After months of despair, the Labour Party was suddenly gripped by a mood of hysterical jubilation this week. In their desperation to recover some of their lost popularity, MPs and activists have feverishly embraced Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, as their potential saviour following his thumping victory in the Makerfield by-election. So intoxicating is the allure of this municipal messiah that the party seems ready to install him as the new Prime Minister without any vote or any kind of leadership contest.
Echoes of Past Personality Cults
The worship of Burnham carries echoes of the personality cults that developed in Labour’s ranks around the quasi-Marxist Jeremy Corbyn in the last decade, and the radical demagogue Tony Benn in the 1980s. Burnham is attracting the same unhinged admiration from supporters, as was highlighted on Monday when he travelled by rail from Manchester to London to be sworn in as a new MP and was greeted at both ends of the journey by excitable crowds anxious for a glimpse of the conquering hero.
Media coverage heightened the drama, with both the BBC and Sky News using helicopters to provide aerial shots of Burnham’s odyssey to Westminster, where he was welcomed by a throng of Labour colleagues grinning manically for selfies. The scenes of adulation were reminiscent of the crucial moment in 1917, when the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin left exile in Switzerland aboard a sealed train for the Finland Station in the Russian capital, St Petersburg. Soon after his arrival, he addressed thousands of followers gathered outside the station. “We must fight until the complete victory of the proletariat,” he declared, words that galvanised the Soviet revolution.
A Record Lacking Conviction
Burnham could never be described as a revolutionary, nor has he ever called for the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Indeed, the most persistent complaint against him is that he lacks steely convictions. “Andy is a nice guy, but he wants to be liked,” says one former minister. Burnham’s past record as an MP and cabinet minister is not particularly impressive, the low point being his embarrassingly heavy defeat by Corbyn in the 2015 leadership contest.
But then he reinvented himself as “the King of the North”, shrewdly attracting private investment into Manchester, and cleverly exploiting public relations and his personal affability to widen his power base. From his Mancunian fiefdom, the coup he has just pulled off is remarkable. He has effectively bent his party to his own will, forced out a sitting Prime Minister and overcome the previously almost invincible threat of Reform UK.
Unprecedented Path to Power
If, as now seems inevitable, he reaches the summit, he will be the first prime minister in the history of British democracy not to have previously held one of the great offices of state or been the official Leader of the Opposition. He will also be, incidentally, the first practising Roman Catholic in 10 Downing Street. However unprecedented, that does not mean he is suited to the top job. Burnham has little grasp of economics or experience of the world outside politics. His only clear policy is an attachment to greater decentralisation, which in practice means more regional bureaucracy and more unwanted tiers of politicians. Otherwise, he clings to a vague socialist belief in a bigger state and higher taxes.
Failed Left-Wing Recipe
Given that the tax burden is at its highest level since the 1940s, debts are crippling the public finances, public sector productivity is falling, and welfare bills are out of control, that old, failed left-wing recipe is exactly what our country does not need. In truth, Burnham gives no indication that he is ready to take on the real challenges facing Britain. Against the backdrop of failure, he could soon find that today’s cheers turn to tomorrow’s jeers.
