Andy Burnham will refresh Labour, but won’t change Britain’s statecraft
The Burnham premiership looks more likely to provide an opportunity for a Labour Party reset than it does a re-appraisal of national statecraft and strategy. But the two are intrinsically connected.
This post explores the relationship between politics and security in Andy Burnham’s preparation to enter Downing Street. The term “statecraft” can be used in two senses: Jim Bulpitt’s domestic political, electoral notion of “party statecraft”; and the more traditional view of it as the adroit use of the instruments of national power to achieve strategic goals. This post reflects on some of the ways in which those two senses of the term interact and how Andy Burnham will need to navigate between them.
One of the established stories about Keir Starmer’s premiership is of a failure to prepare properly for government while in opposition. Even Morgan McSweeney admits this now. Where the blame truly lies for this will be argued about for years to come, but ultimately it was Keir Starmer’s premiership that was being prepared.
What is undeniable is that Starmer’s premiership was at once very short and longer than it should have been. The political logic of replacing Starmer was evident quite quickly. But it took a longer time for that change to happen – unsurprising, of course, in that it’s not easy to remove a prime minister who resists, who accepts only at the last the necessity for change.
Andy Burnham will enter office imminently, in circumstances very different to those Starmer inherited when he replaced Jeremy Corbyn. The big question is: how much does Andy Burnham really want to change? Ostensibly, not very much.
Any effort to significantly reshape Britain’s established mode of statecraft (John Bew has written about this concept and how it relates to Burnham, though his argument is different) – how the government uses its various tools of defence, economic, foreign and security policy – and to seriously reconsider the ways in which the “special relationship” has long anchored British strategy, would need strong commitment from the prime minister. We have as yet no evidence Burnham is interested in doing any of that.
From 2001, Burnham served Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as a loyal MP, with no dissent from New Labour foreign policy. Several of the names in the frame for senior appointments under Burnham are from this era, including his confirmed continuity national security adviser (Jonathan Powell) and possible foreign secretary (David Miliband). None of this screams “intent to depart from the foreign policy status quo” – although David Miliband as foreign secretary might conceivably cultivate sharper relations with Trump’s administration. (I still think the best use of Miliband would be as a substantial politically-appointed UK Ambassador to the UN in New York – there would be no better signal of Burnham’s commitment to multilateralism. Throw in a seat on the NSC to make it more appealing to Miliband. But it sounds like it might be Foreign Secretary or nothing.)
Burnham hasn’t been in Westminster since 2017 and his scope for staking out foreign policy positions as a Mayor was limited. In contrast, he has been able to articulate a bolder commitment to a more pluralistic politics, meaning his premiership could be an opportunity for a more open approach to government.
Where Labour has lost progressive voters to Zack Polanski’s Green Party, Burnham can feasibly win some back with a more plural domestic agenda, including a manifesto commitment to proportional representation. But some clear departures from Starmer’s foreign policy are also likely to be useful in securing the return of a sizeable bloc of these voters to Labour. What are the prospects for such a shift?
It is clear that Starmer’s statements regarding Gaza cost Labour the support of many voters ahead of the 2024 elections. Burnham enters office with the Middle East in a different phase of tension, so the challenges he faces are different. Moreover, UK policy has also evolved, including Starmer’s belated recognition of a Palestinian state in September 2025. Being realistic about the limited influence of the UK over outcomes, there will still be a need for Burnham to respond to developments in the region. This includes further fluctuations in the “ceasefire” between Iran and Israel/the US, as well as Israel’s military intervention in Lebanon, and the possibility of still further violence in Gaza and the West Bank, not least ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to hold onto power in elections later this year. The UK’s influence on all these issues is limited, but Burnham will be expected to communicate his government’s response clearly. He will also need to find ways to express this response with more than words.
The centre of government is shaped, to a large extent, by the ways in which the PM of the day wants things to be done. Burnham will have to adjust to government, but government will also have to adjust to him. Routines and relationships that worked for Starmer won’t necessarily work for Burnham. (Burnham’s eye-catching idea to move part of his office to Manchester is one example.)
Most of the surrounding commentary has inevitably been about whom Burnham will choose to occupy the top Cabinet jobs. His choice of Chancellor matters as a guide to the kind of strategy he is likely to adopt, and just how transformative he intends to be. It also gives some indications about his approach to party management, that is to say, to the Cabinet balance between centre-right and centre-left.
We will find out soon enough, for example, how far Burnham’s electoral strategy differs from McSweeney’s/Starmer’s in 2024. Burnham’s by-election narrative gives us some ideas, but it was consistent with a variety of quite different approaches if applied nationwide. He may talk about the “end of neoliberalism” but just how radical is he willing to be? The more radical a departure from it, the more significant the strategic implications, but Burnham’s offer is likely to be more bounded than that. His isn’t a premiership that is about to embrace the implications of Paul Rogers’s “triple paradigm crisis”.
