We are at the phony war\/silly season stage of the Andy Burnham ascendancy and there\u2019s a lot of nonsense flying around. A lot of decisions have not yet been made \u2013 and some of them remain highly problematic \u2013 but, in descending order of confidence, this is what I\u2019m hearing:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0Is Mahmood edging ahead of Miliband to be chancellor?
Burnham makes his big speech on the economy and devolution in \u2013 where else? \u2013 Manchester on Monday, but the steer from senior members of Team Andy is that we should not expect the battle to be chancellor, which comes down to Ed Miliband against Shabana Mahmood, to be resolved next week. \u2018It won\u2019t be for a while,\u2019 one says. Unite and the GMB are opposed to Miliband, while Unison is backing him, but the interesting thing is that even quite left-wing members of Burnham\u2019s inner circle don\u2019t seem sold on the Energy Secretary. \u2018The fact that Louise Haigh is regarded as a more market-friendly pick than Ed is really quite frightening,\u2019 one says. \u2018Shabana just absolutely proved herself head and shoulders above the rest of the cabinet, getting a grip of the Home Office.\u2019 My understanding is that, while Mahmood doesn\u2019t want to be seen to campaign for the job, she would absolutely take the post if it was offered.<\/p>\n
2) Burnham is not sold on backing the Defence Investment Plan
Keir Starmer will announce the DIP before he goes, but No. 10 is divided on whether he will do so next week or on the eve of the Nato summit, which begins on 7 July. Either way, Burnham is not wedded to the outcome, despite demands from Starmer\u2019s allies that he \u2018immediately\u2019 support whatever derisory sum the Treasury has found for the MoD. Burnham\u2019s team want to see the detail and where the money will be spent before they endorse anything. \u2018People only ever talk about it in big numbers. We don\u2019t have a clue what they mean,\u2019 a key figure complains. \u2018What are we buying? What level of security is that delivering? There is very little assurance that they\u2019re going to spend it well, given that the MoD piss their money at the wall.\u2019 There are also amusing reports of Starmer, who did not show himself to be a details man for much of his premiership, agonising over the minutiae of the DIP.<\/p>\n
3) Lucy Powell is not as central to Project Burnham as many have claimed
Don\u2019t put your house on Powell becoming deputy prime minister, an appointment largely regarded as inked in. While she\u2019s a longstanding ally of Burnham from Manchester, and allied herself to him when she was fired from the cabinet by Starmer, insiders point out that Burnham did not want her running his by-election campaign and handed power to Haigh and Anneliese Midgley. While it is most likely that a woman gets the title, don\u2019t rule out Burnham giving the job to Miliband if he decides not to make him chancellor.<\/p>\n
4) No. 10\u2019s culture will change
This is a big deal for a lot of Labour MPs. The female-heavy team behind Burnham have made a point of telling James Purnell, the incoming chief of staff, that they will not tolerate the briefing wars which consumed Team Starmer at the end of 2024 and into 2025. I understand that Haigh, the key figure in Burnham\u2019s camp, has already had discussions on this with Purnell.<\/p>\n
5) Charlie Falconer for Attorney General?
This is more of an idea that makes sense than a done deal, but Tony Blair\u2019s Lord Chancellor was a resolute member of Burnham\u2019s inner circle during the 2015 leadership contest and remains an active peer. Richard Hermer will be first out of the door with Starmer and, if Burnham is putting together a government of all the talents, Charlie makes sense as a grey beard for a year or two. Not everyone will like a return, however, for one of the most resolute advocates of assisted dying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We are at the phony war\/silly season stage of the Andy Burnham ascendancy and there\u2019s a lot of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-765564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}