Now that Labour MPs seem confident that Andy Burnham is the only possible answer to whatever question their party has been asking over the past few months, the party really needs to face up to some even bigger questions. Does their likely new leader have the stomach for what needs to be done to really fix Britain? Perhaps even more importantly, do those MPs have the stomach too?
One of the most painful questions that Burnham is going to have to answer quite early on is how precisely he proposes to cut the benefits bill. Projected to hit £400bn by the end of the decade, welfare spending is out of control and poorly designed to the extent that people are often trapped on benefits rather than being able to return to work. Keir Starmer didn’t manage to get his proposals for reform past his own MPs: in fact, those crude £5bn worth cuts from the Treasury to disability and sickness benefits ended up damaging his authority so badly, some in Labour see the rebellion over the welfare reform bill in June last year as the beginning of the end for his leadership.
Since then, welfare has been juxtaposed with defence spending by former Nato chief George Robertson and others, and Kemi Badenoch is almost certain to raise it as a topic in the first few Prime Minister’s Questions that Burnham takes. So what is he going to do?
