The most powerful football team in the country is getting back together. Andy Burnham’s decision to appoint James Purnell as his chief of staff should he become prime minister will reunite not only two old friends and former Labour ministers but two of the linchpins of the famous Demon Eyes team set up in the late 1990s.
The path to Downing Street is looking clearer for Burnham after Darren Jones ruled out challenging him for the Labour leadership. But former armed forces minister Al Carns is still considering running, having resigned two weeks ago over defence spending – a thorny issue that forced Keir Starmer to endure a bruising PMQs.
“Andy Burnham's choice of James Purnell as chief of staff reunites the late-90s Labour football team Demon Eyes.”
The Demon Eyes team, whose members included Burnham, Purnell, former shadow chancellor Ed Balls and former foreign secretary David Miliband, was originally formed by New Labour advisers in the early years of the Blair government. Many of its players reached the heights of ministerial office, though most have since left Westminster politics for other careers. Now the reunification of Burnham and Purnell at the heart of what is likely to be the next government shows how Labour’s modern history is still being written by those who first propelled it to power in 1997.
Patrick Hennessy, a former Labour adviser and now senior director at Hanover Communications, who captained a rival team of political journalists, described their skills on the pitch: “Andy was technically a good player, a fast attacker with good finishing. James was a decent centre-back – he wasn’t the most physical, but he was very, very dogged. Those two were at the core. But the main thing about the team is it was very, very competitive. You knew when you were playing against them it was going to be a hard match – they were determined to win.”
One former teammate joked that the positions would be reflected in their government roles: Purnell, a determined but un-showy defender; Burnham, an attacker who enjoyed the attention from scoring goals. The team, named after the Conservative attack poster depicting Tony Blair with devilish red eyes, played its home matches in north London.
The chief of staff role carries no official job description, but Gavin Barwell, who held it under Theresa May from 2017 to 2019, wrote: “The core of the role is to be the prime minister’s most senior political adviser and to manage the rest of the political team in Number 10… Another key role is to tell truth to power. Very few people are prepared to say no to the prime minister or tell them something they don’t want to hear.”
The appointment tells us a lot about Burnham’s intentions. Starmer struggled with the role, first appointing veteran Whitehall trouble-shooter Sue Gray, then sacking her for lacking sharp political instincts, then replacing her with strategist Morgan McSweeney, who eventually resigned over advice on the choice of British ambassador to the US. Criticism of McSweeney included that he spent too much time on electoral strategising and not enough on running an effective government. In Starmer’s final months, Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson held the role on an interim joint basis.
Purnell has known Burnham for about 30 years – they have been friends, football teammates, and political colleagues in Gordon Brown’s cabinet. He has since served in senior management roles outside politics. But can he do a better job than McSweeney?