Tomorrow, Andy Burnham will become Britain’s 59th Prime Minister. The team around him has been strikingly circumspect when it comes to setting out his plans. But this weekend we are starting to get some smoke signals via the Sunday papers. The new PM will back licences for drilling at the Rosebank and Jackdaw gas fields. Thames Water, Britain’s largest water supplier, is likely to be placed in special measures over £18bn owed to creditors. Plans for digital ID and the abolition of jury trials will be scrapped, with the post of AI minister upgraded to cabinet rank. Around a third of the cabinet are expected to be sacked and the Departments for Business and Technology overhauled too.
Like Brown, Burnham will enjoy something of a honeymoon – if only because he is not his predecessor
The transition from Keir Starmer to Burnham has echoes of the handover between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the last time a Labour leader enjoyed a coronation. On coming to office in 2007, Brown scrapped his predecessor’s more unpopular policies like ID cards, signalling he wanted to be a champion of civil liberties. He stripped back Blair’s perceived excesses, dumping plans for a Manchester ‘super casino’ and a £10 million VIP jet. There were travelling cabinet meetings to reconnect Westminster with the country – an initiative that resembles Burnham’s plans for a ‘No. 10 North.’ Much like Brown, the new PM clearly feels unbound by his predecessor’s commitments and will use the handover to ‘strip the barnacles’ off the government boat.
Some of Burnham’s proposed changes seem sensible, while others look more like gimmicks. Drilling at Rosebank and Jackdaw is expected to be justified on the grounds that these licences were approved before 2024 – hence remaining faithful to Labour’s manifesto for ‘no new licences.’ Burnham’s reasoning here will be read as a tell for how much he intends to stick to the document on which every other Labour MP was elected.
An AI minister at the cabinet table seems prudent, especially given the impressive performance of Kanishka Narayan, the incumbent. But the briefings around merging the newly-created Department for Science and Technology with the Department for Business and Trade suggest that AI risks being crowded out in the Burnham government. Thames Water was a headache that Starmer never managed to solve, despite featuring on Sue Gray’s pre-election ‘shitlist’. Clearly, officials feel that the issue cannot be deferred until the end of the parliament.
Like Brown, twenty years ago, Burnham will enjoy something of a honeymoon – if only because he is not his predecessor. His arrival in office tomorrow marks the zenith of his authority. As one minister joked this week, ‘it’s all downhill from here.’ If Burnham is to succeed, he needs to use this time sensibly. Top of his list ought to be whether to call an early election: the subject which ultimately did for Brown’s authority.
