Andy Burnham is set to become the new British prime minister, replacing the humbled Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour party. This means the United Kingdom will have its seventh leader in less than a decade.
Burnham’s rise raises critical questions about the changing dynamics of political parties, leadership and representation in an accelerated political climate.
One aspect overlooked in Burnham’s rise is that the British Labour party has still not achieved something the Conservative party has done three times, and its sister social democratic parties in Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Austria have all achieved at least once – select a woman to lead the party.
The elevation of Burnham raises a suite of critical issues about the changing patterns of representation and leadership.
Burnham and experience
A key reservation about Burnham becoming prime minister immediately after being elected as an MP revolves around experience. While he had a successful stint as mayor of Greater Manchester, there are concerns this is inadequate experience for national leadership.
Moreover, his local policy agenda, dubbed “manchesterism”, might have limited appeal when translated to the national stage.
This criticism tends to overlook that Burnham had previously been an MP at Westminster, and was a minister in Gordon Brown’s government. In contrast, the five previous Conservative prime ministers, and indeed Starmer, had either not held a ministerial post before getting the top job, or had limited senior experience.
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Andy Burnham is known as the ‘king of the north’. Could he become the UK’s next prime minister?
As politics accelerates, leaders arrive with less experience
Burnham’s background is the more striking because it less typical than his predecessors. Across the 21st century, leaders have tended to reach the top of British parties with thinner political track records than their predecessors. These changes are occurring in a period of what is being called “hyperpolitics”.
The academic scholarship suggests this a growing trend. Over the 21st century, UK major party leaders had less political experience, and there is an attendant rise of “novice” cabinet ministers.
Liz Truss is a good example of this trend. She briefly served as international trade secretary, and then as foreign secretary before taking the leadership in 2022. She then went onto become Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister.
The lack of experience proved telling, aside from her radical agenda. Former Conservative MP Rory Stewart, then an aspiring leadership hopeful, has since been reflective and insightful about how “grotesquely unqualified so many of us were”.
There have been warning bells about the growth of ministerial churn for quite some time.
Representation and the Labour party
Burnham’s rise to power also tells us critical things about patterns of representation in British Labour politics more broadly. A notable feature of the previous Conservative government was the high level of prominence of senior cabinet figures from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds across the party.
The last democratic audit of the UK in 2018 also confirmed the representation of key groups more broadly in parliament. This includes those from different minority ethnic groups and also from the working class.
While the British Labour party has had internal party structures in place to champion Black and ethnic minority members, the pathways to leadership roles have been less clear. Only three of the 28 members of the Starmer cabinet have an ethnic minority background.
There are then complex issues for Burnham’s leadership of Labour between descriptive and substantive forms of representation. In descriptive terms, if measured by number of senior Black and ethnic minority MPs, the Conservatives look far more like the diverse and multicultural UK.
However, Labour stalwarts would argue that in substantive terms, the policy agenda, including that of Starmer, will make a far greater difference to many communities, and begin to win back formerly core voters.
Likewise, there is a well-established scholarship that suggests political parties are middle-classing, in other words, made up of and pitching to the middle classes, and patterns of class voting are changing.
Part of Burnham’s appeal is his northern roots – he comes from an area of England that has long been doing it tough economically. Despite his long political career, his supporters hope he can champion regional and neglected parts of the UK, especially where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is making inroads.
… but where are the women leaders?
Labour appears, yet again, to have chosen a man to lead the party. In contrast to issues of race, Labour’s record on broader descriptive and substantive gender representation is arguably stronger.
Labour has long held mechanisms to attract and promote women – at the 1993 Labour Party Conference, it was determined that lists of all women candidates would be used for winnable seats. The UK Labour Party have used all-women shortlists (AWS) for Westminster elections since 1997.
The 2024 general election returned the highest number and proportion of women MPs ever recorded: 263 women, around 40% of the House of Commons – with Labour accounting for 190 of them, close to half of its parliamentary party. (Byelections have since nudged the Commons total to 266.)
However, Labour has still never had a permanently elected woman leader; Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman held these roles only in acting capacities. There is also ongoing speculation about the future role of Rachel Reeves – the UK’s only serving female chancellor.
A critical focus for Burnham will be how he harnesses all the talents of his party, and crucially, the foundations he and his party lay for the next wave of leaders.
