There is talk again that Andy Burnham might return to Westminster. A byelection in Manchester opens the possibility, and if he does, there will be plenty of cynical commentary.
Some will say he is simply pursuing ambition, which would undoubtedly be true.
Others will say that, after years as Mayor of Greater Manchester, he has seen a path back into national politics and is taking it before the moment passes.
I am not especially interested in any of that. Politics is about power; if you want to change anything, you have to engage with it. Burnham is. So the more important question is this: would Burnham's return to Westminster be good for the country? And, uncomfortable as it may be for many in the Labour right to hear, I think the answer is yes. And I say that despite the fact that I have never been his greatest fan, and still think he is the bearer of many of the faults that have deservedly left Labout in its current dire state.
For all that, Burnham is one of the very few senior Labour figures who still seems to understand that Britain is not just a collection of individuals and markets, but a network of places, communities, and systems. Housing, transport, health, social care, local government and the connections between them are, for him, not add-ons to the economy but the economy itself as most people actually experience it, and this matters.
Westminster politics and Labour apparatchiks have spent far too long behaving as if the country can be run through a handful of fiscal ratios and a weekly focus group in a marginal seat. That, though, is not governing. It treats the country as if it is purely a financial operation and politics as just a game of marketing. The result is exactly what you would expect: collapsing public services, decaying infrastructure, regional resentment, and a growing belief that politics cannot change anything.
Burnham, by contrast, now represents a tradition of Labour politics that is municipal and practical. He understands that people measure the economy not through GDP but through whether they can get to work, whether they can afford housing, whether their parents can get care, and whether their lives feel stable rather than permanently exposed to risk. That alone would make his voice valuable at Westminster, where far too many MPs have never run anything and still talk as if they are permanently auditioning for a ministerial job, even when they have one.
The other reason he matters is that Burnham is one of the few people in Labour with enough stature to say openly what is otherwise whispered: that the modern British state is dangerously over-centralised, and the Treasury has become a veto machine rather than a tool of democratic government. This matters because Labour's current leadership appears to believe that politics begins and ends with what they think to be credibility, which they believe is something granted by the bond markets, the right-wing press and the mythology of household-budget economics.
Burnham does not appear to share that worldview. He might have done in 2015, when he stood for party leader when Corbyn won. But years in Manchester seem to have changed him. His politics is now rooted in the real economy, in the systems people depend upon and in the belief that public investment, public planning, and public control of natural monopolies are not moral failings but the foundation of national resilience. That is realism. The UK has been run for rentiers for forty years, and anyone who does not see that is not serious about reform.
As a consequence, the conclusion is clear: Burnham's exile to Manchester as its mayor is what has made him the politician he is now. Being responsible for a city provides a form of education that Parliament rarely provides. It forces you to deal with real constraints, real failures, real institutions and real lives. That is why Burnham now sounds different. He has had to govern in a way that being a minister did not.
But there is more to Burnham than this. If Burnham were to return to Westminster and make proportional representation and serious parliamentary reform central to his project, he could change the entire political scene. PR is not a technical fix. It is a shift in power. It would end the manufactured majorities that have allowed minority governments to impose radical ideology without genuine consent. It would make politics more plural and more honest, and it would make it harder for the far right to build its appeal on resentment generated by unaccountable rule, and Burnham appears committed to this. To Labour MPs, most of whom look as if they might lose their jobs, this might be his greatest appeal. If Burnham embraced reform, he would not be returning as just another Labour MP. He would be returning as a potential architect of a different Britain.
The trouble is that I cannot ignore the other possibility, which is that Burnham's return might change nothing, because the Labour Party itself may now be beyond repair. Labour has become increasingly centralised, increasingly managerial, and increasingly hostile to internal challenge. In the process, it has abandoned pluralism, as will become very obvious in the weeks to come. Too often, it now behaves like a political machine whose main goal is to prevent anyone inside it from saying anything that might upset the leadership, or the financial commentariat to whom they appear to owe their allegiance.
