Keir Starmer is finished. Whether he goes today, tomorrow or in a few months’ time, it’s all over. The Peter Mandelson scandal made sure of that, and the only question being asked in Parliament is who’s going to replace him. The Labour MPs I speak to tell me the leadership contest will most likely be between Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood – Streeting is already doing lots of campaigning behind the scenes.
The other name being touted for leader and saviour of the Labour Party – largely by himself – is the twice-failed Labour leader contender, windbag of the North and current Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham. He is definitely not the solution to the problems facing the country or the Labour Party. Burnham is just Starmer with a northern accent. Like Starmer he believes in nothing but his own personal ambition.
A political chameleon who will say anything if he thinks there is an extra vote in it for him, one moment he’s a Blairite, the next he’s a Corbynista.
He even plays at being a Scouser then drives along the M62 and becomes Mancunian. He’s equally partial to a U-turn – he introduced a congestion charge and then scrapped it at the first sign of a backlash – and is happy to take the credit for others’ work: despite the impression he likes to give, it was Theresa May who delivered the Hillsborough Inquiry.
Supporters say his achievements as Mayor make him the man for the job, but his time in office coincided with the Tory government pumping billions into northern cities.
All the subsidy-junkie Burnham has done – like any good socialist – is to spend other people’s money and whinge he wants more.
We also mustn’t forget the Greater Manchester Police scandal where 80,000 crimes were lost in 2020 and although Burnham is Police and Crime Commissioner, he passed the buck; nor his failure to support rape gang inquiries in his area.
Burnham is another out of touch, Metropolitan elite Leftie who has spent virtually all of his adult life in politics. He hasn’t come from the background of a real job, despite the impression he tries to give as a professional northerner.
His policies are no different to Starmer’s. He supports nationalisation and Labour’s ballooning welfare bill, and he’s looking for ways to get back into the EU by the back door, and he supports wealth taxes which will destroy the economy.
When he was last in Parliament, he was renowned for being a vacuous windbag. If he ever does replace Starmer, we won’t notice the difference – apart from the accent of course.