Starmer: ‘Andy Burnham would be Labour’s Liz Truss’

Starmer’s attack is extraordinary. Truly gloves off. After days of pressure, the PM has taken to the airwaves to say that Labour under Andy Burnham would “harm” working people, comparing the Greater Manchester mayor to Liz Truss.

He said he would not “get drawn into commenting on the mayor’s personal ambitions”, but added: “I do want to be really clear about our fiscal rules, because economic stability is the foundation stone of this government.

“It was three years ago this week that Liz Truss showed what happens if you abandon fiscal rules. In her case, she did that for tax cuts, but the same would happen if it was spending.”

Reaching for a comparison to Liz Truss - a hapless incumbent whose premiership famously saw markets crash as she lasted in power for less than the shelf life of a lettuce - is punchy. But Starmer is on the ropes.

Labour MPs, disillusioned with the state of their party a year after its landslide election victory, privately admit to anyone who will listen that they want the Manchester mayor to oust the PM.

Many believe they are already out of a job the next time voters go to the polls. Before the summer recess, Scottish Labour MPs joked nervously that there were only “three of them coming back” to Westminster next time around. At the last election, they took 37 seats north of the border. That is how funereal things have become. A new Ipsos poll this week shows Starmer’s party haemorrhaging support to Nigel Farage’s Reform up there, where it is Starmer’s rock bottom ratings that are weighing the party down.

Few within the Labour Party think Burnham is a perfect candidate. After all, this is a man who, at the sprightly age of 55, has already lost the Labour leadership twice. In 2010 he was too young, but in 2015 he found himself unable to stem the red wave that lifted Jeremy Corbyn to power, aided as it was by previous Labour leader Ed Miliband’s decision to allow members of the public who paid £3 to vote in the leadership contest.

But what MPs argue now is that backing Burnham is a necessity because of how the land is likely to lie when the dust settles on the next election. The dirty word on Labour lips is “coalition”. That is, faced with a right-wing bloc, which will include Reform and the Conservative party, Labour will be forced to do a deal with other parties such as the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

Burnham, who has proven himself gifted at winning friends and reaching across the aisles during his time in Manchester, has shown himself to other parties as “a man they can deal with”, one Labour MP told me. Starmer, evidently, has not.

As the party relocates to Liverpool, the attention on Burnham will remind many of how Boris Johnson used to dominate Conservative party conferences from the political wilderness – dragging all the attention away from whoever happened to be the hapless Tory leader at the time. The spotlight will be trained on Burnham from his first fringe event the day the conference kicks off on Sunday, right through until its final hours, which will be dominated by deputy leadership hustings, featuring his close political ally and fellow Manchester MP Lucy Powell.

She has been at the centre of speculation that she could offer Burnham the first step in his campaign on Downing Street – a way back into Westminster.

Last week, the Labour MP, Andrew Gwynne, another Manchester MP, was forced to publicly say that he did not intend to quit and offer Burnham his seat in a by-election. There is still speculation, however, that he could do some sort of job swap with Powell, were she to win the deputy leadership contest. The polls suggest she is on course to do just that, running against No 10’s preferred candidate, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary.

In any case, Burnham himself has also changed. He has been busily building up his own support network, Mainstream, for “radical realists”. It’s a leftish version of the Starmerite Labour Together grouping. This time around, he has their support, which insiders believe can be scaled up as a leadership campaign tool, much like Momentum was for Corbyn.

He’s also a much more relaxed character than the slick and unrelatable “suited and booted” health secretary he presented as under Gordon Brown’s government.

A few months ago, I contacted him to tell him he was being talked about on BBC Radio 5 Live. The presenters, comedians John Robins and Elis James, did not want to pick his brains about politics. No, they were suggesting to their producer that they should get music lover Burnham to DJ their upcoming club night. That is the kind of “of the people” thing, of course, that Angela Rayner, the party’s former deputy leader, once tipped as Starmer’s successor before she was forced to resign last month, would have jumped at. So, of course, Burnham made a special guest appearance spinning the decks.

Whether it comes to playing the tunes at a local club night or the heights of British politics, Burnham clearly fancies a tilt. No 10 should steel itself for a potential shuffling of the decks.