The Greens are reeling, the Lib Dems are plotting to get rid of their leaden leader, and Reform UK is mired in allegations of sleaze.
Many Labour MPs believe our unelected Prime Minister has been working his magic. Some think he should take advantage of the ‘Burnham bounce’ and call an election.
There is a feeling among Andy Burnham’s supporters that he’s a gifted politician who is reviving his party following the catatonic leadership of Sir Keir Starmer. They reckon that after a triumphant election victory he will be able to take Britain back to the supposedly golden 1970s.
May I dissent from this upbeat analysis, which I regret to say is shared by some nervous souls on the Right? The more I see of Burnham, the more convinced I am that, far from being the saviour his cheerleaders claim, he is a prize dud, against whom Starmer will soon seem a towering genius.
Burnham was a failed national politician when he went to Manchester to become its mayor, and his nine-year sojourn in that great city has blunted such political acumen as he once possessed.
He evidently believes, for example, that the European Union is a dynamic economic bloc which Britain must rejoin if it is to enjoy the growth Labour leaders have continually promised.
In the past few days Andy Burnham has dug what may become his political grave. He has made it plain that he’d like to take us back into the EU, and hasn’t denied that a pledge to do so could be included in Labour’s next election manifesto.
He also cast doubt on the validity of the 2016 Brexit referendum by telling The Rest Is Politics podcast (hosted by ex-Blairite spin doctor Alastair Campbell and ex-Tory minister Rory Stewart, both EU fanatics) that the Russians clearly interfered with the result.
In the past few days Andy Burnham has dug what may become his political grave, writes Stephen Glover
In so doing, Burnham has revealed himself as a fool and a knave. A fool for resuscitating Brexit divisions and for risking so much political capital in a doomed cause – namely rejoining the lumbering behemoth that is the EU.
And a knave for saying something on the podcast that isn’t true. On Monday in the Commons he was forced to retract his claim of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum, and instead insisted that ‘Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election’.
Various authorities have debunked the notion that Russia influenced the Brexit result. In 2018 the head of MI5 declared there was no evidence it had. The present holder of that job, Ken McCallum, said yesterday that the Russians tried to interfere, though that doesn’t mean they had any impact.
Burnham’s claim on the podcast was a shameless attempt to discredit Brexit. It was the sort of wild allegation one might hear at a Rejoiner dinner party from hell – but one doesn’t expect it from a prime minister who wants to be thought honest.
On the knave rather than the fool side of the ledger, I should add that the PM’s enthusiasm for the EU contradicts what he told the largely pro-Brexit voters of Makerfield in May’s by-election. He said categorically: ‘I am not proposing that the UK considers rejoining the EU.’
This was a downright fib. It is exactly what he is now proposing. Andy Burnham likes to present himself as being above party politics, and unsullied by its low ethical standards. Yet would even that political Houdini Tony Blair have told such a brazen whopper?
I can’t say I’m surprised because I never imagined for a moment that the King of the North was straightforward. But I am taken aback that he is turning out to be such a political clot.
Why That is the question. Why is he prepared to expend so much political capital on a rotten cause? A cause that could bring no economic benefit but is so divisive that it would almost certainly finish off Burnham’s prime ministership.
He said on Monday when discussing getting closer to the EU: ‘If we are serious about promoting growth, controlling immigration, upholding our values and security, it is a conversation we must have.’
Yet in fact Britain has grown faster than the EU’s three biggest economies, France, Germany and Italy, since the Brexit referendum. Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund forecast that the UK would do better than all three countries this year as well.
All right, no one is pretending that the British economy is thriving under Labour after the unlamented Rachel Reeves raised taxes to record levels. But it is at least outperforming Europe’s leading countries – running on three spluttering cylinders rather than two.
Vladimir Putin's Russian regime has repeatedly been accused of trying to influence democracies in the West, including the UK's referendum on EU membership
As for Burnham’s contention that getting closer to or rejoining the EU would help control immigration, that really is bunkum. Membership would mean accepting the free movement of people. Legally, we now have control of our borders. Our leaders just don’t bother to exert it.
The PM’s childlike devotion to the flagging EU is baffling. It’s as though he doesn’t know what is going on. Why is he so keen to nuzzle up to a union whose three biggest countries could soon be controlled by hard-Right governments? Italy already is.
That prospect may not alarm Nigel Farage or even Kemi Badenoch but you’d think it would stop the socialist Andy Burnham – whose politics are increasingly indistinguishable from Jeremy Corbyn’s – in his tracks. But no.
Andy looks backwards through those huge eyes, not forwards – to the economically calamitous 1970s, which he is too young to remember, and to the time more than half a century ago, when Germany, France and Italy grew much faster than Britain.
In this state of delusion he is eager to reopen the wounds of Brexit in search of El Dorado, which as we all know doesn’t exist. Pundits tell us that he may mop up some Lib Dem and Green supporters who are passionate Rejoiners, and so he might.
But he will seriously aggravate millions of voters, not all of them Brexiteers, who believe that the verdict of the biggest turnout in British history must be respected.
We shouldn’t be misled by poll findings that a majority of people think that in principle Britain should rejoin the European Union. Most don’t want to return to the bitter convulsions of the Brexit debate that at times resembled a civil war without the shooting.
A second debate would be even more acrimonious, since many would rightly argue that the political elite was trying to overturn a democratic decision. Burnham is threatening to plunge us into very dark waters.
It’s not even clear whether in his ideal world there would be another referendum. He might simply incorporate EU membership in a Labour manifesto. That would be a disgraceful sleight of hand.
And what, by the way, are the Scottish Nationalists meant to think? If Burnham can renege on an historic vote that was supposed to be binding, why should the Scots Nats be expected to respect a ‘once in a generation’ 2014 referendum vote against independence?
Andy Burnham has just embarked on a path that will lead to national calamity and his own demise. Maybe he’ll have second thoughts. Whatever happens, here is an untrustworthy and unexpectedly inept Prime Minister whom political opponents need not fear.