With former defence minister Al Carns confirming he will not contest the Labour leadership, a coronation for Andy Burnham is all but guaranteed.
That will mean no clash of ideas, no test of mettle, no televised debate. For a man so thoroughly convinced he is uniquely placed to lead the Labour Party and the country to sunnier days, the outgoing Manchester mayor seems oddly averse to scrutiny.
He’ll write the odd opinion piece for a national newspaper and even entertain a Q&A with Reddit, the Left-leaning online forum (only answering the questions he wants), but a one-on-one telly grilling from the legendary broadcaster and Daily Mail columnist Andrew Neil these are not.
A leader as confident in his abilities as Burnham would surely relish the opportunity to press his Left-wing case in a leadership contest against some Blairite holdout, to debunk their policy proposals as Tory-lite and put forward prescriptions of his own.
He could place before the membership two sharply contrasting visions for their party and win their endorsement for his vision so emphatically that his internal opponents are forced to fall in line or at least scale back any efforts to undermine him.
If Burnham is the saviour he believes himself to be, it is in his interests to have a competition rather than a coronation.
Why, then, is he snatching at the crown? Given the ideological make-up of the Labour Party membership, there would be little risk of defeat were he to face a centrist rival.
The risk would be to the ego of a man who reeks of entitlement and seems to regard being Prime Minister as his destiny. That Burnham is this hostile to scrutiny while he loiters on the doorstep of No 10 does not bode well for his temperament once inside. The Labour Party will come to regret installing an untested leader in these most testing of times.
A leader as confident in his abilities as Burnham would surely relish the opportunity to press his Left-wing case in a leadership contest against some Blairite holdout, argues Stephen Daisley
The only voters given a say have been his constituents in the Makerfield by-election, and that in a part of the country very friendly to Labour. Such is the way of it with our constitution; neither a general election nor a leadership poll is required to change Prime Minister.
However, after a decade of ever-changing premiers, it is plain that some form of contest is advisable, if only to give the voters an opportunity to hear from their new Prime Minister and see what he’s all about.
When Liz Truss stood to replace Boris Johnson in 2022, there was a genuine contest thanks to the candidacy of Rishi Sunak. The pair debated, claimed, counter-claimed and squirmed through difficult questions about their intentions, and while the membership initially went with Truss, a bruising contest meant that when her tenure ended in catastrophe, there was a successor ready and waiting whom the country felt had been sufficiently tested.
Burnham’s unwillingness to submit himself to the most cursory democratic examination bodes ill. For the man himself, it means he will enter Downing Street without a popular mandate. When times get tough, and they will, he will not be able to fall back on this democratic endorsement.
He won’t be able to keep internal foes at bay by reminding them that the membership chose him. In declining to submit himself to a contest, he is implicitly admitting that a contest might return someone else as leader. That possibility will be chum in the water should his government get off to a rocky start.
Earning the job brings legitimacy but it also buys a level of protection from those around the Cabinet table who would do to him what he has done to Keir Starmer. Burnham is denying himself that protection.
Of course, he is only getting his coronation because the Labour Party is allowing him one. Without intending it, Labour is telling the country not that Burnham is the best man for the job but that he’s the only one they’re willing to countenance. What does it say about the party of government, an outfit which secured a landslide two years ago, that it cannot field a single alternative leader to a city mayor.
If their aim is to conceal tensions within the party, Burnham’s premiership might well thrust these divisions into the foreground.
Among the various reasons why Starmer failed so dismally is that, no matter what they promise, Labour governments always spend more.
Starmer arrived in No 10 to find there was little in the way of fiscal headroom. Without a significant cut in spending or increase in taxes, there would be no money to lavish on those items Labour MPs prioritise.
This is why Starmer first attempted to slash welfare expenditure, only to be trounced by indignant backbenchers. Burnham will now confront the same benefits bill, the same backbenchers – and the same sense that the Government is adrift and without direction.
The pressure will build and the momentum will grow for a fresh direction – another one – and Burnham will be denied an appeal to his mandate among party members.
Finally, and most importantly, a coronation does real damage to the country. Britain is facing a decline far steeper than anything seen in the 1970s.
Sluggish growth, uncontrolled immigration, compromised defences, runaway spending, the threat of separatism in Scotland and Wales, and the growth in Islamic extremism and other domestic security concerns – the scale of challenges the next prime minister must overcome is daunting.
Spurning a genuine competition of ideas in favour of bestowing the crown on a chippy, arrogant regional politician just because he wants it now and is willing to scream and scream to get it is a fatal mistake of national consequence.
It means gambling everything, including Britain’s future, on Burnham being as good as he tells everyone he is.
This is a not terribly impressive New Labour frontbencher who has lost every competitive leadership poll he has stood in, a self-styled political messiah whose only miracle has been spreading cash and sentimentalism across his own backyard.
Few men on the cusp of No 10 have been so shielded from the most basic assessments of competence and fortitude.
Should Burnham prove to be a dud, and he’s given us no grounds to suppose otherwise, it will mean yet another failed Prime Minister, more wasted years.
Britain cannot afford many more of these. This nation is in desperate need of a leader, but instead is being made to settle for another self-promoting member of the Westminster establishment. A lanyardista is a lanyardista, even if he likes pie’n’gravy and has spent time north of Luton.
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