Before the end of July, 10 Downing Street will have housed seven different UK prime ministers since 2016.
Larry the Cat, a 19-year-old tabby with his own Linkedin profile (a civil service joke), will have seen them all come and go.
Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation speech on June 22 came one day short of the 10th anniversary of the UK’s referendum vote to leave the EU.
It followed Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester convincingly routing the deeply right wing, anti-immigration populist Reform party of Nigel Farage in a parliamentary by-election, barely weeks after the latter had won many local council seats.
Like his London contemporary, Sadiq Khan, Burnham was briefly a Cabinet minister under Gordon Brown. Although both were then youthful highfliers, neither was especially famous beyond political circles. It has mainly been only since they left Parliament to become mayors of their cities, that their public profile and international reputation have grown more widely.
Burnham quickly got Labour MPs to overwhelmingly back him as a replacement party leader and prime minister. It was only down to Starmer’s tenuous hope (possibly football influenced) he might be able to varnish his legacy with an extra month, by delaying his departure till the day after the World Cup final, that the UK has for a month had a PM-elect in all but name.
A strange sensation for a country used to seeing prime ministers replaced in a matter of hours after an election, in contrast to the US presidency’s lengthy transitions of power.
With a heatwave, football, and latterly, an avalanche of press disclosures and potential legal investigations into the financial affairs of Farage and his associates soaking up press attention, Burnham might get the bonus of being a lucky general in his timing.
As leader of the opposition, Starmer had a knack for contrasting his own cautious demeanour with the serial catastrophes and unpopularity of successive Conservative prime ministers. It might seem cruel that as prime minister, Starmer himself should have so quickly sunk to similar depths of public unpopularity, despite his government professing to take a few steps away from his Tory predecessors.
Whilst excuses that Starmer is weak at communication and faced both a traditionally hostile media and an explosion of online disinformation have some truth, these wouldn’t have mattered so much if Starmer and his team had been smarter with their policy choices.
Instead, it was very much a tragedy foretold.
Labour’s 2024 General Election campaign and manifesto naively focused more on announcing end goals in the hope that market forces could fill in the dots, and tacking towards the right, rather than setting out a compelling centre-left path forward.
Neoliberal economic assumptions remained the underlying orthodoxy despite decades of mounting evidence and discontent at their shortcomings, which have in the main only exacerbated inequality and national decline.
Although austerity and Brexit intensified these trends under Conservative governments, Starmer at most chose to ameliorate symptoms rather than think about changing direction.
For 20 years, not only in the UK, but across many Western democracies, deeply right-wing parties, with populist anti-migrant, often racist rhetoric, which hitherto would have remained at the fringes in elections, have raised their profile by taking advantage of the unwillingness of dominant mainstream parties to address economic inequality.
Aided by plutocratic funding and timid media, many have succeeded in growing public support, bringing in their wake fears that more electoral democracies may succumb to fascism.
It is too early to assess how far, if at all, the electoral fortunes of Farage or his party will be damaged by currently ongoing press exposures.
These intensified after it was revealed Farage had not disclosed a five-million-pound gift he received from the Thailand based UK crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne in the year before he became an MP In 2024, as transparency rules require. Not least because of Farage’s intemperate reaction to questions about this and other donations.
Farage has chosen to trigger a byelection in his own constituency to deflect such attention, but with all major parties saying they will not contest the by-election he has created for August 13, (because they anticipate one being called shortly anyway, after ongoing enquiries are completed,) Farage’s plan seems to have backfired.
He now faces seeking re-election only against fringe candidates, notably the veteran novelty candidate Count Binface, which offers many a comic possibility. Being seen to win only against a bin is not a good look, least of all for someone like Farage.
Andy Burnham will naturally want to take advantage of the Reform leader’s self-inflicted discomfort to establish himself as a leader who can set the agenda and create the narrative rather than follow it in the manner of Starmer, whose actions badly damaged the Labour party’s credibility.
This is necessary if his party is to stand any chance of recovering support, but it’s also probably worth showing some humility.
After all, Burnham has twice stood for the Labour leadership before and failed. The fact that he now succeeds without any plausible challenge from the other 400 plus current Labour MPs does not reflect well on them or the party.
Nobody needs to be persuaded that Andy has more charisma than Keir or is a capable communicator. Burnham would do well though to recognise that he is ascending to the top job more because of good fortune in his timing and the failings of Starmer, rather than his own career.
For Labour to have any prospects at the next election, Burnham must “make the political weather” rather than respond to crisis after crisis. A more assertive approach to tackling the UK’s multiple economic challenges must be part of the mix.
Making better policy choices will help Burnham more than personality.
Niaz Alam is London Bureau Chief, Dhaka Tribune.