Labour MPs today lined up to kiss the feet of their new king and Britain’s inevitable next prime minister, Andy Burnham. Nominations from the Parliamentary Labour party to take over from Sir Keir Starmer opened this morning, with Burnham confirming in a social media video that his expected coronation is ‘starting to feel very real’.
When it comes to the crunch issues of slashing the welfare bill and cracking down on immigration, there is only so much group therapy that some MPs can take before they descend into another heated spat
Backbenchers from across the PLP posted pictures of themselves pledging allegiance to the MP for Makerfield. For the first time in a while, a palpable sense of optimism and unity swept through Labour’s ideologically disparate ranks.
How long this togetherness will last is, of course, anyone’s guess. It is all well and good for Burnham to promise to turn the whips’ office into a health and wellbeing retreat, where the Socialist Campaign Group and Blairites can hold hands and sing kumbaya. But when it comes to the crunch issues of slashing the welfare bill and cracking down on immigration, there is only so much group therapy that some MPs can take before they descend into another heated spat. Speaking to the BBC, Burnham’s close ally and former cabinet minister Louise Haigh was confident his approach would pay off. She said the former Manchester mayor had been ‘planning’ to overhaul both the party and the country ‘for at least the last year’.
Nonetheless, after months of bitter division, Labour MPs felt particularly buoyed by the prospect of a prime minister who can speak to the public with authenticity rather than sanctimony – and by Nigel Farage’s by-election battle against a comedian dressed as a bin. On The Spectator’s Coffee House Shots podcast, Labour MP Chris Curtis argued that, despite all the media attention around Farage’s financial backers and their undeclared gifts, Reform remains Labour’s greatest threat. He said: ‘Reform is – is and always will be – the biggest enemy. They have a very right-wing politics that would be a big threat to the country. And I think first and foremost we have a duty as a Labour party to ensure they never end up anywhere near power.’
Curtis, a former supporter of Wes Streeting’s short-lived leadership bid, gave two thumbs up to Burnham’s happy-families approach to whipping. He argued that Sir Keir Starmer’s discipline machine, operating through ‘fear’, was a sign of weakness rather than strength. He added: ‘I think a political operation that is positive and confident in itself and confident in the arguments that it is making should not fear a conversation about the policies that it’s been putting forward.’
Tonight Labour confirmed that 322 of its some 403 MPs signed nominations for Burnham to takeover from Sir Keir. And just like clockwork, at around the same time a letter emerged signed by 80 members of the PLP, calling on the MP for Makerfield to ditch Shabana Mahmood’s migration reforms. It’s all well and good for the buoyant former Manchester Mayor to preach unity – but what does he do when that quickly falls apart over the most contentious topics of the day?
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