Andy Burnham seventh UK prime minister in ten years

Editorial of the Socialist England and Wales edition, issue 1376

Andy Burnham is now Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade. That is as many prime ministers as there were in the preceding 40 years. Such is the level of political crisis facing Britain’s capitalist ruling class.

Keir Starmer’s tenure of just over two years is, in recent history, about par for the course. On what basis will Andy Burnham possibly be able to significantly outlast him?

On taking office in 2024, Starmer was lauded as having won a landslide, as a result of the Tories’ collapse. In reality, he was elected with the lowest share of the vote of any leader of a majority government in a century. And despite his boasts to have transformed the Labour Party after its time with Jeremy Corbyn as leader, his Labour Party received fewer votes than Corbyn’s in both the 2017 and 2019 general elections.

Burnham, however, has been coronated by Labour MPs. His victory in the Makerfield by-election – although he polled fewer votes than Labour did in the seat in 2017 under Corbyn – is being grasped at as ‘proof’ that he has the ability to see off the threat of Nigel Farage’s right-populist Reform UK and win a second term for Labour.

On the other hand, in the days before he entered number 10, Reform won the Norfolk Police and Crime Commissioner by-election, a position won by Labour in 2024. Labour’s vote collapsed from 52,455 in 2024, to 14,192. Votes for the Conservatives, Greens and Lib Dems also collapsed. Reform, who didn’t stand in 2024, received 32,647 votes (26.7%).

A ‘Burnham bounce’ was not evidenced in East Anglia. Despite his first speech as Labour leader saying that this ‘king of the north’ would serve the North, East, South and West.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that there won’t be some who hope that at least things can’t get worse. And Burnham has plans for a policy blitz over the summer, a bid to boost his popularity with announcements on council house building and ‘greater public control’ of water and electricity. His first speech as prime minister promised to end street homelessness, and he says he wants to give “breathing space” to households in the cost-of-living crisis. The VAT cut on energy bills announced will save the typical household about £45 a year – one gasp for air.

No one struggling to keep their head above water would turn that down. But it is nowhere near enough to stop the struggling.

The problem for Burnham will be what he has to do to pay for any further measures, having reasserted his intention to stick to Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules.

And while for now he may be praised by fellow Labour MPs from all corners for his ‘vision’ and ‘vibes’, he won’t be able to avoid all of the contentious issues for long. Rumours over whether or not he would change Labour’s position and allow for more drilling for North Sea oil filled in the days before his entering number 10. Deputy Labour leader and Burnham ally Lucy Powell had to go on Sunday morning TV to make the point that, for now, the difference between Burnham and Starmer governments on the issue would be essentially the ‘vibes’. Nevertheless, talk of the issue threatened to open up an old wound.

“Factionalism has bedevilled us. Today we moved beyond it”, Burnham has said. But tomorrow it will be back, because ‘factionalism’ is in fact the result of deep divisions over the way out for British capitalism and the huge pressures Labour MPs will come under on the issues of disability cuts, Send provision, public service funding, future relations with the EU, and more.

Not a cabinet of ‘left wingers’

To win the Makerfield by-election, Burnham had to present himself as an alternative to Starmer. And gone are many of the Starmer loyalists from cabinet. But this is not a cabinet of ‘left wingers’. Shabana Mahmood stays as Home Secretary, likely to continue her project of mirroring Reform and making life more difficult for those seeking asylum in Britain.

John Healey, who weeks ago resigned as defence minister, has been appointed chancellor. He will be tasked with diffusing the fiscal bomb left by Starmer, of a £10 billion funding hole in the Defence Investment Plan. Healey, who resigned because he deemed insufficient Starmer’s plan to cut other departments to increase military spending, is clearly going to demand more pain for public services to pay for weapons.

Pat McFadden will stay in post in the Department for Work and Pensions to continue his project, started under Starmer, to pursue attacks on disability benefits.

Burnham’s appointed economic advisors include Andy “knife must fall on public spending” Haldane, a former Bank of England chief economist, and Jim “we’ve got to get rid of the triple lock” O’Neill, a former treasury minister under George Osborne.

