Welcome to the cabaret, Andy Burnham. Last year, the editor of this magazine wrote about ‘Weimar Britain’: the fear that political instability, economic turmoil and rising anti-Semitism was making our country as decadent and dangerous as inter-war Germany. As our sixth prime minister of the post-Brexit decade departs, and our seventh looms into view, we have developed a national addiction to perma-crisis, seemingly trapped in a game of ‘Topple the PM’. We are far from a January 1933 moment. But the joke isn’t funny any more.
This turbulence is not inescapable, though. What is needed is a premier able to stay the course, to set out how they want to change Britain and to discover the drive and charisma to bring their party and the country with them. What is needed is a narrative; not soulless spin or a fairy story about what could be done, but a set of values to believe in and a vision to embrace. Keir Starmer had many failings as prime minister, but his inability to explain why he wanted the job and what he sought to do with it was his earliest, greatest and, ultimately, fatal flaw.
Maybe this time, we’ll be lucky. In his nine years as the mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham has proved adept at projecting a sense of mission.
