Andy Burnham Can Promise Change, but the World Has Other Ideas
From Hormuz to Gaza and Ukraine, the global instability the new prime minister hoped to sidestep may end up defining his premiership.
The first call Andy Burnham made as prime minister was not to a mayor, a council leader or a northern business group. It was to Donald Trump. At the new administration’s first briefing for journalists in Downing Street, which I attended for Zeteo UK, we were told the conversation lasted around 20 minutes, was warm in tone and mentioned the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz.
For a politician who has signalled that his premiership will be defined by domestic renewal rather than foreign affairs, he ended up spending part of his first day discussing a shipping lane thousands of miles away. Everything you need to know about the gap between the premiership Burnham wants and the one he is likely to inherit is contained in that phone call.
The domestic pitch is clear enough. In his opening days Burnham has moved to cut VAT on energy bills, cap bus fares in England and slash business rates for pubs, clubs and grassroots music venues – Manchesterism arriving in Whitehall more or less intact. On foreign policy there is, formally at least, little that is new. His government has continued Keir Starmer’s policy of allowing U.S. aircraft to operate from British bases for defensive strikes on Iran, but even this – the sin of continuity rather than commission – is not cost-free. A YouGov poll this week found that 58% of Britons oppose the use of British bases for strikes on Iran, with that figure rising to 72% for Labour voters. The move also opens the UK up to potential retaliatory strikes, with Iran publicly saying they believe this makes British bases a legitimate target – if the Iranians were to strike a British base, the new prime minister would immediately have a huge decision to make on how to respond. Burnham’s instinct appears to be to say as little as possible about the wider world, but on the defining security question of the summer it is one many of his own supporters reject. How long can it really hold?