Andrew MacDougall: Andy Burnham is better lipstick on the Labour Party pig
Britain's new PM is more suited to the attention economy. Not a compliment
By: Andrew MacDougall
In the end, there was no head of lettuce left to rot in front of a webcam. Bad as he was, Keir Starmer was no Liz Truss.
Even so, Starmer has still suffered the same fate as Britain’s worst-ever prime minister, wilting in office after his disloyal Labour Party supported Andy Burnham’s (long-planned) internal coup against him. Burnham, until recently the mayor of Manchester, now becomes Britain’s seventh prime minister in 10 years. How very fucking Italy of us.
That Burnham is anyone’s idea of an answer shows just how deep the rot has set in over here in Blighty. The country is spending more on welfare than it is taking in on tax, can’t fund its military, and is paying twice as much for its energy than countries on the European continent, and people think that Andy Burnham — Andy fucking Burnham — is the answer.
Burnham is no God. He is a political lifer. A staffer at the age of 23, an MP at the age of 31, and a minister at the age of 37 in Gordon Brown’s government. Burnham then ran for leader of the Labour Party twice — and failed both times. And so, when Jeremy Corbyn took over the Labour leadership following the 2015 election and began turning the party into a late 1970s socialist revival with a heaping helping of antisemitism thrown in, Burnham slunk off to Manchester to run for mayor, a position he held for nine years.
Which isn’t to say Burnham is completely bereft of accomplishment. During his time as mayor, Burnham improved the bus network (albeit, thanks to a large subsidy from Westminster). Manchester also grew impressively, both in terms of housing footprint and economy. But what Burnham is best remembered for is putting two fingers up to Boris Johnson during the pandemic, when the then-prime minister tried to impose different lockdown restrictions in the north of the country. That’s when Andy became the “King of the North.”
Ah, the north. Andy Burnham loves reminding people that he’s from the north. Just a working-class lad from Liverpool. A true Evertonian with a season ticket. Albeit one who went to Cambridge and then fucked off straight to Westminster the second it became possible to go.
But that’s Andy. He is a man who wants to be all things to all people. As the joke that was making the rounds during the coup goes: “a Blairite, a Brownite, and a Corbynite walk into a bar, and the barman says, ‘Hello, Mr. Burnham.’”
This ideological malleability is how Burnham managed to unite the vast majority of Labour Party MPs behind his coup. That, and the fact that Starmer was truly shit and a drag on the numbers. Starmer took the Labour Party from a massive majority win in 2024 to polling parity with the opposition parties in a vanishingly short period of time. Starmer never looked comfortable in office and never had a clear plan or governing ideology. “There is no Starmerism,” Starmer once famously declared. Now there is no Starmer.
And what will Burnham offer in Starmer’s place?
It’s not yet clear. Burnham’s coup was more about attitude than it was policy. Burnham is naturally more of an optimist and is comfortable speaking about things Britain has forgotten about, like “hope.” He wants more power for Britain’s left-behind regions and “growth in every postcode.” But the policy offer to get there is thin, something that should worry Labour given Starmer’s own thinness. Every leader has banged about Britain’s regional inequality; none has come close to solving it.
In many ways, Burnham is just a better coat of lipstick on the pig. None of Britain’s problems go away just because Burnham has graced us with his presence and optimism. The migrants are still coming across the channel. Defence is still massively underfunded. There are still over a million 18-24 year olds not in education, employment or training. Millions more are claiming benefits for ill-defined mental-health reasons. Britain needs a series of nettles grasped, not a better suite of TikToks from the temporary resident of 10 Downing Street.
That said, one place Burnham truly excels — certainly compared with Starmer — is comms. He is a natural before the camera in a way the stilted Starmer never was. Burnham’s personality jives with the rhythms and demands of the attention economy. He spends a lot of time catering to the platforms feeding content to the kids. And no, that is not a compliment.
On comms, Burnham is a reflection of how politics has now moved upstream to government. Governments used to do things and then find a way to discuss and frame them. Now politicians apply a vibe to government. Instead of policy driving comms, comms is driving policy. The long, slow, boring, complicated work of government is not suited to the attention economy. So why bother doing it when you can vibe instead?
To wit, Burnham’s first week in office featured a suite of bite-sized policy tweaks seemingly selected for their suitability for communication on social media: a small cut to energy bills; a £2 cap on bus fares; a cut in business tax for pubs; a pledge to end “rough sleeping;” and opening a Number 10 North, i.e. an office space for Burnham to work in Manchester on Fridays. And Burnham called the office opening “the best day of his life,” which makes you worry about the state of his marriage.
The fact I had to Google the week’s policy announcements is proof of how much of modern politics is “here today, gone today.” I follow this stuff closely and I didn’t register some of Burnham’s tweaks. Burnham’s operation also floated a few trial balloons, like reforming council tax, increasing the basic personal allowance on tax, and increasing business rates on warehouses (i.e. Amazon) to fund smaller businesses on local high streets. These are all serious policies that would present a step change in Britain’s governance. That all of them were quickly denied is proof that serious change isn’t in the offing.
Lipstick it is, then.
Andrew MacDougall is a partner at Trafalgar Strategy and is a senior policy fellow at the Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy at McGill University.
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