There is some irony in the way that further “proof of concept” for Andy Burnham’s leadership of the Labour Party came in Sir Keir Starmer’s former seat of Holborn and St Pancras.
It has been proved that Labour under Mr Burnham could take on and defeat Reform UK. Now it has been shown that the new Labour leader can also see off his Green rival.
Indeed, Mr Burnham has brushed aside a by-election challenge from a Green candidate who happens to be that party’s leader, and was standing in a constituency tailor-made for the classic Green demographic – young, cosmopolitan, lots of students and renters, many passionate about the sufferings of the Palestinian people and still disillusioned with Labour’s response. Much of the campaign was conducted in a heatwave – a tangible warning about climate change. In short: ideal conditions, electorally.
A few months ago Mr Polanski would have walked such a contest, but the Burnham Bounce has squashed another victim. Yet Mr Polanski and his party have created enough problems for themselves, not least over their attitude to Zionism.
The Greens have many questions to answer about the nature of their party and its uneasy coalition of nimby environmentalists in places such as Suffolk and Herefordshire, and the more radical pro-Palestine socialist wing that makes up their core support in urban bases in the North West, the Midlands and London.
A cultish belief in the hypnotic Mr Polanski held them together for a time, but his leadership is clearly now in question. His best hope of survival is that there is no one obviously ready to succeed him. He’s the best they’ve got and, like Nigel Farage, he is a polarising personality.
For Labour there are no longer, or at least for the time being, such distractions. By the end of his time in office, Sir Keir, however history chooses to judge him, could neither take on the Greens or Reform, nor the SNP and Plaid Cymru for that matter. Mr Burnham has thus managed to achieve something that few others have – to renew a party with a change of leadership while it is still in office.
It is not just a matter of “positioning”, though the tilt leftwards has obviously yielded a useful political dividend. It has also become clear that Mr Burnham is simply a better, more instinctive politician than was Sir Keir – much more natural in debate and at the podium, a clearer communicator, and less likely to delegate and more liable to intervene when he sniffs trouble and opportunity alike.
In taking the initiative on Europe, on water, on social care and on cost-of-living issues he has enjoyed drawing useful dividing lines with rival parties, and thus discomfiting Kemi Badenoch and Mr Farage. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, have been left confused at Mr Burnham’s habit of agreeing with them. At the end of this political conference season, it is the right of British politics that is the more fragmented, and the “progressive” wing that is the more consolidated around the larger player, Labour.
All that said, Mr Burnham should not fall into the same trap that Mr Polanski waltzed into and start to believe his party’s own hype. The Greens invited their own downfall when they went around claiming that, under Mr Polanski, they had already replaced the Labour Party. Something of the same might also be said about Mr Farage’s attempt to pose as the “real” leader of the opposition and next prime minister.
Mr Burnham, therefore, is in a relatively strong position. Some recent local by-elections also support the polling picture of a Labour recovery. But it would be folly for him to go for an early election on such a flimsy basis, and the voters would neither thank him for the timing nor oblige any assumptions of an easy Labour win.
Labour’s comeback story still has a long way to go. Even now the party has not recovered the strength it enjoyed at the last general election – and in terms of the popular vote, that was not exactly overwhelming. The Greens and Reform remain formidable foes in many areas of the country Labour has to win in order to govern. As Sir John Curtice asked recently in conversation with The Independent: why would Mr Burnham sacrifice three whole years in government with a landslide majority for an extra two in office with little or no Commons majority at all? How will that help him get things done?
Whenever Mr Burnham does decide to seek his own personal mandate, he must do so with real achievements to his name – not just hopes. He enjoys the huge advantages of incumbency, which should not be lightly given up. In the coming months, the prime minister and his colleagues will have many opportunities to move beyond the honeymoon phase and win the respect of the electorate. There will be another difficult Budget, what he terms his Ten Year Plan, and renewed moves to reform welfare, fund defence and control migration. The Burnham Bounce cannot defy political gravity forever.
