Why Andy Burnham makes me think of my mum

When Jeremy Corbyn resigned in 2020 I was delighted. A week ago, his successor, Keir Starmer resigned as Prime Minister. I wasn't delighted but neither was I sad. His election on 4 July 2024 has been called the loveless landslide. He won a massive parliamentary majority on around a third of the popular vote, such is our ridiculous electoral system. He won big because the country was as fed up with the Tories as I have always been. There was hope when Keir Starmer took over. Hope for change.

Those hopes quickly turned to disappointment.

His government has done a lot of good. Breakfast clubs for school children, increasing the minimum wage and workers' rights, reducing the number of poorley paid workers whose meagre wages have to be supplemented by the state and, my favourite, making significant progress with weaning the country off fossil fuels. And yet, and yet … Starmer was too quick to be honest. The country is indeed in a mess. The 2008 financial crash, Ukraine, Covid-19, Trump's war in Iran and, of course, the pernicious, ongoing calamity of Brexit. They have all hurt Britain. But people need hope. They need leaders to understand what they're going through. For all his many strengths, for all his integrity, honesty and achievement, Keir Starmer has failed to connect with the country and, regrettably, had to go.

Short of something entirely out of anyone's imagination coming to pass, Andy Burnham will take over, 3 weeks today. He gambled massively when he stood for election in Makerfield - and it paid off. He won an absolute majority of seats, seeing off the far-right and everyone else. He is now, and is expected to remain, the only candidate to take over as leader of the Labour party and, thus, Prime Minister on 21st July.

But what does he stand for? What is Andy Burnham going to do?

Today he set out some of that in the speech included at the top of this page. He talked about people working together, not against each other.

That's what made me think of Mum. It's why she supported Labour all her life. We can achieve more by working together than by always working against each other, always trying to be one up on the other person. That's what Andy Burnham set out today.

The far-right always feed on despair and people's feeling of being left behind. Farage, Tice, Lowe, Yaxley-Lennon, Trump and others, just like Nick Griffin, Enoch Powell and every other racist bigot through the ages will point at other people and say: "look, you'd be beter off it weren't for them!" And people react and say "yes! I see other people better off than me. I've done nothing wrong so it must be someone else's fault!"

Today, Andy Burnham showed how to counter that and how he won in Makerfield. To understand at least some of why people feel what they feel and offer hope for a better future. Not because we're going to get rid of anyone with a different viewpoint, skin colour or background, but because we're going to do things that will make a material difference to everyone, everywhere.

As Andy Burnham said in his speech today: "Imagine; good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart."

Mum would have liked that. I wish Andy Burnham nothing but success in making it happen.