When mischievously invited by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to offer some public advice to his successor Andy Burnham, Keir Starmer tactfully declined — at least for now. Stanley Baldwin, outgoing British prime minister in 1937, promised that when he left office he wouldn’t “speak to the man on the bridge or spit on the deck,” and kept his word. Baldwin, however, was an exception among his peers; in practice, few former prime ministers can resist semaphoring the new captain.
Had Starmer taken up Badenoch’s challenge in the House of Commons last week, he would have given short shrift to Burnham’s stated ambition to turn his back on foreign affairs to focus on the home front. In a catty interview with The Independent, former Tory Prime Minister John Major, however, articulated the thought: “Mr Burnham has had great success with buses (as Mayor of Greater Manchester), I am told. A little different from dealing with Trump, Xi, Macron and Merz.”Burnham can laugh off Major, who complained of backseat driving by his own predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, only to offer unwelcome advice to almost all of his successors. He will also have noted that Starmer was mocked as “Never Here Keir” by the tabloids for summiteering abroad while ducking difficult decisions at home. Still, foreign affairs leave a large domestic footprint on a medium-sized power like the UK.
