My old friend Andy Burnham must remember he is going to be Prime Minister of the whole country - David Blunkett
My old friend, Andy Burnham, is almost certain to become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom next Friday. I've known him for well over 25 years, but we became close when he took on the lowly role of being my Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS), sometimes disparagingly known as a ‘bag carrier’.
The downplaying of this role is deeply unfair. This is the first important rung on the ladder into government, and it's a grounding in having the eyes and ears and ‘back’ of the Secretary of State for whom you're working. You're an MP, but you're a loyal member of the ministerial team and your job is to watch out for rebellions, find out where things seem to be going wrong and for feeding messages back from the constituencies about how policy and delivery is being received.
It's a tremendous foundation for anyone who wants the highest office in the land and, depending on who your boss is, a real opportunity to shine. I used to tell Andy that I couldn't do what I did, unless he was doing what he did for me.
Back in 2010, my wife, Margaret, and I shared Andy's 40th birthday, just down the road from his home, and stayed overnight. The celebration was in the Working Men’s Club down the road, and a far cry from the dining clubs of central London.
But even eight weeks ago, what has happened now would have been a fairytale. After the Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester, in which the Greens won a Labour seat and both they and Reform UK were cock-a-hoop, things looked incredibly bleak for the government and therefore for the Labour Party.
Then, the MP for Makerfield, Josh Simons, resigned. He did so to allow Andy Burnham a run at defeating Reform, who had won enormous numbers of votes in the local elections on May 7. Andy was well known, not only because he was the Mayor of Greater Manchester, but had also held the neighbouring seat of Leigh until he stepped down from Parliament in 2017.
Nevertheless, it was an enormous risk. To him personally because, if he had been defeated, goodness knows what that would have done not only to his own morale and standing, but to his chances of ever progressing in politics again. But more crucially for the country, it would have been another body blow to Labour and to the chance of a substantial number of the 403 MPs on the government’s side in the House of Commons holding their seats at the next general election.
The size of the victory propelled Andy into Parliament on the following Monday and to what has become a clear coronation, as other candidates for the top job dropped away along with their support. All of this will be written up in history books, although while it's constitutionally and politically inept to suggest that there should be a general election when the PM changes, it is also worth keeping one eye on the precedents – which haven't always gone well. It is the team you build and the energy and drive to make delivery happen which are the difference between success and failure.
Andy Burnham has learned an enormous amount in the last nine years by running the Combined Authority which constitutes three million voters in Greater Manchester. But my first message to him on Friday, June 19, apart from congratulations, was, “don't forget, if you make it, you will be Prime Minister of the whole country!”
As I have written in this column on many occasions, the North of England is constituted both east of, and not just west of, the Pennines. Andy and I have had endless banter about how ‘sick and tired’ I was of hearing about the North West of England, as though it was singularly ‘the North’. Louise Haigh, the MP for Sheffield Heeley, who was key to running his by-election campaign, is another key confidante to ensure that here, in our proud historic County of Yorkshire, we don't get overlooked – as we have so often been in the past.
But apart from the fact that it's also down to us to generate enormous economic and social improvement from the bottom up, it is also vital that key gestures to devolution and to power being transferred out of London and Whitehall does not simply reinforce the performance of those parts of the country that are already doing very well. This will be regrettable not only in relation to demonstrating political nous, but also to rebalancing the economy and providing the growth Andy Burnham has promised in every constituency and every part of Britain.
The task now is to rapidly build the capacity in the mayoral authorities in Yorkshire and in local government to be able to take on new powers and responsibilities. That work must begin now.
But, as we have seen over recent years, the political pendulum can swing so easily one way and then another. The battle for the hearts and minds of voters is engaged now with renewed vigour and, above all, with ambition and hope.
David Blunkett is a Labour Party politician, and served as the MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough.