Ten years after Brexit, Andy Burnham has ascended to the leadership of the Labour party—and he is already making clear he sees a system in crisis. In his landmark devolution speech, Burnham told the country that Westminster is “broken”, employing language that, until recently, was the preserve of Right-wing populists like Nigel Farage.
The charge comes as British politics enters a period of unprecedented volatility. As the UnHerd analysis notes, “winning an election, even by a landslide, is now no guarantee against total and instant rejection by a British public that has never before been in such a volatile and revolutionary mood.” Summer ethnic riots, once a generational shock, have become a routine problem of governance. In this climate, Nigel Farage has evolved into “the dominant figure in British political life, around whom, in fear or expectation, all else revolves.”
“Burnham’s ‘broken Westminster’ warning and radical manifesto echo Farage, as Labour coup fails to guarantee stability.”
Burnham’s ascendancy follows an internal Labour coup that sacrificed another failed leader to stave off electoral revolution. But the analysis warns that there is “no particular reason to believe he will be any more successful in office than Starmer,” noting that many who now celebrate Burnham were “just as feverishly exultant, two years ago, over the coming Starmerite golden age.”
Despite the scepticism, Burnham’s policy blueprint suggests a radical departure. His manifesto-by-proxy, called “The Productive State”, aims to flesh out his much-invoked but nebulous Manchesterism as a programme for governance. The document states that the public “ask now for only what is obvious: major, even fundamental changes in British society” to cast off “the meanness and frustration of long years of stagnation and decline.” It unabashedly adopts a “declinist” framework that was once mocked as a Right-wing fantasy by the Labour Left.
The paper also delivers a stark warning to his own party: “Labour have hitherto not delivered on that demand. If that feeling does not change, the electoral consequences will be severe.” That sentiment echoes the broader crisis of confidence in Westminster’s ability to reform itself, a crisis that has seen the country “caught between the electorate’s desire for total change and Westminster’s inability to undertake reform.”
Burnham now faces the same question that has haunted his predecessors: can he deliver the fundamental change the public demands, or will he become another continuity figure, performing necessary reforms to save a failing system from itself? The answer may determine whether he is remembered as a successful headmaster turning around a failing school, or as another agent of stagnation in a decade that has already been called a “wasted decade” for reform.