Starmer and Burnham meet to facilitate an orderly transition

LondonWho is Andy Burnham beyond the stereotype of Manchester and Mancunianism? The United Kingdom asks itself the question, as it could become a new prime minister in three weeks, after of the resignation announcement of Keir Starmer. In a gesture of acceptance of the brutality of politics, the first in functions met this Tuesday with his successor de facto outside Downing Street, as has been revealed The Times.

Starmer, on the other hand, has authorized discussions on vital government machinery information access between Whitehall officials and their potential successors. For now, however, only Burnham has confirmed his aspirations. Nevertheless, two more names, Darren Jones and Al Carns, could end up being part of the extras in a function that, in any case, already has a decided ending.

The question of who Burnham is is also being asked by the Labour parliamentary group. Although this Monday more than two hundred of the forty-something MPs who make it up took a selfie with him to welcome him, as would be done with an old acquaintance, the fact is that his colleagues have very little to do with those who sat in the Commons when Burnham left the chamber in 2017. Only 10% have direct political memory of the former Manchester mayor during his previous spell in Westminster. And it is this data that weighs on the calendar for the coming days to close the crisis.

The Labour Party is debating between the coronation and a primary process. Not to risk Burnham's election, but to test his policies and abilities. Especially since in recent days, during Makerfield's victorious campaign, has made some retreats and changes of mind that outline the tension between political aspiration and on-the-ground practice.

The need to subject Burnham to this political examination, at least in the opinion of some Labour MPs and lords, has become even more relevant after it emerged that the content of the first major policy speech he will deliver next week is dedicated to the economy. Burnham will use his intervention to try to dispel one of the main unknowns surrounding his candidacy: to what extent is he willing to challenge the fiscal orthodoxy inherited from Starmer.

According to leaks from his team, the future head of government will commit to respecting Labour's fiscal rules and maintaining budgetary discipline, a message aimed at both the City and MPs concerned about his economic credibility. At the same time, he will advocate for a growth agenda based on public investment, housing construction, reform of public services and, above all, a much greater transfer of power to the English regions. In other words, he will try to combine budgetary prudence with an economic transformation strategy inspired by the decentralization model he has defended for years from Manchester.

His intervention will be watched with particular attention because it will, in a way, constitute the first response to the question that many Labour MPs are asking themselves these days: what exactly will Andy Burnham do when he arrives at Downing Street? His allies maintain that it is possible to promote a more active economic policy without clashing with the markets. Skeptics, on the other hand, doubt that a genuinely progressive agenda can be built while keeping current fiscal limits intact.

In this regard, several analysts have highlighted a combination of general ideological coherence and a certain flexibility in how he expresses or adjusts his positions according to the political context. Precisely in the economic sphere, he has made critical statements about dependence on financial markets and the aforementioned framework of self-imposed budgetary discipline by the government. But during the Makerfield campaign, he reiterated that any policy under his leadership would respect these fiscal rules. In other words, he does not intend to challenge the logic of the City.

One of the MPs who was in the Commons during Burnham's first term as an MP, Jon Trickett, is backing the premier"to set out his policies, how he will achieve them, and for that to be contested in a leadership election within the party". "I think that would strengthen Andy's position," he told the BBC. Trickett knows him well enough because they served together in Gordon Brown's government. "He's a great guy, he's popular, he's very likeable, he's sharp, but I don't know exactly what his government would look like if he were Prime Minister, and this period should be used to establish what your ideas are," he said.

Pragmatism or flexibility?

What does Burnham think, for example, about the European Union? Last year, during the Labour Party conference, he openly expressed that his personal opinion is in favour of a possible return of the United Kingdom to the EU. But he also pointed out a few weeks ago that it is not part of his immediate political agenda to "reopen the Brexit debate" and that the result of the referendum must be respected, of which this Tuesday marks a decade.

A reopening of the wound that, in fact, was requested today by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, an unashamed supporter of a return to the EU. In Brussels, on the other hand, they have cancelled the summit planned with the United Kingdom for July 22, in which Starmer intended to deepen the reset of relations. Be that as it may, if Burnham is not willing to break the red lines of the referendum, he will hardly be able to go further than his predecessor has done.

His supporters maintain that this apparent ability to defend different positions depending on the circumstances is a sign of political pragmatism. Critics, on the other hand, see it as excessive flexibility. The discrepancy recalls the famous observation attributed to Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat leader, about Tony Blair: "Tony's problem is that he always believes what he says at the moment he says it," a tidbit collected in his autobiography by Ken Clarke, John Major's Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Perhaps to test the candidate, 81 Labour MPs will still sign the ballot paper to support one of the two aforementioned candidates for first: To Carns or Darren Jones. However, it is very difficult to avoid the coronation of the King of Northern England. What is certain is that Burnham will have little time to please the British. Since Brexit, the country has become accustomed to burning prime ministers practically every Midsummer's Day.