Andy Burnham will formally succeed Keir Starmer as prime minister tomorrow after becoming Labour leader on Friday, with Ed Miliband now part of a new era in Westminster. He is expected to officially become the UK’s 59th prime minister on Monday.
Lucy Powell on Burnham
Lucy Powell said Burnham will “radically rewrite” the political and economic model for the country and described him as having a “big, bold agenda”. She also said the digital ID card scheme may not have cost a lot of money but takes “attention away” from being “laser focused on the cost of living”.
Kemi Badenoch’s warning
Kemi Badenoch said Burnham was “a man who was talking to the Labour Party, not the country” in his first speech as Labour leader. She called him a “people pleaser” with “airy fairy” plans and said he is “going to be in for a rude awakening” if he comes to office unaware of the country’s priorities.
Badenoch also said she has met Burnham before and called him a “nice guy”, but added that the job of prime minister is “not a popularity contest”. Her full warning was that he has not said what he is going to do and that the country needs someone who can take tough decisions.
No 10 on Monday
The immediate change is procedural and political at once: Burnham’s move from Labour leader to prime minister brings a new occupant to No 10 and places him in charge of the UK’s top office. The first test will be whether the outline praised by Powell becomes a set of actual government decisions, or remains a promise that Badenoch has already challenged as vague.
The next step is Burnham’s formal entry into office on Monday, when the leadership change becomes the reality Westminster has been anticipating since Friday. What comes after that is the simplest unanswered question in the story: which policies he chooses first, and whether they match the scale of the rewrite Powell described.
