Some people call Andy Burnham Labour’s prince across the water and others call him the King of the North. Those are two pretty different symbolisms – the first referring to James Francis Edward Stuart, the exiled son of James II, the second referring to Robb Stark, and later Jon Snow, from Game of Thrones. Everyone on Team Starmer will be sticking with the Stuarts, since that whole saga was defined by fakery and flakery. Since the moment of his birth, there were rumours that James was an impostor. It was all a little bit convenient that, just as his father was about to be deposed, this heir would appear. If history had taught the era anything, it was that having sons could not possibly be that easy.
The Starks, by contrast, were known for honour, bravery and legitimacy, even the ones that were definitely illegitimate. The fact that they are also fictional is a side issue, really, given that none of these routes to power – commanding fealty, raising troops – has much to teach any pretender to Labour’s throne.
The rebel’s basic checklist is as follows: they need an absolutely minute knowledge of the party’s rulebook, yet at the same time, an understanding that the rule-based order is over. Item one in Labour lore used to be that, unlike the Conservatives, they found it more or less impossible to change the leader until he’d lost an election. If that was true even in opposition – which is where they normally are – it was so much truer while they were actually governing that it’s never really been worth examining other, lesser rules, such as “what’s the national executive committee (NEC) allowed to do again?”
So when Burnham’s desire for a parliamentary seat was just a (very loud) rumour last week, there was a lot of speculation about what cards the NEC had up their sleeve – would they demand an all-female shortlist for the seat vacated by Andrew Gwynne? An all-people of colour shortlist? The staggering and self-defeating cynicism of either move, from a leadership that had no discernible qualms about female or minority representation where the 2024 election was concerned, was priced in. Of course they’re cynical – they’re trying to run a country here. That’s what government is like.
In the event, they went for the much simpler, committee-says-no solution, blocking Burnham because he already has a job, as the mayor of Greater Manchester. It was smart in the sense of being self-evident and dumb in the sense that it failed to address the real source of Burnham’s threat: people like him.
It’s just one of those unfortunate coalitions: everyone who wishes a Labour government stood for something, and had a discernible sense of purpose, likes Burnham; everyone who has fond memories of the Blair years likes him, but everyone who hated the Blair years also likes him. He has somehow managed to put clear blue water between his current self and his 90s self, and maybe all that water imagery did the trick, in a roundabout sort of a way, or maybe he’s an entirely different politician to the one he was – or maybe just being different to the ones in government is enough. Everyone who doesn’t really concentrate on politics likes him, perceiving his effectiveness in Manchester, and sensing somehow that he’s on their level – people are much more into a politician who knows the bus fare than one who knows the price of milk. Everyone who does concentrate on politics is exhausted by watching the discourse, horrified, through their fingers, as the entire mainstream seeks to chase off Reform politics by sounding exactly like it.
In other words, that’s pretty much everyone, as evidenced by Burnham’s favourability ratings last September, which were +7. Some other time we can worry about the state of the nation – that a single digit positive would be such a skyscraper on the political landscape – while every other leader is well underground. A YouGov poll this month put Keir Starmer equal with Trump, at -56, and less popular than everyone except Vladimir Putin and Hamas.
This saga isn’t going to end quietly, but nor is there anything obvious the Labour leadership could have done instead to assure its own survival, except maybe go back in time, be more pluralistic and respect the broad church that delivered its victory. Or, to put it simply, be completely different in almost every way. Instead, we have all the backstabbing of Game of Thrones and none of the dragons; the worst of all possible worlds.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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