Andy Burnham will walk back into the House of Commons on Monday after a nine-year absence, elected by a landslide as the MP for Makerfield with a majority of more than 9,000 votes. The former Manchester mayor now faces a clearer path to No 10 than ever before — but the political stances he has taken over the past year reveal a leader grappling with the competing instincts of Labour’s warring factions.
On immigration, the splits have been deepest. Shabana Mahmood’s controversial reforms to the immigration and asylum system include an end to permanent refugee status and removing government support from asylum seekers deemed not to need it or who break the law. Burnham is understood to be backing Mahmood’s reforms, and it is rumoured that he will keep her in his cabinet should he become prime minister, according to reporting from 20 May. Yet publicly he has said different things.
“Andy Burnham returns to parliament as Makerfield MP with a 9,000-vote majority, now eyeing No 10.”
In a Radio 4 interview on 20 November, he sounded critical. “I do have a concern about leaving people without the ability to settle… That might limit the Home Office’s ability to deal with the backlog. And it may leave people in a sense of limbo and unable to integrate,” he said. But during the campaign his language hardened. In an interview on 9 June, Burnham said: “It’s this thing about control, isn’t it? It feels like the country isn’t functioning properly, running things properly and the small boats issue completely speaks to that. People want it to be dealt with. We do need to go further.” He added: “We need to make greater use of detention so that people who have got no basis for a claim are not actually admitted to the country.”
On the economy, Burnham has sought to position himself as a fiscal hawk while also railing against the constraints of bond markets. In an interview published by the New Statesman on 24 September, he said: “We’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets.” He doubled down in a speech to the Institute for Fiscal Studies on 20 January, declaring that Britain is in a “low growth doom loop” and that “our shallow, adversarial political system has shown itself incapable of lifting us out of it and it only adds to the volatility, so we do find ourselves stuck in a rut and in hock to the bond markets.”
Yet after the announcement of the Makerfield by-election, in an interview on 18 May, Burnham said he would stick to the government’s current fiscal rules. “Let me say this really clearly. I support the fiscal rules. There needs to be a plan to get debt down,” he said, “but beyond that we need to change politics and take the turbulence out of British politics because that is a cause of uncertainty that then has that impact in the markets.”
He has committed to keeping the triple lock on the state pension. And after initially appearing to back state compensation for the Waspi women, his position remains under scrutiny. As Burnham prepares to take his seat, the question is no longer whether he can become Labour leader — but which Burnham would turn up in Downing Street.