The Burnham Quandary

Performances in the House of Commons can make or break reputations.

The improvement in Kemi Badenoch’s performance at PMQs correlates with how well she polls on ‘competence’. No wonder: according to reporting, she has been advised by David Cameron, who sparred with Tony Blair and delivered performances still quoted today.

In Sir Keir, Badenoch had a lumbering opponent, unable to sound sincere or pivot quickly. It was not always thus. Starmer’s deliberate approach worked to unpick Boris Johnson. His lawyerly interrogation often exposed hand-waving rhetoric as hollow.

Let this be a warning of how quickly the tables can turn.

So, how should Badenoch approach Andy Burnham?

For all that either would take it as an affront, Burnham reminds me a lot of Boris Johnson. He wears the role with a lightness and is effective at puncturing anything too earnest or too pleased with itself. Righteous anger can fall flat against someone who raises his eyebrows and gives the impression that everyone just needs to calm down.

Badenoch should play it straight until she understands the lay of the land. She should not crow, mock or try to repeat the approach that worked against Starmer. Burnham is more likely to play into the joke and ruin it. Nor should she become outraged unless he risks looking flippant. Her first task is to pin him to his weaknesses without giving him an easy means of puncturing the attack.

Those weaknesses are detail and internal confidence.

Early announcements have generated positive headlines, but Burnham has asked for the summer to put together a plan, despite Project Make Andy PM seemingly being a year old already. He has not yet faced systematic, detailed questioning. Badenoch should provide it, particularly given how quickly cracks have appeared in even headline pledges and claims about his record.

Nor is he guaranteed any loyalty from his colleagues. Burnham was not so much elected by the Parliamentary Labour Party as he was the default beneficiary of a collective mental breakdown which ended in getting rid of Starmer. In this regard, he is the slightly too-short fringe the PLP has cut with kitchen scissors following a bad breakup.

Darren Jones’s intervention neatly encapsulates both vulnerabilities, pointing out that Burnham was paying for a VAT cut by cutting a non-existent budget. There probably aren’t enough Starmerites to fill a lift, but they are likely to prove useful sources of information. Badenoch should use what they give her. The strongest attacks will appear to be hers alone and allow Burnham’s weaknesses, Johnson-style, to reveal themselves.

Tired of winning

The question of unity extends beyond PMQs. As we saw with the 2019 Tory intake, there is a lot to fear from a large majority containing seats that would not have been won in almost any other circumstance.

What, for example, does Burnham have to offer a West Country Labour MP with a wafer-thin majority in what is ostensibly a Conservative-Lib Dem marginal?

He will need to manage parliamentary relationships and secure wins across the party. More importantly, he must show hard evidence that his strategy is working if a skittish cohort is to hold its nerve through the rough patches. Otherwise, and especially with the apparent retreat from the traditional whipping operation, I expect the PLP to fracture into caucuses as MPs scramble to protect themselves before an electorate unlikely to reproduce such a freak result.

One possible advantage of an early election, provided Labour performed strongly, is that Burnham could shed the 30 or so most at risk and secure a smaller but more directable parliamentary majority.

The election question

On which topic, Burnham has of course been entirely clear. It won’t happen.

Just as Theresa May (re-elected June 2017) said in March 2017.

There is no safe choice. Burnham will never be as popular as he is now, but an election would subject him to weeks of scrutiny before he has filled in the blank page: forcing him to provide detail and take positions he may later regret.

Against that, Labour looks likely to retain the Manchester mayoralty, Farage and his party are in their worst disarray since their post-Brexit reinvention, the Greens have all but disappeared from the narrative and the Conservatives continue to drag in national polling. The Tory numbers seem soft to me, but there is only one way to know for certain.

If Burnham can effect a rates cut, secure a good Budget narrative and use the half-year economic figures as a launchpad, I suspect an election in spring 2027 could begin to look fairly appealing.

And, as they say, who dares, wins.