Burnham

I like Andy Burnham. I’ve got time for him. He sounds like a normal bloke, he’s got a record in Greater Manchester, and he doesn’t give off that faintly haunted Westminster vibe where everything you say has been focus-grouped to death.

But if you look at this properly, without the fan club goggles on, what he’s doing now doesn’t look like “best for the party”. It looks like “best for Andy Burnham”.

Because this isn’t his first go at the top job. He ran for the Labour leadership in 2010 and lost. He ran again in 2015 and lost. So when people pretend this is just a noble act of service, you have to laugh. He’s not being called back to Westminster because the nation is short of men in suits. He’s being pulled by the one thing Westminster is always about: another shot at the leadership.

And I get it. Politicians are ambitious. That’s not a sin. But timing matters, and this is not the right time.

If Burnham stands as an MP, he has to give up the mayoralty. That means a new Greater Manchester election. Labour might hold it, but it’s not guaranteed. Reform would love to turn it into a national protest vote, and the Conservatives would love to claim Labour can’t even keep hold of its own backyard. Even if Labour scrape through, you’ve still created a huge distraction, spent a load of money, and handed the opposition weeks of attack lines.

Then there’s the by-election itself. Yes, Labour should win. But by-elections are weird. Turnout collapses, the angry show up, and the media turn it into a verdict on the government. If Burnham lost, he’d be out of the mayoralty and out of Parliament. That’s not bold. That’s reckless.

And the big giveaway is this: there are two years to go until a general election.

Two years. That’s ages. That’s enough time for Labour to recover in the polls, enough time for Reform to overreach and wobble, enough time for the government to actually deliver something people can feel. It’s also enough time for one ugly internal story to fester and become the permanent headline: “Labour divided”.

Because the right-wing press are already writing the script. “Plot”. “Coup”. “Civil war”. “Starmer under siege”. They don’t need Labour to be collapsing. They just need Labour to look like it might be. Burnham standing would hand them that story on a plate, with garnish.

And after what we’ve just lived through with the Conservatives, Labour should know better. We had revolving Prime Ministers, endless factional nonsense, and a party that looked like it was governing as a side hustle while it obsessed over its own internal psychodrama. It didn’t look strong. It looked unstable. Voters hated it.

Labour’s whole pitch is supposed to be the opposite. Calm. Competent. Boring in a reassuring way. Get on with the job. Don’t turn politics into a knife fight every six months.

Burnham might well be a better politician than Starmer. Starmer might well be a better Prime Minister than Burnham. Both can be true. But neither of them escapes the constraints. The NHS is still battered. The public finances are still tight. Debt interest still bites. Growth is still weak. Brexit is still dragging the economy like an anchor.

Changing the leader doesn’t change any of that.

So yes, Burnham senses another chance. He’s been here before, he’s lost before, and now he thinks the moment might be coming round again.

But the party doesn’t need another leadership soap opera. Not now. Not with two years to go. Not when the public have only just stopped flinching every time a Prime Minister walks up to a lectern.

If Burnham wants to be a serious asset to Labour, he stays where he is, keeps delivering, and waits for a moment when the party actually needs a change, not just when he fancies another run at the crown.

Because right now, this doesn’t look like leadership. It looks like ambition getting ahead of judgement.

Heart says yes, head says no.