he alone can revive Labour’s fortunes and see off the menace posed by Nigel Farage. Only the messiah of Manchester can save Labour. That is their tune and for many in the party it is a seductive song. Sir Keir Starmer should “read the room”, spend the weekend gathering together his remaining shreds of dignity and start drafting a resignation speech. We’ll give him 72 hours “to come to his senses”, say Burnham backers. Their preference is for a coronation, no later than by the Labour conference at the end of September. Though it would be styled as a “smooth and orderly transition”, this would effectively be a coup.

And the idea has plenty of takers in Labour’s ranks. “I think there should be a contest,” says one veteran Labour MP. “But the mood among many of my colleagues is: get it done cleanly, get it done quickly.” The impressive scale of the victory at Makerfield matters. “He smashed it,” observes one senior figure. “Labour MPs want a winner and they think he is a winner.” A senior minister, who is by no means a Burnham fanboy, remarks: “Frankly, he looks unstoppable.”

Whether this view prevails will in large part depend on the cabinet. Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood, either of whom could be chancellor in a Burnham government, have told Sir Keir to his face that he should smooth the accession by announcing a timetable for his departure. But that is not the only view around the cabinet table. There are others who fume at the thought of the King in the North sauntering southwards to grab the crown jewels of Downing Street.

“Andy seems to think he’s Nelson Mandela and Tony Blair wrapped into one,” sniffs an unimpressed cabinet member. “He’s not had to take a single tough decision. I’d like to set a test for him. Can he say one single sentence without spending £10 billion?”

His handsome victory in the byelection was an impressive tribute to the potency of the Burnham personal brand in Greater Manchester and his skill at positioning himself as both the anti-Starmer candidate and the anti-Reform candidate. He was much more accomplished at communicating inspirational messages than the man he seeks to replace. But the past few weeks have also sewn doubts about how he might shape up as prime minister. His hopey-changey rhetoric has been accompanied by zigzags, including over rejoining the EU and the fiscal rules. He made a loose suggestion that there ought to be compensation for Waspi women only then to hastily disavow it. His national favourability ratings have declined since voters began to consider him as a potential prime minister. This government’s many challenges won’t be resolved simply by talking about them in a chipper northern accent. There are big outstanding questions about his precise attitude towards borrowing, tax, spending, defence, education, immigration and welfare. Even some of his most ardent supporters recognise that the Burnham prospectus is under-cooked. One of Team Andy acknowledges: “It is not a fully-formed political project yet.” A contest would stress test whether he is formidable enough to turn around the fortunes of this government or has flaws which could prove fatal at Number 10.

“It is beyond question that he’s beatable,” remarks one Labour strategist, pointing out that Mr Burnham has twice before run and been beaten for the leadership, on the second occasion entering the race as favourite only then to be defeated by Jeremy Corbyn.

Snag is you can’t have a contest without another contestant. Sir Keir has suggested he will be limpet-like in his determination to cling on to Number 10 with defiant declarations that he is “in it to win it”. Not everyone takes this altogether seriously. “He has to say that – doesn’t he?” points out one worldly-wise minister. There are mounting indications that the prime minister’s resolve is crumbling as senior colleagues give him brutal assessments of his position. “Things are over for Keir” is the blunt verdict of one of the cabinet members who has told him directly that he will be humiliated if he contests a leadership challenge. There is a swelling expectation that he will, and within days, choose to fall on his sword with as much grace as he can muster.

That leaves Wes Streeting. The former health secretary currently polls poorly among the Labour selectorate, but has sufficient self-belief to think that several weeks of hustings might shift the odds in his favour. He says he wants a “battle of ideas” and has made some punchy interventions. “The soft left always wants a stitch-up,” says one cabinet-level friend of the former health secretary. “But my wing of the party likes a fight.” Other allies think that Mr Streeting will end up striking some kind of deal with Mr Burnham.

The risk of a contest is that it turns into the protracted and unattractive bout of blood-letting that many in Labour are desperate to avoid. The peril of not having one is that the party parachutes a new face into Number 10 without a searching test of their mettle and absent any kind of mandate. Remember Gordon! Coronations have often proved a lousy idea in politics. But we’re going to see one unless a rival can muster the numbers and the courage to contest Andy Burnham for the crown.

Photograph by Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images