The following of vehicles with helicopter-mounted cameras is usually reserved for high-speed chases à la OJ Simpson, or the processions of royalty. This week, however, a characteristically delayed train from Manchester to London was tracked overhead by news cameras, for it carried the last hope of Britain’s Labour Party: Andy Burnham.
Long feted as the prince across the water, last week he won a parliamentary by-election, induced by a resignation engineered to allow him to stand, win, and then challenge Sir Keir Starmer for leadership of the Labour Party, and thus the role of Prime Minister. Starmer had been insisting through the media for months that he would stay and fight any challenger. Over last weekend, he clearly realized the acrimony of an open contest within his party would hasten its demise, and announced his resignation on Monday morning. But the haggardly Avanti West Coast service from the de facto second city is no train to the Finland Station—Burnham is Labour’s best hope, but he cannot save the party.
Starmer has become an avatar of all things the public find repellent in the political establishment generally, and in the left in particular. A senior barrister, justifying everything with reference to process and procedure, born to be a public sector manager, unaided by his strangulated pronunciation. Despite his genuinely coming from a very modest background, his attempts to appear relatable through this backstory have been reduced to the status of meme: “My father was a toolmaker”. By all accounts he is a genuinely nice man in private life, with strongly held views, but he has become one of the most unpopular politicians in British history, not through the force of his character and political convictions, but precisely through their absence.
Starmer has become one of the most unpopular politicians in British history, not through the force of his character and political convictions, but precisely through their absence.
Starmer’s near-certain successor, Burnham, successfully presents himself as a man of the people, despite being a lifelong politician. His northern accent, taken to be a cultural indicator of class in Britain, helps in this regard, as does his obviously cultivated wardrobe, mostly composed of plain T-shirts. He has come close to making himself all things to all people in the ailing Labour Party. The rump of the post-Corbynite far Left, the “soft-Left” and “center” of the party, “socially conservative” Blue Labour types—all but the most vociferous Blairite revivalists see Burnham as their saviour.
The rump of the post-Corbynite far Left, the “soft-Left” and “center” of the party, “socially conservative” Blue Labour types—all but the most vociferous Blairite revivalists see Burnham as their saviour.
Yet before he has even been chosen as Prime Minister, the first tremors appear to be shaking this coalition. Writing in the New Statesman, Michael Chessum, a veteran of the sort of leftist anti-Brexit activism which helped doom the Labour Party in 2019, warns that “the left shouldn’t trust Andy Burnham … Haunted by Brexit, Burnham engages with immigration on Farage’s terms”. To the man with the remainer campaign, all problems look like Brexit problems. Labour’s mandate, such as it was from the 2024 election, is wafer thin—scant on both political substance and objective support. The one matter on which majority public feeling is abundantly clear is immigration— they want far less of it. Parties which have promised reductions have won every British election since 2010, and the current government has genuinely managed to reduce it significantly. Not soon enough or significantly enough to stem the tide of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, a near-enough single-issue anti-immigration party, though.
The one matter on which majority public feeling is abundantly clear is immigration— they want far less of it.
But the government’s supposedly hard-line stance on immigration—which has not even involved withdrawing from the international human rights commitments (notably, the EHRC) which are so central to the sort of immigration which vexes the public—has incensed Labour activists, driving some to the unashamedly pro-open borders Green Party. Yet Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the public face of Labour’s hard-line stance, is an ally of the soon-to-be PM Burnham, and is thought to want to stay in post. It would then be no surprise if, even under Burnham, the party’s parliamentarians and activists continue to rebel against their most popular policies.
Much commentary in Britain has focused on the difference between Labour’s colossal electoral victory in 2024—winning 412 out of 650 seats—and how beset and beleaguered the party seemed within months of taking power. Labour were rocked in particular by scandals about donations from a wealthy member of the House of Lords. But the tenor of their impending unpopularity was foreseeable from the day of the election: turnout was a dismal 59.8%. The quirks of Britain’s electoral system mean parties win without anywhere near a numerical majority of votes —but 2024’s result was the most disproportionate in British history and saw the lowest proportion of the public voting since the introduction of universal suffrage. If you include people who would be eligible to vote, but did not even register, not much more than 50% of the electorate voted in total, and barely 20% voted for the ruling Labour Party. Meanwhile, in 2025, Labour even ceased reporting party membership figures to its own ruling body, with the most recent estimate putting members below 250,000—less than half of what they were barely a decade ago.
Labour even ceased reporting party membership figures to its own ruling body, with the most recent estimate putting members below 250,000—less than half of what they were barely a decade ago.
These are the signs of a party entirely of what political scientist Peter Mair termed “the void”. According to Mair’s analysis, parties, no longer able to serve their traditional function of representing and aggregating the interests of a class or coalition, and channelling those interests upwards into the realm of the state, become de facto parts of the state themselves, retreating into the realm of elite institutions and away from the public. Membership and support declines; parties are increasingly compelled to draw on those elite institutions for political support and policy; and so the cycle goes.
Labour is deep into this death agony, held in stasis by the electoral system, bankrolling by similarly hollow trade unions, proximity to the progressive donor class, and the incredible unpopularity of the Conservatives from whom they seized power. This is in large part the aftershock of Brexit. The momentous vote to leave the EU, almost exactly ten years ago, has pushed the decrepit parties of the twentieth century, unable to embody the radical demands of that vote, into terminal decline. So much so that the Labour Party now appears to be dying while in government with a titanic majority. A party that combined such parliamentary dominance with real public support could achieve incredible things. Labour’s apparent stagnancy is testament that political power is not a matter of parliamentary seats alone.
Andy Burnham makes noises in the direction of being more radical than his predecessor, and he may be more personally popular. But whoever leads it, the Labour Party will remain the same: the party of the public sector, charity professionals, progressive lobbyists and quangocrats, and liberal culture industry grandees. The British public have said very clearly for a decade what they think of this milieu, and there is no change of management which could save the party that embodies it.
