Andy Burnham is just finishing an ‘ask me anything’ Reddit interview, which may shed some light on his plans, but if it’s anything like the interview he gave to Andrew Marr yesterday evening, we are still at the vibes stage of Burnhamism. So let’s talk about the personnel, rather than the policy, where things seem to be a bit clearer – and it was who would be up and who would be down which sucked up most of the oxygen at The Spectator summer party on Wednesday.
There is an irony in David Miliband becoming Britain’s chief diplomat
Burnham, we are told, wants a balanced cabinet and team, and since many of his senior advisers are women, attention continues to fall on some of the men he is apparently tapping up from Labour’s class of 2001 – the generation of New Labour spads who became MPs that year and went on to become ministers.
If you had asked pretty much any politico or journalist who knew them well then to rank David and Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, James Purnell and Burnham for brains or the likelihood that they got on in politics, Burnham would have come in fifth. But it is an interesting feature of politics that other members of that clan now acknowledge that Burnham was the first to understand the politics of the post-2007 crash world and was better positioned to grasp the politics of place than they were.
His elevation also shows that to win a race you have to be in it, you have to persist and you have to grasp your chances when they present themselves. Purnell resigned from Gordon Brown’s cabinet in a vain bid to bring him down. Balls lost his seat. David Miliband lost to his brother and flounced off to the US. Ed Miliband, at least, grabbed the crown when he had his chance, but his agonised intellectualism meant he was never a natural leader, and in the 2010-15 period Balls had the superior political antennae. Ed Miliband’s fate remains unclear – Burnham says he still hasn’t decided whether to make him his chancellor.
I have always thought that Ed Miliband was unfairly maligned for running against his brother in 2010 for the simple reason that the cult of David has always seemed bizarrely detached from the person. I was told on Wednesday that it is as good as done that he is returning as a peer – and you don’t come back to be secretary of state for transport. Burnham clearly wants to focus on domestic affairs and leaving foreign policy in the hands of some combination of David Miliband, Jonathan Powell and Olly Robbins makes sense.
However, there is an irony in David Miliband becoming Britain’s chief diplomat since those who remember him shorn of the ‘king over the water’ mantle he seems to have acquired recall him as one of the rudest men in Westminster. As we all wandered around the Spectator garden on Wednesday, I was reminded of the comment by a Labour adviser that if David Miliband was at a party talking to Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela he ‘would still be looking over their shoulders to see if there was anyone more important to talk to’. Miliband once slagged off a journalist even as the hack left to buy him a drink. The journalist in question – who had been in earshot – returned and said: ‘I heard that! And that, by the way, is why you never became leader of the f***ing Labour party.’ Cue guppy-like jaw gymnastics from Miliband.
Miliband Sr. had at least three chances to oust Brown and become leader but flunked the challenge. He lost to his brother because he needed just four extra second preference votes from MPs to win and brought defeat on himself. A then shadow cabinet minister is fond of recalling how David Miliband appeared so convinced the MP would back him that he did not even ask him for his second preference vote. The MP voted for Ed Balls, then Ed Miliband. Another MP, now a senior select committee chairman, cheerfully recalls a David Miliband flunky phoning him to say: ‘I’m calling on behalf of David Miliband.’ To which the MP replied: ‘If he wants my vote he can call me himself.’ No call was forthcoming.
I’m sure he has mellowed and it is telling that it was brother Ed who suggested to Burnham that he bring back David as foreign secretary. The brothers’ relationship has improved in recent months as they have both dealt with the death of their mother. But Burnham appears not to want to stop there. Purnell has already been appointed chief of staff and there are now reports Burnham wants Balls back as a senior adviser in the House of Lords as well.
Truly, Labour’s version of the golden generation (apt given the number of football fanatics it includes) is back. It is worth remembering that England managers of the era never got Gerrard, Scholes and Lampard to play together effectively. Are the mutual hatreds between Man United, Liverpool and Chelsea players of the era a harbinger of discord between Blairites, Brownites and Blue Labourites to come?
If Ed Miliband does not become chancellor, Shabana Mahmood was assumed to be the strongest rival, but the consensus among cabinet ministers I spoke to at the Spectator party was that she should remain at the Home Office. Pat McFadden is coming up on the rails if Burnham wants a safe pair of hands. But if the prime minister designate agrees with the idea that ‘you can’t have more Milibands than women’ in the big jobs, the ‘definitely underpriced’ option, most ministers I spoke to agreed, was Yvette Cooper to the Treasury.
The thing about the footballing golden generation was that they were badly managed. Burnham will know that Labour’s best hope of winning the World Cup/general election will be to get everyone playing to their strengths to deliver a coherent plan. If he does so, the Class of 2001 will have a more meaningful political legacy than they do now. And, who knows, David Miliband might also learn some manners…
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