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Labour MPs today lined up to kiss the feet of their new king and Britain’s inevitable next prime minister, Andy Burnham. Nominations from the Parliamentary Labour party to take over from Sir Keir Starmer opened this morning, with Burnham confirming in a social media video that his expected coronation is ‘starting to feel very real’.
When it comes to the crunch issues of slashing the welfare bill and cracking down on immigration, there is only so much group therapy that some MPs can take before they descend into another heated spat
Backbenchers from across the PLP posted pictures of themselves pledging allegiance to the MP for Makerfield. For the first time in a while, a palpable sense of optimism and unity swept through Labour’s ideologically disparate ranks.
How long this togetherness will last is, of course, anyone’s guess. It is all well and good for Burnham to promise to turn the whips’ office into a health and wellbeing retreat, where the Socialist Campaign Group and Blairites can hold hands and sing kumbaya. But when it comes to the crunch issues of slashing the welfare bill and cracking down on immigration, there is only so much group therapy that some MPs can take before they descend into another heated spat. Speaking to the BBC, Burnham’s close ally and former cabinet minister Louise Haigh was confident his approach would pay off. She said the former Manchester mayor had been ‘planning’ to overhaul both the party and the country ‘for at least the last year’.
