𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Speculation is rife about a potential leadership challenge to Labour’s Keir Starmer by Greater Manchester Mayor – Andy Burnham. And whilst our current Prime Minister might be about as popular with the British Public as a fart in a spacesuit, Labour are kidding themselves that a change of leader (or two) is going to solve their problems and reverse their fortunes anytime soon.

Like the Tories before them, they have no vision, no real solutions and lack the political will to get to grips with the serious and challenging problems that our great country is facing.

I stood against Burnham in the Greater Manchester Mayoral election in 2024. I cannot claim to know him personally, but in my experience he is personable and certainly a far better communicator than Sir Keir Starmer. But do not be fooled into thinking that Andy Burnham is the answer to this failing government’s, or indeed, the nation’s problems. He is a socialist and a dangerous one at that.

At a time when the country is leaning right on many key issues from immigration to the economy, Burnham is politically left of Starmer and much of the current Labour Cabinet, and he has been, at times, both a Blairite and a Corbynite.

Nowadays, he presents himself as a soft-left populist figure appealing to centrists and the lanyard-wearing wokerati of metropolitan Manchester.

The fact is, it is hard to say what Andy Burnham really stands for and many who know him well say that he has as many faces as a town-hall clock.

If anyone thinks that Andy Burnham or a Labour government led by him is going to do anything to stop the boats, close the migrant hotels, reduce the ever-growing welfare bill, or tackle the job-destroying net zero agenda that is deindustrialising the country, then you only need to look at his record to see that he will double down on the green agenda, that he has nothing to say on illegal immigration, that he would rather impose a wealth tax than tackle indolence in people who can and should be working and that even his own party accuse him of ‘fantasy politics’ around the economy and delivering growth.

Then there is his track-record as Mayor of Greater Manchester.

For a city and a region that would have done well anyway, with or without a Mayor, Burnham has had more money and more power than anyone else outside London, and after nearly 9 years in office, the results are underwhelming.

At the time of writing, his flagship achievement – the nationalisation of the buses – are affected by industrial action due to bus drivers demanding better pay and conditions – can anyone say they are surprised?

Burnham’s development of the city centre area is champagne socialism at its very worst – gleaming new towers full of high specification flats now dominate the skyline. But you don’t have to drive far to find plenty of areas and people who feel left-behind. Given that much of this development has been financially assisted by the tax-payer funded Greater Manchester Housing Investment Fund – where is all the affordable housing?

His housing development plan – Placing for Everyone – is a charter for the wilful destruction of the green belt across the city region. Instead of providing housing quicker, cheaper and closer to existing services and transport links by developing Greater Manchester’s abundant supply of brownfield land, Burnham has chosen to promote a plan whose chief benefactors seem to be the developers that will make handsome profits building expensive housing estates on some of the region’s most treasured and beautiful green belt areas – and once again – the thing that is most obviously lacking in all of this is the affordable housing.

And then there is the charging clean air zone that he tried to impose on the region: after years of uncertainty and anxiety for businesses, road-users and residents alike, the scheme has been unceremoniously scrapped at a cost of over £100M to tax-payers, with no apology and without a satisfactory explanation from Burnham himself.

And what of Burnham’s vision for government? Well if his writings are anything to go by, then he supports constitutional changes which would make the innovations implemented by Blair and New Labour look like tinkering around the edges and deliver a socialist dystopia which would embed and deepen the growing sense of unfairness and division which already pervades our country.

After almost 30 years of a socialist Blairite agenda initiated by New Labour, perpetuated by the Tories and now Labour again, the country is running aground: everything that should be going down is going up: illegal immigration, inflation, taxes, the national debt, unemployment and the welfare bill. Everything that should be going up is going down: business confidence, investment, wages in real terms, real GDP and our standing in the world.

Unfortunately, the alternatives to Keir Starmer is a hobson’s choice of: Wes Streeting, Ed Milliband and perhaps even Andy Burnham, if he can make it back to Westminster. But none of these individuals or the Cabinet, or the Labour MP’s are capable and willing to grasp the nettle of the serious and pressing issues that face the country right now.

The only real hope for the country is a change of government: a Reform UK government led by Nigel Farage with a Cabinet and MP’s who are serious about delivering change. The silver lining in this leadership challenge to Keir Starmer is that wherever it comes from it will bring that much needed general election a step closer and hopefully, earlier as well.