This formulation of Labour has been a recipe for disappointment. If Burnham returns to Westminster, he may find that his instincts for devolution, public control of key systems, renewal through investment and parliamentary reform might collide with a leadership that sees politics as a performance of caution. The danger is that he becomes either marginalised or absorbed, unless, that is, he becomes the face of the coup to overturn Starmer, which is why his chances of a return are so slim, given the party machine will now do all they can to prevent it.
If Labour wanted to take a risk, it would welcome him back. That would at least give a voice to a different Labour tradition from that Starmer follows. It is one rooted in public service, in place, in solidarity, and in the knowledge that the economy is not a machine but is a social system. But, if it lets him back, Starmer and his cohort will be on the back benches. That is why I see the return as unlikely. However, in that case, Labour is heading to oblivion. Those in the party not wedded to Starmer might need to show some courage. I remain, at least as yet, no great believer in Burnham, but he might be the best hope Labour has.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
I dont know if its still true but many French politicians either had been or were the Mayor of the city they represented in Parliament.
In the past becoming leader of a major Local Authority represented the hight of a political career OR a stepping stone to Parliament and a Ministers job. Sadly this is no longer the case and while some – Pickles – clearly dont seem to have learnt anything from the experience I suggest that we are poorer for it.
I remember seeing an article written by someone who had started their working life at Wakefield Station in the 1950’s. About 4 times a year the County Clerk of the West Riding would spend a week in London on business. The Yorkshire Pullman which normally didnt serve Wakefield would make a special stop to pick him up, he would then be put up in one of Londons best hotels and Ministers and Civil Servants would come to see him. Perhaps thats something we need to get back to?
Thank you, John.
It’s still the case in France. The current PM and recent former PM, Philippe, are also mayors.
It’s interesting that the least effective ministers are the youngsters like Macron, Barrot, Attal and Sejourne. None was even a councillor.
First, Burnham has to get selected as a candidate, and the NEC can scupper that, whatever the local CLP selection committee decide.
If he is selected, then 80 decent Labour MPs have to challenge Starmer’s leadership, and then once a contest has been declared 80 Labour MPs have to nominate Burnham, and then a majority of Labour MPs have to vote for him. The smear machine will be in overdrive.
If he has ever said one word against Israel’s unlawful behaviour, then that will be in the headlines and he will be smeared as an antisemite. This week the Jewish Chronicle front page is lecturing us on who should be allowed to lead Birmingham council, and also lecturing the Bristol NEU branch as it continues to worry at the “Damien Egan MP banned from Bristol school by antisemites” story, one that seems to have the full support of the Home Secretary despite getting all the essential details wrong.
It really doesn’t matter what we think, these matters are no longer decided by us or our democratic representatives, they are decided by others over whom we have little control.
If Burnham isn’t allowed to stand in this by-election then we should be very worried about UK democracy. This central control has been part of Labour politics for a long time, but will they have the gall to do exercise this sort of interference in the full glare of national publicity? I’m really not sure.
Ask Luke Akehurst.
Much to agree with
This G’ article from yesterday is relevant.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/22/starmer-allies-stop-andy-burnham-campaign-block-parliamentary-return
Extract: “Senior Labour figures told the Guardian that a “Stop Andy” campaign was already under way, with the party machinery tightly controlled by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, and his allies.”
Let’s reverse this: an Englishman is calling the shots as to who could be an Irish MP – in Ireland. The Englishman is also a very keen zionist.
Dunno if Burnham is a zionist, if he is, he has no place in UK politics. As for McSweeney, I am amazed that other political parties are not making hay out of a)his nationality, b)he is calling the shots in the UK (i.e. directing the Dockland Lightrail train that is Starmer) c)he puts the interests of a very small and very violent country guilty of genocide a long way away, ahead of the needs of UK citizens.
Example: the good (?) citizens of Tunbridge Wells have no drinking water – again – & have not had any for some days. Failure by South East Water (again) to invest in maintaining a treatmnent works. Gov’ action? Zero. Regulatory action? zero. (zero = wringing of hands – oh it’s all so unfortunate). Begs the question: Burnham becomes PM, what changes?
(all that said – I confess to schadenfreude – I am confident they all voted for Thatcher & water privatisation – now they are “enjoying” the results).
