On the morning after the Easter weekend, I walked up Whitehall and into the Cabinet Office. It was April 2017, and I had been a Special Adviser for about six months, joining government when Theresa May became Prime Minister.
Something felt off as soon as I got in. The usual Tuesday morning Cabinet would be taking place next door in No.10, but it was clear there was going to be nothing usual about it. Rumours started flying that Theresa May was about to do something she had insisted time and time again she wouldn’t. Sure enough, she emerged onto Downing Street to say that an election was now, after all, essential “to secure the strong and stable leadership the country needs”.
Things didn’t go to plan. Less than two months later I walked into a different government department following the post-election reshuffle. In between, the Conservatives had lost our majority and Theresa May had only just managed to hold onto power through a deal with the DUP. She was forced out of office within two years.
As the seventh Prime Minister in ten years, Andy Burnham is aware that all his recent predecessors came in – as he has – determined to stay for the long haul. And that none of them managed it. He has ruled out an early election despite a bounce in the polls. But, then again, so had Theresa May.
There are arguments for an early election. Assuming he won it, Burnham would have a clear personal mandate and a full five-year timeframe to earn credit from the public for getting difficult things done. It could give him more freedom by throwing off the hyper-cautious 2024 Labour manifesto commitments not to raise income tax, National Insurance or VAT.
Tactically, too, there may be a window of opportunity as Reform UK’s progress stutters a little after losing its lead in the polls for the first time in a year. Perhaps he might think he could take advantage of a divided right and attract voters back from the left to lock in a Labour government.
Yet as the Conservatives found out in 2017, elections are messy and unpredictable. And the voters set the terms. Theresa May wanted an election to strengthen her negotiating hand with Brussels and see off Jeremy Corbyn. Instead, it weakened her hand and emboldened him.
Indeed, the biggest reason for seeking a new mandate could present the biggest risk to getting it. If Burnham really does want to pull on the big tax levers, then he will have to say so clearly, meaning the entire election would open up exactly the attacks that Labour was so desperate to avoid in 2024 and which led to the promise in the first place. If he doesn’t, then what exactly does he want a mandate for that he can’t get on and do already?
As the Conservatives found out in 2017, elections are messy and unpredictable.
Fundamentally, the polls all suggest that Labour would lose a significant number of seats even if it did win a snap election. It may even lose its majority entirely and need to enter into a coalition to stay in government. A majority of nearly 170 and two and a half years to use it is something no Prime Minister would give up lightly.
So, what does Burnham want to do with it? His worldview was shaped inescapably by two interconnected things: his experience of the 1980s and of the North of England. His political priorities are direct responses to both.
His 2024 book, Head North, co-authored with his great political ally and Mayor of Liverpool City Region Steve Rotherham, is unequivocal: “this is not just a deeply unequal country; this is a deliberately unequal country”. Their region, as he sees it, was not only hit hard by the Thatcher government, but all subsequent governments exacerbated the consequences by deliberately skewing the economy towards London and the South. As Burnham put it in his first speech as Prime Minister: “Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, large parts of the country de-industrialised, and they still haven’t recovered.”
He has parachuted into Parliament from the outside.
For Burnham, devolving power to the regions is essential to reversing that. He wants more mayors and for them to control more of their own regions’ destinies, with the new No.10 North in Manchester the driving force. Powers will be transferred from Whitehall to elected mayors and local authorities across education and skills, transport, and housing. They will also – significantly – be given a share of income tax raised locally to incentivise them to grow their tax bases.
On devolution, therefore, he is moving fast and showing that he means what he says. Yet his diagnosis goes far deeper. In Head North, he called for a full written constitution, a Basic Law to guarantee living standards, an elected Senate of Nations and Regions in place of the House of Lords, and a change in the voting system to proportional representation. These are enormous – and contentious – constitutional changes for which Burnham has no mandate and would need to convince his party to include in its next manifesto. This tension goes to the heart of taking power between elections, rather than winning one. Burnham is inheriting someone else’s majority and seeking to do something different – but not too different – with it.
This is nothing new, but it is fraught with difficulty. Most mid-term Prime Ministers come in with confidence that they can get it right. Some are more successful than others, at least in the short term, as with John Major and Boris Johnson, who both won elections after taking over mid-term. Some are too associated with the past and fighting losing battles, as with Gordon Brown and Rishi Sunak. Liz Truss, of course, never made it as far as the ballot box.
All these premierships have their own contexts. Yet it is striking how different Burnham’s is. He has parachuted into Parliament from the outside rather than biding his time from the inside, meaning he has none of the baggage of having served under his predecessor. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he was always semi-detached from Westminster, which enabled him more freedom than any Cabinet minister to deviate from the party line without facing consequences.
If Burnham wants to pull the big tax levers, he will have to say so clearly.
Most importantly, his decade away has genuinely hardened his view of what Westminster and Whitehall gets wrong and what needs to change. This means he comes to the job with a far more defined vision than his predecessor, something that was – alongside failures in delivery and communication – Labour MPs’ fundamental concern with Starmer.
Yet the challenges he faces remain daunting and will take time to turn around. Time has been in short supply for British Prime Ministers recently. The patience of business, investors, and markets has been in even shorter supply as political instability has looked systemic. The promises of change and of doing things better have come out of the mouths of all those mid-term Prime Ministers who have walked down Downing Street so confident they will – after all – be the one to tame that instability.
Perhaps Burnham really will. Perhaps he will resist any siren calls for an early election, stay the course and be rewarded by the voters. Or perhaps another adviser might walk into work one morning and find the political world has turned upside down. Yet again.
Fraser Raleigh
Managing Director, Public Affairs at SEC Newgate UK
About SEC Newgate UK
SEC Newgate is a global corporate affairs consultancy. Fraser Raleigh is a former Special Adviser to the de facto Deputy Prime Minister Sir David Lidington and served in the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Justice, and Office of the Leader of the House of Commons.
