Teamwork makes the dream work

When Andy Burnham steps across the threshold of 10 Downing Street he will have several huge jobs to lead on.

Number one, of course, will be setting the political and policy direction for the country. Keir Starmer was right when he said that Labour should always have the mindset of “country first, party second.”

But that cannot mean forgetting that you are also the leader of a political party – one that has invested its time, energy and effort in getting Labour into power, even as they did so under a different leader. 

It is absolutely fair to say that a leadership contest may well have been a distracting waste of Labour’s precious time in government. All our polling has shown that Burnham would have won a leadership contest hands down. And at present, no one has yet declared that they will be challenging him for the leadership of the party. The reality is that Burnham is going to be PM and he is going to lead the Labour Party. 

Despite his evident popularity, there is some disquiet among Labour members that they are unlikely to have a say – even an acclamatory one – over who leads them. We are a democratic party and one where members deserve to have their voices heard after all. 

READ MORE: Labour General Secretary Hollie Ridley to resign from role after conference

It is my sense that this will largely disappear as Andy takes the reins and starts to deliver as PM. But in order for that to happen, he will need to do some important work to give all members – those who were desperate for him to take over and those who are desperately sad to be losing Keir Starmer – a sense that this party does belong to them. 

It is worth remembering the state the Labour Party was in when Keir Starmer inherited it. 

We were broke financially and we had just been battered at the 2019 election leaving the way clear for all the damage done by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. 

We were under investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and were then found to be institutional anti-Semitic. A dark stain on the party that we should never forget. Because to forget would be to lose a sense of vigilance. We owe Starmer a huge debt of thanks for turning that around. He was right to highlight it in his fascinating and – dare I say endearing – BBC interview. 

However, Andy is also right that we need to change the culture of how we do our politics to ensure that the Party does feel engaged in all areas of the party’s policy and political programme. And that will take really careful and thoughtful work. 

Perhaps – in fact almost certainly – because of the conditions Starmer and his team inherited a sense of top-down control of all aspects of party and politics has permeated. There was an understandable if unfortunate lack of trust between the leadership and other elements of the party. 

This spread far beyond the ways in which we talk to each other about contentious issues. There was a lot of control over candidate selection. Remember the sense that the 2024 intake were ‘Starmtroopers’? 

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Well if they ever were, they weren’t going to be for long. The people selected to fight seats up and down the country are bright, enthusiastic about Labour politics and were eager to bring their varied expertise to Parliament with them. But they were met with a sense that policy was delivered from on high on tablets of stone – with no space for debate or challenge. 

Again I understand this instinct. But, in the end, the tightness of the grip worked against the leadership – as they made inevitable mistakes that some of that challenge might have tempered or stopped. 

And the same is true of the membership. Many are members of branches like mine that have been moribund for many years (mine had our first AGM for about five year last month) and – as such – have few ways to engage with discussion inside the party about local, national and international issues. Work will need to be done to get us back up to being an enthusiastic fighting force. That will need to be done with members at the core of the work, and must include reaching out to those who are not happy about Starmer stepping down. All of this is a daunting in-tray for a new Party leader who – let’s be honest – will not have time to dedicate to this vital project. 

This is why whoever is chosen by Labour’s NEC to be the General Secretary after conference will matter so much to the party as a whole. It will be their job to take on the lion’s share of the task of reforming party culture and working with the leadership to do so. They will have the focus a PM cannot and will need to set the example from the top that this is a party that, yes, has guardrails and rules, but also empowers members to give their ideas and discuss their passions as well as dedicate their time and shoe leather.

This is not to say that Hollie Ridley has done anything but an exceptional job. All reports speak of a formidable campaigner and the work she has done under difficult circumstances got us on to an election footing and was essential to the landslide success that was achieved. Like Starmer, we owe her a huge debt of gratitude. 

But as the mainstream media inevitably focus on the job Burnham will do as PM (as will we) unlike them, LabourList will play a unique role in exploring what Andy’s vision for the party is – and who the NEC will appoint to drive it. 

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Andy Burnham will be spending the summer thinking about how the inspiring vision he set out in Manchester last week can be translated into a programme for government. We will be spending the summer delving deeply into how we can support that – with honesty and as a platform for discussion. We will also be doing some deep thinking about what is needed to ensure that the party itself can be as good as it can be. If you have ideas about what you want to see in your branch, in your CLP, in your union and socialist society – let us know! 

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