Ian Sollom MP: Andy Burnham won't be afforded much time to deliver the change the country needs
Originally written for the Cambridge Independent Column – July 2026
Ian Sollom MP: Andy Burnham won't be afforded much time to deliver the change the country needs
In just over a week, barring a surprise leadership contest, Keir Starmer will become the 6th Prime Minister to leave office in the last 10 years. While each has had their own particular circumstances and context in which they failed – and I think it is fair to assume they would have all preferred to serve longer – it is a sequence that is deeply concerning for the country. What looked like a Conservative Party problem starts to look systemic when a Labour Party elected to government just two years ago on a promise to end the chaos has now gone through its own psychodrama.
A popular rhetorical question amongst commentators at the moment is “are we ungovernable?” Most seem to reach “no” as a conclusion, which is reassuring, but it does beg the question just what is going on? And will our apparent Prime Minister-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, be any different?
Even as an opposition MP, when I was elected 2 years ago I still wished Starmer success. The country undoubtedly voted for change, and it was his to deliver. Having knocked on many doors over the preceding years, I knew many hadn’t warmed personally to him, and I speculated at the time this might have something to do with his communication style, which even his most ardent admirers would surely admit is a weakness.
But maybe, as is the wisdom of crowds sometimes, many of those people sceptical of Starmer at the outset were intuiting something more fundamental. A Prime Minister needs a settled framework of values – a consistent basis for making the trade-offs government inevitably involves, from which decisions can actually be made – and it has certainly been apparent in government that Starmer didn’t have one.
There are countless examples that can be pointed to: the claim that growth was the number one priority and then increasing tax on employment for business in the first budget; a speech to set the government’s agenda on immigration and social cohesion, disavowed within days; the promise to end sleaze alongside the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington; the long delay in making the necessary trade-offs for defence investment; the countless re-sets. Even decisions that could be regarded as positive – to lift children out of poverty, or steer clear of the war with Iran for example – took place in a vacuum of wider vision, lacking cohesion with other policies and the implied strategic direction. Communication problems were downstream of this fundamental incoherence.
To his credit, Andy Burnham's first speech since returning to Westminster did put forward an organising idea – pushing power and resources out of Whitehall – and applied it, at least in principle, consistently across housing, utilities, employment and industrial strategy. It’s worth noting, however, that most of our recent Prime Ministers have given some version of this speech. Boris Johnson's "levelling up” offered a similarly confident, mission-shaped rhetoric, while Theresa May invoked the civic tradition of Joseph Chamberlain in her “shared society” before Brexit consumed her.
On its own a speech can't tell us whether the framework holds when genuine trade-offs arrive: a difficult spending choice, two promises pulling in different directions, the moment party management and stated principle stop pointing the same way, or when fiscal reality bites. It didn’t for our recent Prime Ministers. For Burnham the tests are ahead.
Some of those tests will carry significant implications for our region. "Good growth in every postcode," a phrase Burnham used, will need to mean something here too and not just in “the North”: promises of much needed investment in transport, social and environmental infrastructure must not be simply dropped and reallocated. It’s notable too that Whitehall’s instinct on such investment thus far has been the opposite of Burnham’s – the most recent obvious example being the Cambridge DevCo: a centrally-appointed, undemocratic body, with significant planning authority for the whole of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire for at least 25 years.
Our own complicated experience of devolution carries some warnings too. The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has existed since 2017. Its history includes five different chief executives in its first five years and an independent improvement board set up after a government intervention. That is not necessarily a verdict on devolution as an idea, but it's a useful reminder that giving power back to regions requires good structures of accountability and not simply good intentions.
A recent Private Eye headline spoofed: "Why Burnham Must Resign Immediately Even Though He's Not Prime Minister Yet." Like all good jokes it’s funny because it’s true – Burnham won’t be afforded much time to deliver the change the country needs. We are about to find out whether this time really is different. Again.