Burnham’s Mask Is Slipping

I’m not sure that Andy Burnham will be able to hold out until June 18th. Apparently, the Makerfield by-election was called as early as possible. But how will Burnham cope with another three weeks of vigorous campaigning?  A poll by Survation for the Sunday Times has him ahead – but only by three points. Opinion polls can have an impact on the real ones. Restore UK, led by Rupert Lowe MP, has been campaigning hard on the theme that Reform UK are a bunch of pinkoes. Lowe promises a tougher prospectus on such matters as crime, immigration and reforming the welfare system so it no longer “rewards the indolent.” Lowe has been insisting that his Party can win the by-election. Well, anything is possible, I suppose. Opinion polls have a margin of error. But the one I mentioned has Reform UK on 40 per cent. Restore UK is on seven per cent. Surely that will now get squeezed – however much Elon Musk retweets Lowe’s robust messages.

Then there is the audacity of Burnham’s central message: “If you think the Labour Government is useless and the Labour Prime Minister should be kicked out, then… vote Labour!” By that logic, how should people who think the Labour Government has done a good job and want Sir Keir Starmer to continue as Prime Minister vote? For Reform UK? What if Starmer pulls a really dirty trick and comes to Makerfield to campaign for Burnham? There are rumours that such low cunning could be deployed. The dastardly Wes Streeting has already been to visit – to help keep rejoining the EU at the top of the agenda. It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world in the Makerfield by-election.

Against that is the strength of Burnham’s personal brand. The King of the North, who won the Mayoral election two years ago in a landslide; he got the most votes not just in every borough but in every ward except one (the Oldham suburb of Werneth was the exception, since you ask, where an independent candidate came out ahead of him.) Burnham has established his credentials as a caring person by never knowingly missing a charity awards ceremony.

We have Burnham presenting himself as courageous in risking everything by standing in the by-election. An outsider willing to take on the Westminster establishment and battle for those let down by the system, and who have suffered injustice. A straight talker who will stick to his beliefs, whatever the pressures. Someone with a successful record as Mayor, which proves his credentials. The vulnerability for him is that all these claims are false.

Far from his candidacy being a romantic, heroic “death or glory” adventure, he risks nothing. He is still the Mayor of Greater Manchester – with his £118,000 salary still being paid while he spends his time campaigning. If he loses, he simply continues as Mayor. As Charles Moore put it in The Spectator:

“It is an odd manoeuvre, like crossing the Rubicon with a return ticket.”

An “outsider” untarnished by the Westminster bubble? This is being subjected to particular ridicule. During the MPs expenses scandal, he was the Culture Secretary. He claimed £19.99 for an Ikea bathrobe. A modest sum, perhaps. But an insight into his sense of entitlement and his attitude towards taxpayers’ money. Much more substantial sums were also involved. The Telegraph reported the time “a long-running dispute over Mr Burnham’s complicated expenses. An analysis of his expenses for the financial year 2005-06 shows that his claims were rejected repeatedly.”

“On June 5 2006, the fees office refused to pay a claim that covered both the mortgage interest on the Lambeth flat and on the constituency home, because to do so would breach the rules. On June 15, the fees office refused another claim because Mr Burnham submitted a claim for his entire mortgage costs — including repaying capital. Again, the rules clearly state that MPs may only reclaim the interest on a mortgage.”

There were also difficulties with claims being made without the receipts. Burnham was exasperated the Fees Office were being such a nuisance and wrote to them saying:

“I would be very grateful if the expenses could be paid in the last round of the year on Friday. Otherwise, I might be in line for divorce!”

What of Burnham the straight talker who sticks to his beliefs? The shameless u-turns are too numerous to mention all of them. He said the Government should refuse to be “in hock” to the bond markets. Like telling your bank manager that you insist on a higher overdraft limit and refuse to allow any impertinent penalty charges to be imposed or payments bounced if you go over it. Now he says he would stick to the fiscal rules.

Then there is the issue of singe sex spaces. Joan Smith wrote in the Daily Mail last week:

“In 2019, along with three other Labour mayors, he signed a letter calling on the Conservative government to make it easier for trans people to get a certificate stating they are legally a member of the opposite sex…It was an unequivocal demand for self-ID, which would have destroyed women’s right to single-sex spaces at a stroke.”

