Can Prime Minister Burnham Succeed?

On Monday, Andy Burnham becomes prime minister of Britain almost by acclamation. The former mayor of Greater Manchester won a by-election to the House of Commons on June 18 in a swing seat by an impressive margin of 54.8 percent to 34.5 percent. This was in a district where the right-wing Reform UK party had won a majority of votes for local council seats only a month before. At that point, Burnham became inevitable.

Last week, 349 of 403 Labour MPs lined up to nominate Burnham as party leader to succeed the feckless Keir Starmer. Nobody else even ran against him.

In his three terms as mayor since 2017, Burnham succeeded in making Manchester a rare success story amid Britain’s stagnant economy. The GDP growth rate for the city has been running at 3.1 percent a year, far better than any other city in England’s depressed north and more than double that of the U.K. as a whole. Manchester was on an upswing before Burnham, but he built on the success.

More from Robert Kuttner

In a Labour Party long beset by disabling schisms and plain bad luck, Burnham has been a force for rare unity—a likable man of the practical left. When he takes office, Burnham will literally be the world’s only national leader who is a competent progressive with a governing majority in the national parliament. One has to wish him success.

Yet the press coverage of Burnham’s rise has been depressingly cynical, even by British standards. Some of the commentary suggests that Burnham is a simple opportunist, trying to be all things to all people. This joke has been widely repeated: “A Blairite, a Brownite, and a Corbynite walk into a bar. The barman says, ‘Hello, Mr. Burnham.’”

But that’s too cynical. Burnham was never an ally of the far-left former party leader Jeremy Corbyn—whom Burnham ran against for party leader in 2016. And he has long been a critic of the neoliberalism of Tony Blair. Ideologically, he’s closest to former center-left prime minister Gordon Brown, but Burnham is more progressive and more effective politically.

That said, Burnham’s challenges are real. Many commentators conclude from the appalling history of seven failed prime ministers in ten years that Britain is simply ungovernable. Tom Clark, in a thoughtful piece in The Guardian, wrote that “the simple class divide of postwar society has been replaced by a variety of deep, overlaying cleavages: cultural divides like Brexit, values divides such as Gaza, and generational divides between older homeowners and younger tenants.”

Fragmented public opinion has translated into a fragmented party system. The U.K’.s once-stable two-party system has given way to five parties and potentially even more. In addition to Labour and the Tories, there are the Liberal Democrats, Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK, and the Greens.

Thanks to Britain’s first-past-the-post system of elections, the top two parties get far more seats in the House of Commons than their popular voting support, and smaller parties get almost nothing. In the 2024 general election, Labour won just 33.7 percent of the national vote yet ended up with 411 out of 650 seats. Conversely, Tory Margaret Thatcher never won a majority of the popular vote but ruled for nearly 12 years with ample majorities in the Commons.

But the obvious reform—proportional representation—would lead to an even more fragmented Parliament and weak coalition governments. If Burnham can have a successful three years as prime minister between now and August 2029, the deadline for the next general election, Labour will keep its governing majority.

The massive challenge is the British economy. Here, Burnham will have to thread several needles. He has proposed to take his Manchester model of business-friendly socialism national. His signature policy of deprivatizing the bus system, adding more trams and buses and reducing fares, is immensely popular.

The national counterpart is to bring several failed privatized enterprises back under more efficient public control. He will need to invest more money in the National Health Service, in social housing, and in economic development.

Burnham has sought to neutralize a potentially hostile bond market by indicating that he will retain the Starmer fiscal policy of very low deficits. But that means that he will have to increase taxes on income from capital or there will be no new money for his new investment projects.

Even if Burnham’s policies are smart and successful, they will take many years to affect the economic circumstances of ordinary people. And export-dependent Britain will face the undertow of a deteriorating global economy. An accommodation with Europe that probably stops short of a full reversal of Brexit will help.

One possible early blunder: Leaks last week from Burnham allies indicated that he would pass over progressive Ed Miliband, the leading candidate for finance minister, in favor of the more centrist Shabana Mahmood, the current home secretary. This was initially greeted by relief from London’s bankers, but then expressions of incredulity since Mahmood has zero experience in finance. Burnham has since backpedaled, saying that no decisions have been made.

Like any national leader, Burnham will make mistakes, but he is better equipped by temperament and political skill than any of Britain’s recent failed leaders of either party. It would be welcome to see a practical progressive actually succeed.