Those figures are undoubtedly there to give reassurance to capitalist investors that the Labour government will continue to serve in the bosses’ interests. Burnham himself has said this is Labour’s “last chance”. From the capitalist bosses’ point of view, they hope that Burnham will once more be able to use the Labour Party’s heritage as a party created by the working class and once seen as ‘their’ party, to be able to keep at bay expressions of organised working class anger while continuing to oversee falling living standards and austerity.

Burnham’s rhetoric about 40 years of decline is in reality harking back to an era which no longer exists, in which Labour was seen by big sections of the working class as being its own. Since, the party has been transformed into an out-and-out capitalist party.

With Corbyn as Labour leader, retransformation was posed by the potential for the mass influx of workers and young people into the party – enthused by Corbyn’s anti-austerity programme – which could have been the force with which to carry out a fundamental change. That is not threatened with Burnham as leader. Which is one reason why the capitalist class more readily accepts Burnham as prime minister.

Breathing space?

Burnham may aspire to give “breathing space” to the working class facing rising prices. But will the capitalist bosses give him breathing space in order to perform in this “last chance” – leeway given on spending or borrowing to allow for measures to take the edge of the cost of living? Such is the precarious situation of British capitalism, that is not entirely in the gift of the British capitalists. Outgoing chancellor Rachel Reeves says that she has left Burnham the gift of having restored economic stability and credibility. But it remains that Britain’s government borrowing costs are at historic highs and growth is stagnant. The world economic situation is equally if not more volatile as when Reeves took office and Britain is just as vulnerable.

Notwithstanding the tight fiscal constraints facing any capitalist British government, exactly how much can be ‘afforded’ is determined by the relationship of class forces. Unfortunately, without exception, none of the leaders of the Labour affiliated trade unions – or others – have used the Labour leadership process to apply their pressure. Unite, for example, could have used its executive immediately preceding the opening of nominations to put forward a set of demands that it expected any candidate to fight for in order to win its backing. That is the approach Socialist Party members on the Unite executive argued for. In the end, the union’s executive voted to endorse Burnham, despite no commitments from him.

Unite’s Sharon Graham, who the Socialist Party is backing in the upcoming general secretary election, has been among the most critical of Starmer’s Labour government, including backing strike action against Labour authorities – for example in the Birmingham bin strike. There must be no retreat from this stance under Burnham.

The need for industrial action in the public sector, to fight for decent pay, for full funding and against job cuts, has not gone away – despite the fact that many union leaders would like to use the new Labour leader to buy some peace.

They won’t necessarily get their way though. “There will soon be a new prime minister and, very likely, new ministers in education and the treasury. While we do not yet know whether this will lead to any meaningful change in spending priorities, it does create an opportunity to influence those debates.” That was the argument put by NEU general secretary Daniel Kabede to the union’s executive, in arguing for steps back from balloting teaching staff over the issues of pay and funding. Since, however, those steps back have been decisively rejected, executive members coming under pressure from members – who voted overwhelmingly in a snap poll to continue towards a ballot – and with Socialist Party members on that body articulating members’ determination to fight.

Trade union pressure

Pressure must be kept up on the leaderships of all the trade unions, making the case that the biggest ‘opportunity to influence debates’ is to organise and build towards action, demanding what is needed.

Meanwhile, the biggest assistance that the capitalist establishment is giving Andy Burnham currently is its assault on Reform UK and its key figures over their financial dealings.

That, and the farce that is the Clacton by-election, can temporarily hamper the prospects of Farage or Reform. But if a Burnham prime ministership continues to govern in the interests of the bosses and carries out attacks on living standards and public services which that entails, it will in fact strengthen the forces of right populism for the future. Unless of course the leaders of the authoritative mass organisations of the working class – the trade unions – drastically change course from support for a Labour government carrying out austerity, and instead fight independently for working-class interests.

A starting point would be to make good on the 2025 TUC policy to organise a demonstration against any further austerity. It could bring together school staff fighting for full funding, civil servants battling to stop job cuts, local authority workers continuing to face the austerity onslaught, disabled people preparing to struggle against new attacks on benefits, and other working-class and young people facing an ongoing cost-of-living squeeze.

An autumn demonstration of that character would ramp up the working-class pressure on the Burnham government as it prepares for its first ‘fiscal event’ towards the end of this year. That will be a demand raised by the NSSN at its lobby of the Trades Union Congress on 13 September, which Socialist Party members are helping to build towards.