Burnham believes in collaborative cross party politics. As such he would be a much more practical leader to form a left wing coalition with the likes of the Greens. But as you rightly say the current Labour party will do everything to stop him getting selected, and if he made it back to parliament he would get no role in Starmer’s government. It will be interesting to see how dirty Mcsweeny is prepared to play to stop Burnham, who is an extremely popular person in Manchester. If he expressed an interest would almost certainly be wanted by the selection panel. It will be interesting to watch.
Even if Burnham jumps through all the hoops, present polling shows Reform and Greens ahead of Labour.
I love how pissed off Mike Parr is these days……..
I hope that Burnham stays in Manchester – they need him. And he needs Manchester I think and I hope he realises this.
McSweeney has a huge grip on Labour – for all we know he is conduit for the Dark Lord Mandelson. As Mike points out, Labour’s job now is as a ‘holding party’ – Thatcherite thinking has created a typically Neo-lib redoubt in government now and it is their turn to curate it. That is to say that Neo-liberalism only concerns itself with ownership and the flow of tribute – the function of what they own in wider society ceases to exist. Labour will uphold that. Their job as they see it is to create and maintain a Garden of Eden for the worthy of capital.
Burnham will not be allowed to ‘save’ Labour. What will follow is that the Tories and Farage will pose as saviours and hoodwink a desperate electorate again. And strange things might happen and the whole charade will keep shuffling and crawling along somehow. ‘“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. It is down to us – the people – to remember more.
At the next election I would like to see the lowest turn out ever – so low that it actually provokes a crisis. Yep – sorry. And on election day it would be nice to see demonstrations everywhere about bullshit elections where nothing fundamentally changes? It’s ugly I know, and not what we want, but it may have to come down to something like this.
We’ll have to disagree on this.
I fail to understand how a low turnout would provoke a crisis. Whoever wins is still going to take the credit.
I do agree, though, that “Burnham will not be allowed to ‘save’ Labour.” The Starmer clique would rather burn the party down than give up control, which would only feed the Right.
It would be much better for him to work with the Greens and build a credible Left-wing vehicle that could have a chance of replacing the spiralling Labour Party.
It is a very hard decision. He must know that if he does stand, he will be asked constantly on a daily basis for weeks whether he is going to usurp Starmer. If he says no, then the constituency will wonder why bother voting for him, if he says yes, then the whole top level of Labour which we saw undermine Corbyn with lies, would work against him, probably even happily sacrificing the seat to Reform and actively briefing against Burnham. If he prevaricates he will get labelled as just another politician.
On the other hand, if not now, then when? This is an ideal time, if there are enough Labour MPs dissatisfied with their leadership to get behind a bid for Burnham, and still have a few years before the next General Election has to be called.
My hesitation about the local government provenance is that (as I have written to my MP a time or two as they began in local government) it tends to reinforce the household budget analogy because that is what local government has to do: work within a budget as they don’t have sovereign currency management powers. The natural tendency, especially as groupthink is rampant, is to scale that mentality up to national macroeconomics.
That said, I agree about the kinds of lessons learnt and I myself think he’s not the same candidate (if it comes to that) as in 2015 where I found him disappointingly neoliberal in his rhetoric. I do get a sense of someone who has rediscovered Labour’s municipal socialist roots and seems actually to believe in it.
I note too, agreeing with a prior poster, that it’s a long and perilous climb to get past the NEC, the bad-mouthing and other ‘manoeuvres’ that await.
The politicians I have the most respect for are the backbenchers who serve their constituencies by looking after the interests of all, and particularly those who work on cross-party groups to work at solving problems. Sadly, not so much to admire in the upper echelons of power.
We used to have far more practical experience in politics, when more MPs came to it after working in other fields. I hope you are right, that Mr Burnham has become a more practical person, who sees the needs of the people and society he serves.
Whether, if he returns to politics, he will gain entry to what passes for the Labour Party, is a question many feel dubious on, and I agree. Maybe he will find another political home. Maybe the people of Manchester would like him to stay, despite the constraints of the current set up.