Andy Burnham could scrap plans to merge police forces in England and Wales, Sky News reported on Wednesday – a move that would delight Labour grass-roots but intensify calls for the former health secretary to seize the moment and trigger a snap general election.
The Greater Manchester mayor, already installed as Labour’s dominant figure after Keir Starmer’s limp exit – “It ended not with a bang but a whimper,” one observer noted – now finds himself besieged by a party united in its desperation. MPs from the soft-Left, hard-Left and Blue Labour factions have “kissed the ring”, crowding for selfies, united in the belief that “Andy is their last hope”. His vision of “the productive state” has become the party’s inchoate rallying cry.
“Andy Burnham could scrap police merger plans as allies urge him to call a snap general election.”
Yet governing the country is a different order of magnitude to running city-regions or the NHS. And these are not the best of times: a once-in-a-century fragmentation of the two-party system, wage repression, a collapsing public realm, rising tax and debt burdens, and international gilt traders circling like sharks. Starmer, in a final confessional, promised to be a better husband and father – a sign of how low Labour had sunk. Burnham, by contrast, is “Mr Labour”, a protean politician who grasps his party instinctively.
His strength, according to allies, lies not in his policy platform – which remains a confused set of woolly principles – but in his charisma, both within the party and among the public. To survive beyond 2029, the PM-in-waiting should exploit his honeymoon period by calling an early election, while he is still the unassailable king. The argument runs that he should double down on radical constitutional reform: replacing the House of Lords with an elected Senate of the Regions; maximum devolution to municipalities; proportional representation for the Commons. That would lock in centre-left coalition governance for a generation.
Incremental Leftward shifts already underway – nationalised rail, a public energy firm, a sovereign wealth fund, a higher minimum wage – could be repackaged as the start of genuine national renewal. But the clock is ticking. Once the cultural-political projections of his “Manchesterism” are sullied by time and close reading, the moment will pass. Whether Burnham has the stomach for a snap election – or the wisdom to scrap the police merger first – remains an open question.