Andy Burnham risks entering Downing Street without the urgency, preparation or clear plan needed to govern, a former senior Whitehall official has warned.
Helen MacNamara, the former deputy cabinet secretary, said the Labour leadership hopeful’s team need to demonstrate the “urgency and ruthlessness” required to make the transition into government.
Speaking on the latest episode of The Independent’s political podcast In The Room, MacNamara said Burnham’s camp needed to have “a clear template in their heads of what good governing looks like” for the UK and not just Manchester or Makerfield.
“I don’t know whether this is just how our political class is now, or whether it’s a Labour Party problem, but they feel extremely intellectually incurious about the business of governing,” she said.
Her warning came after Burnham was sworn in as an MP on Monday, just hours after Sir Keir Starmer delivered his resignation speech outside Downing Street. His arrival was met with whoops and cheers from supporters, as well as some heckling from the opposition benches. One Tory MP shouted “Rome is saved!”, while another offered a Monty Python-inspired response: “He’s not the messiah.”
MacNamara’s co-host, the former No 10 special adviser Cleo Watson, raised similar concerns. She cited reports that former transport secretary Louise Haigh had been asking MPs which jobs they would like in a Burnham-led government – “basically, the opposite of what you should be doing,” MacNamara said.
Watson said: “When you talk to people about these jobs, what you want to be able to say is, ‘These are the five priorities I want to happen with housing. That’s what I want you to deliver. Are you comfortable with that?’”
Instead, Watson said she had heard of more informal conversations in which MPs put forward their own ideas. She characterised the response from Burnham’s team as: “Yeah, cool, man. That sounds good. Note that down, somebody.”
“I just think: oh, no,” she said. “Are we about to sleepwalk or sleeprun into a similar situation that we’ve just had?”
MacNamara said her wider concern was the apparent lack of urgency surrounding preparations for a possible new government.
“The pace is miles off,” she said. “When you’re working right at the heart of power, you haven’t got time to be wondering and thinking. Where is the pace, and the urgency, and the ruthlessness about the planning and delivery? That’s the thing that bothers me.”
Both MacNamara and Watson have worked inside government during periods of political transition. MacNamara said those around Burnham were likely to be experiencing competing feelings as the prospect of power moved closer.
“The mood in Andy Burnham’s camp is gonna be a mix of euphoria and fear, neither of which are very helpful. The excitement, as you get close to actual power, sends people giddy and a bit mad. We’ve both seen that a lot,” she said.
“And the second thing is fear. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is you get the thing that you wanted. And you’re not ready. There are real rhymes of history in this situation. Are there massively mature transition plans? Has he got a really clear idea about exactly who’s gonna do which job?
“Does anybody believe that Andy Burnham is more ready to become prime minister than Keir Starmer was in 2024? I don’t think so.”
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