Burnham To The Ground

The defining domestic policy of New Labour was the privatisation of England's National Health Service. Only Andy Burnham has ever privatised an NHS hospital, but in September 2009 he modestly proposed that the NHS should be its own preferred provider.

Progress wrote to Burnham to protest that he was "restricting the use of the private sector in the NHS", and using its eponymous magazine to opine, not only that "With an election approaching, Labour has regrettably adopted anti-market rhetoric on health", but that, "The pro-market principles espoused by Andrew Lansley are the right ones." When were the expulsions and the proscription?

Burnham's position was called "profoundly worrying", and its endorsement by Unite was branded "insulting and ignorant", by the Deputy Chief Executive of the Association of Chief Executives. Don't laugh. All right, do. But that person was Peter Kyle.

There is also a strong Southern supremacism to the treatment of Burnham, but the main reason for the utterly ruthless determination to install Wes Streeting as Keir Starmer's successor is that those who set the line are only 99.9 per cent certain about Burnham on NHS privatisation, a 0.1 per cent deficiency that is enough to make them hate him to the marrow of their bones, whereas they have absolutely no doubt whatever about Streeting. Nor should they have.

Streeting would have become Leader when, as expected in 2019, the Conservative majority had been much reduced in 2024 but Boris Johnson had remained Prime Minister. Yes, that was barely six years ago. The nomination process now makes a contested Labour Leadership Election effectively impossible, and with Burnham out of the way, then the looming fall of Starmer should crown the long-anointed Streeting, three years before a General Election.

With also sorts of long-planned and hideous things to do, Streeting would be getting on with them at great speed, since when it came to the Gorton and Denton by-election, in the absence of Burnham, all the talk from Labour itself is of to whom it was going to lose and by how much. Until yesterday, it was taken as read that Burnham would have won, would have challenged for the Leadership, and would have won that, too. In their own words, if uttered through their outriders, Starmer is still there, and Streeting will be there, only because Burnham was not.