Turning to party statecraft, will Burnham build on the broader signs from recent by-elections about voter behaviour to stop Reform UK, and make a significant, sustained move to make the Labour Party the home of the united left bloc? Might that encourage him to make his tent wider still, finding significant roles for figures such as Clive Lewis (Jeremy Gilbert is consistently excellent, specifically here on how to interpret the implications of Burnham’s choices for the Labour left)? That would be welcomed by the Party’s left, and by people who have left under Starmer, but who might be persuaded to return, as members and voters. If, however, Burnham has no room for them, but does for James Purnell and Josh Simons, for example, then these choices will be interpreted very differently.
Burnham has to make these decisions quickly, and with imperfect information, but he should then direct someone to review those arrangements after an initial period of transition, say six months. When it comes to questions of process and machinery, this might include asking: Is there a need to replace the National Security Council with something else? Not obviously, so keep it. But could Burnham use it more constructively than predecessors? There are plenty of ways to open up that system to new ideas, but does anyone in Burnham’s team particularly want to do that?
Might Burnham soon need a new National Security Adviser, when Jonathan Powell eventually moves on? Potentially, but it sounds like an orderly transition period, if not something even longer, has been agreed between them, which seems sensible in the circumstances. In Burnham’s clearest foreign policy indications so far, he sounds very comfortable moving within the lines of conventional defence and foreign policies, unlikely to pursue markedly different defence, foreign and security policies to Starmer, although hoping for better outcomes. It was striking to me, for example, that Burnham’s foreign policy/security oped in the Times made no mention of environmental security – though charitably some of its references to “resilience” might have been nodding in that direction.
It sounds very much like Burnham has little appetite to revisit the painful and protracted defence investment plan (DIP), intra-governmental negotiations for which blighted the second half of Starmer’s premiership. But Burnham will need to think very carefully indeed about how he factors defence commitments into his manifesto for the next election. Given the scale of what the UK has pledged within NATO, no party’s manifesto should be allowed to get away with magical thinking about the challenge of integrating a sustained uplift in defence spending within wider public expenditure strategy. The totality judgement about what Burnham will prioritise is an intrinsically political question.
I think Starmer’s cautious approach to defence spending towards 2029 was actually a defensible political judgement, albeit poorly communicated. (And the knee-jerk cut in the aid budget to pay for it, whilst being a kind of crude domestic political judgement, didn’t feel at all like a coherent international security decision.) Whether or not Burnham decides to commit in his manifesto to rapidly making a reality of the vague-but-very-large post-2029 spending commitments in the DIP, he will need to communicate much more effectively – ideally with more precision about assessing both Russian capability and intent – and emphasising that the UK is making a calibrated, focused contribution to wider Alliance defence spending. There is an argument that the second phase of the DIP, covering the period after the next election, could be even more focused (as a country, we can’t do everything, where should we really concentrate our efforts?) – for example, by allocating proportionately more resources than currently planned to the Royal Navy. I also hope Burnham thinks again about Starmer’s aid cut, which is self-defeating in international security terms.
To what extent will Burnham want to depart from Starmer’s essentially muddle-through approach to the Trump White House, notwithstanding that managing this relationship is like juggling with grenades, whoever is PM? With Burnham, I’d expect no more rapid effort to de-risk the special relationship, but perhaps a better recognition of the domestic political impact of how he deals with Trump, including the upside of occasional, contained disagreements (which is largely where Starmer ended up too). But that’s a long way from anticipating a significantly different analysis of Britain’s role in the world or prescription for how to enact it.
While some decisions, such as Cabinet appointments, can’t be put off much longer, there are quite a few about officials, processes and policies that can be taken more slowly, leaving time for Burnham to reflect on what works or not in the system he inherits. But this isn’t traditionally a system that is very open to alternative perspectives, so the status quo will persist unless the new team makes a conscious effort to critique it.
It’s understandable that the defence, foreign and security aspects of preparation took some time before they were foregrounded in commentaries about Burnham. He may want to be – will obviously need to be seen by voters to be – a more successful domestic policy PM than Starmer. But, to some extent because this is true, he will need structures, processes and people in place to help him deal with the constant flow of defence, foreign and security-related issues that cross his desk. There are few indicators that Burnham will be anything other than a continuity PM in his international outlook, so he might be content to change relatively little in these arrangements.
Clarity of communication and the personal side of politics seem to be Burnham’s political strengths. They are important ones, not least in building rapport with counterparts. But fundamentally, that won’t change very much without significant changes in the people, processes and policies underpinning Britain’s statecraft. Maybe it isn’t too much to hope that the early months of a Burnham premiership are an opportunity to argue for a more open, less siloed and perhaps even modestly re-orientated approach to statecraft. Definitely, maybe.