September 12, 2025.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham is celebrating his tenth anniversary as Labour leader, with speculation growing that he intends to bow out of British politics.
After eight years in Downing Street, he is rumoured to be the favourite to become president of the European Commission, bringing senior-level political clout but a low-key style to the EU’s fractious relationship with the Trump administration.
A committed pro-European, Burnham was widely credited with a successful intervention during the Brexit referendum campaign helping to keep Britain in the European Union.
He subsequently beat Theresa May in the snap general election of 2017, following the Tory party’s implosion over the Brexit result, which forced the resignation of David Cameron as prime minister.
After convincing Germany of the need to tighten borders and limit immigration into Britain with a mixture of charm and quiet tenacity, Burnham won a second term in May 2021.
His widely admired leadership through the Covid pandemic – an empathetic style and consensual approach – were considered to have brought the country together…
Okay, enough hagiography, but the serious point is that Labour politics is full of ‘sliding doors’ moments; counterfactuals and credible what-might-have-beens.
Think how differently our political history might look if Roy Jenkins had won the leadership in 1976, or if Tony Benn had pipped Denis Healey in the 1981 deputy’s race. The 2015 leadership election – ten years ago today – being another case in point.
The race to succeed the defeated Ed Miliband following the 2015 general election seemed to be Burnham’s for the taking: Similar soft-left politics to Miliband but with sharper political skills, he represented a software upgrade but with no danger of downloading Blairite malware.
As we know, ‘twas not to be.
Miliband’s decision to soften party membership rules allowed hundreds of thousands to join the party for £3 – many maliciously – just to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership contest.
Having started as little more than the left’s dutiful standard-bearer, Corbyn’s new army of supporters propelled him to victory – gobbling-up three-fifths of the vote – with Burnham edging Yvette Cooper for second place (19/17%), while full-fat Blairite, Liz Kendall, was left trailing with just 4% of the vote.
The rest of the tale is familiar enough.
The wild oscillations in Labour’s fortunes over the past decade – swirling from the Corbynite hard left to the Starmerite right – hitting rock bottom in the 2019 election, only to bounce back with the thumping 170-majority just five years later – are head-spinning.
A decidedly less dramatic and certainly less traumatic future was available with a Burnham leadership. The prospect of him synthesising the best of the party’s traditions – a Goldilocks politics of modernity with tradition – could have been a winning formula.
A contrast, certainly, to Blairite permanent revolution and Gordon Brown’s listless tenure in Number 10, while being less geeky and more effective than Miliband.
As a politician, Burnham is more reminiscent of John Smith than anyone else. Overwritten by the scale of Blair’s 1997 victory, Smith led Labour for two successful and collegiate years between Neil Kinnock’s agonizing defeat in April 1992 and his own untimely death in May 1994.
Yes, there was less reforming zeal than Blair eventually brought to proceedings, but there was also a remarkable calm. And that mattered. Ideological battles were avoided with Smith’s successful performances doing much to lift the spirits of a demoralised party and set it up for eventual victory in 1997.
So here we are a decade later; a lost decade at that. Yet rather than bowing out, Burnham remains the prince across the water. Well, across the Manchester Ship Canal at any rate.
The ever-watchful, ever-ready ‘King of the North’ and one of the few Labour politicians of his generation with a record of achievement to point to, transforming the fortunes of the Greater Manchester conurbation he has led since 2017 into the fastest-growing city outside London.
Eight years younger than Keir Starmer, Burnham remains positioned as a future leader, despite his two previous tilts at the top job (he also stood in 2010). As of yet he has no sure-fire way back to Westminster. But staying power is the most important attribute in a political career and Burnham has it in abundance.
The obvious counterpoint to Burnham is that you sometimes need to bounce a political party and its activists out of their comfort zone to connect with the wider electorate and he isn’t willing to do that.
Fair enough, but sometimes bringing calm purpose, respecting the various traditions, having a decent track record and, yes, being a nice bloke is enough.
And all that was available to Labour a decade ago.