A couple of days later Burnham had reversed his view.

What of the claim that Burnham champions the victims of injustice? Burnham’s response to events that risk public outrage is to try to cover them up, not tackle the causes. He was Health Secretary at the time of the NHS Mid Staffs scandal. Estimates of avoidable deaths due to poor care ranged from 400 to 1,200. Julie Bailey started to campaign on this issue following the death of her 86-year-old mother, Bella, after she went in for a routine hernia operation at Stafford Hospital. She wrote in The Guardian:

“You only had to open a ward door at the hospital to smell the stench of urine, hear patients screaming in pain and see staff being bullied, and know that the care was appalling. But the people in charge chose not to do that…

“This shift away from patient care started to happened under the Labour government. It destroyed the culture of care in the NHS by replacing it with a top-down, target-driven culture. Former health secretary Andy Burnham contributed to this. He wouldn’t even meet the grieving relatives at Stafford hospital and he only gave us a secret inquiry so that the NHS’s dirty linen wouldn’t be aired in public. Burnham must resign and have nothing more to do with health policy.”

Later, as Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham was challenged over the rape gangs – or “grooming gangs” as they are usually called. Last week, The Times reported:

“When the mayor was elected in 2017 Pete Jackson, a former detective superintendent at GMP, and Maggie Oliver, the former police officer turned grooming gangs campaigner, met the mayor to highlight a series of scandals at the failing police force.

“Oliver has already spoken of her belief that Burnham failed to “grasp the nettle” on child sexual exploitation, but the matters discussed were far wider in scope. Jackson had blown the whistle on serious failings including GMP’s secret destruction of human remains from victims of the serial killer Harold Shipman, tactics used in the botched hunt for a police killer, and shortcomings in the fight against organised crime.

“Burnham told us that ‘this is the first of many meetings,’ ” Jackson recalls. “And then we never got to see him or hear from him again. He tried to write off everything we said as historic. It drives me crackers when I hear him going on about Hillsborough and the duty of candour. He ignored us. He didn’t do anything.”

What of the claims of broader policy successes as Mayor? The buses is the one usually highlighted. But Andrew Gilligan, writing for The Spectator, puts this in context:

“Burnham always forgets to mention is that bus use in Greater Manchester is, in fact, down by 12 per cent since he took office in 2017.”

It’s true that in more recent years the numbers have recovered a bit. That was because Burnham got a lot of taxpayer’s money from central government under Boris Johnson – ‘bus service improvement’ funding of £95 million plus a billion for capital spending on new buses, bus stations. It had limited impact because he wouldn’t add bus lanes. Fair enough – he didn’t want to antagonise motorists by making the traffic jams worse. But then why spend all the money? £80 million to buy the existing operators’ bus garages for no benefit. Lots more buses but slower journeys, which means they are often half empty. Poor value for money – though that is also a criticism of Boris for allowing the funding on those conditions. With his adherence to bathrobe economics, Burnham might say it was “free money” from Whitehall. But should he not have sought to spend it effectively?

Gilligan puts the recent increase in bus numbers in Greater Manchester to hwat has happened elsewhere:

“While Burnham has managed 19.4 per cent, the wicked, privately-controlled bus service in Bristol has grown passengers by 33.1 per cent over the same two years. Bus use over the same period in Leicester is up by 20.5 per cent, Southampton by 19.9 per cent, Cornwall by 29.4 per cent, to name a few, and all for a fraction of the sums per passenger that Manchester is spending.”

What of the housing record? Burnham has broadly been claiming credit for the work of others. His own work is fails to match his promises. Robert Colvile wrote in the Sunday Times:

“Burnham did announce, in May 2024, that he was going to build 10,000 council houses by 2028. But over the following year the region started construction on just ten. No, that’s not a typo.”

There was a reduction achieved in rough sleeping. But then the numbers went back up. There were also perverse incentives with those “at risk” of sleeping rough, as well as those doing so, being given priority for social housing ahead of those in temporary accommodation – including disabled mothers in “grim” blocks and hotels.

Perhaps despite all this Burnham will still win. But I suspect his mask is slipping. Burnham is not fit to be the MP for Makerfield. Let alone Prime Minister.