The paradox of being prime minister, Tony Blair observed, is that a leader “starts at their most popular and least capable and ends as the least popular and most capable”.
Andy Burnham might ponder this insight as he prepares to enter Downing Street. Right now, he’s never been so popular or so powerful. Labour MPs are toadying up to their new leader, each swearing fealty. But the question remains: is he up to the top job?
Nothing prepares a politician for the job of prime minister. Leader of the opposition? Hardly. Mayor of Manchester? Nice try. And once you’ve got the job, nothing prepares you for losing it. Blair lasted a decade and never quite got over leaving No 10 under duress. In his experience, the stress, the demands on time management and the need to compartmentalise are on a different level.
So what makes a good prime minister? In his memoir, James Callaghan, an underrated occupant of No 10 between 1976 and 1979, when the country was gripped by economic crisis, quoted with approval the Victorian era novelist Anthony Trollope. “One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means straight-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners and, above all, a thick skin.”
By these measures, Clement Attlee (1945-51) may rank top of the pile, alongside his predecessor Winston Churchill who led Britain to victory in World War II. Attlee prized humility over charisma. He never confused activity for achievement. He understood how government actually worked. His legacy – the creation of the welfare state and the National Health Service – remains a triumph of implementation which left the country stronger than the one he inherited.
Anthony Seldon, longtime Wellington College headmaster, educator and chronicler of modern prime ministers, believes there are three principles for success.
Get the right people. Set the right priorities. Act the part.
Sir Keir Starmer fails on all three counts. He chopped and changed his team. He picked a dud chancellor in Rachel Reeves. His top priority – economic growth – was constantly undercut by competing interests such as Ed Miliband’s obsession with net-zero carbon emissions. Crucially, his Pooterish delivery meant he never quite looked the part.
Starmer’s immediate predecessors do not fare much better. Liz Truss stumbled at the first hurdle. Her economic diagnosis of low productivity and persistently slow growth was correct but her prescription – unfunded tax cuts, sacking the top Treasury civil servant and an assault on the Office of Budget Responsibility – was a disastrous mix of hubris and naivety.
Boris Johnson had an eye for history – early and unqualified support for Ukraine – but he fell victim to chaotic management and a cavalier attitude to rules, notwithstanding the challenge of managing a once-in-century pandemic. Rishi Sunak was far more diligent, a head-boy type who lacked enough time to make his mark.
Etonian David Cameron looked to the manner born. He was fluent, tall and mildly imperious. By and large, he picked the right people. His mistake – and it was a doozie – was to call an up-or-down referendum on Brexit. History will not be kind to him.
Great prime ministers know when not to speak. In an earlier age, silence was an option. Today political discourse is increasingly driven by social media. Donald Trump set the template, and the British have regrettably followed. Politics has become increasingly performative, at the expense of intellectual coherence and concrete outcomes.
Margaret Thatcher, a consequential prime minister, was hardly immune to political theatre. She revelled in her image as the Iron Lady. But behind her categorical declarations (“consensus is the negation of leadership”) lay a pragmatic streak.
The Tories’ privatisation programme, which transformed the British economy during the 1980s, was staged. Thatcher delayed confronting Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Miners (NUM) until alternative coal supplies were secure. She signed up to the EU’s single market before declaring war on the Maastricht treaty and Europe’s single currency project. Only towards the end, when she tried to push through the poll tax, did her political judgement desert her.
Andy Burnham has made a point of disowning Thatcherism. Britain, he claims, made a “wrong turn” in the 1980s.
His critique serves three purposes: he can distance himself from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who chose to build on Thatcher’s economic settlement rather than dismantle it; he can cement his base in the north of England whose industries and towns bore the brunt of Thatcherism; and – more important – he wants to illuminate “a new path” for Britain based on devolved power to the regions, renationalisation of essential industries like water, and a renewed campaign to tackle economic inequality.
But do we really want to go back to the pre-Thatcher Seventies? My own memories remain dismal: “the Barber boom” (no relation); incessant strikes; rubbish piled high in the streets; the Army driving ambulances and fire engines; tea and biscuits for trade union barons in Downing Street; and a bail-out from the International Monetary Fund. Mrs Thatcher was the necessary, if painful, antidote.
Burnham insists he has a plan for government. That’s an improvement on Starmer who had no visible plan. He also says he will spend more time tending to Britain than on international affairs – a credulous remark which drew a reality check from former PM Theresa May who knows a thing or two about national security. Burnham was third time lucky in his campaign to be Labour leader. Now he has ascended to the job of prime minister without the benefit of a challenge, either within the Labour Party or through an election. He is, in effect, a usurper, albeit a charismatic one.
As a Cambridge English graduate, Burnham will no doubt be familiar with the words of Count Melun, the French nobleman, in Shakespeare’s play King John. “A scepter snatch’d with an unruly hand, must be as boisterously maintain’d as gain’d.”
Bonne chance, Andy.
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