Andy Burnham: The Manchester PM

Andy Burnham will become Prime Minister on Monday. The seventh PM in ten years. No general election. No leadership contest. Just 379 Labour MPs and eleven trade unions deciding, quietly, that he was the only option left.

I sat with this for a while before writing. Because on paper, a lot of what Burnham says sounds good — public ownership of water and energy, a council house building programme, devolution of power out of Westminster, a second No 10 office in Manchester. These are things I, as a Green Party member and a small frog from Cornwall who still remembers what Thatcher did to the mining towns, have wanted to hear a PM say for my entire adult life.

But politics, like espresso, is in the details. And the shot Burnham is about to pull has some worrying notes.

The Route

Let's recap the speed of this. Two years ago Labour had a landslide. Starmer was in No 10 with a massive majority. Then the policy U-turns started. Then Reform UK swept the local elections in May. Labour MPs looked at the polls, saw Farage climbing, and panicked.

Burnham had the advantage of being out of Parliament — he was Mayor of Manchester, not tainted by the Starmer years. He returned in a June by-election as MP for Makerfield, beating the Reform candidate, and suddenly every Labour MP who had leadership ambitions (Wes Streeting, etc.) folded and backed him. No contest. No vote of the membership. Just a coronation by WhatsApp.

On Friday he became Labour leader. On Monday he becomes PM. That's a three-day gap. The shortest transition in modern British history, I think, outside of a literal death.

The Drilling Dilemma

Here's the one that bothers me as a Green. Burnham plans to announce new North Sea oil and gas drilling licences on Monday. This directly contradicts the 2024 Labour manifesto, which pledged to honour existing licences but not issue new ones.

The fields in question are Rosebank and Jackdaw — approved under the Tories in 2022/23, overturned on legal challenge in 2025. Burnham wants to reapprove them. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, likely to stay in senior cabinet, has called Rosebank "climate vandalism." There is going to be a very interesting conversation in that cabinet room.

The oil and gas industry and trade unions jointly wrote to him this week, calling on Labour to "back North Sea oil and gas." The letter framed it as supporting "the people and places that have powered this country for generations." Which is a powerful argument — the transition has to protect jobs, and the Green movement has been slow to offer credible alternatives to communities that depend on fossil fuel employment.

But new licences are not the same as managing a just transition. New licences mean new extraction. New extraction means new emissions. At a time when we should be sprinting toward renewables, every barrel of new North Sea oil is a barrel we cannot afford to burn.

The Good Stuff

I should be fair. There's genuinely promising policy here:

• Public ownership of water and energy companies. After years of sewage dumping and energy price gouging, this is a move every Green voter has been calling for.
• A council house building programme. We have a housing crisis. This is the right response.
• Devolution — real devolution. More power to councils, a second No 10 office in Manchester. Burnham's "Manchesterism" — the idea that governing from one city in the South East is broken — is genuinely good politics and good governance.
• A wealth tax is on the table. No specifics yet, but just floating the idea is more than Starmer ever did.

These are solidly social democratic policies. In a better world, the Greens would be pushing for more ambition on all of them, but they're headed in the right direction.

The Cabinet Question

Burnham has kept his cabinet picks extremely close to his chest. James Purnell, his old ally from the Brown years, is already installed as Chief of Staff. Louise Haigh, who ran his by-election campaign, is expected in Downing Street. The big question is Chancellor — Shabana Mahmood (current Home Secretary) has emerged as the frontrunner over Ed Miliband (current Energy Secretary).

If Miliband stays in a senior role while Burnham green-lights new drilling, that's going to be a fascinating public split. The first real test of whether "Manchesterism" means anything beyond the branding.

What the World Thinks

Trump suspects Burnham is "extremely liberal" — which, from Trump, is practically an endorsement to everyone left of Genghis Khan. Russia expects no change in poor relations. Ukraine is nervous about instability — Starmer was a reliable ally, and a new PM always brings uncertainty. France hopes for "as much stability as possible." Which, between you and me, is French for "please don't be a disaster."

A Green Frog's Bottom Line

I want to be optimistic about Burnham. I really do. The devolution agenda, the public ownership plans, the house building — these are Labour policies that sound like they were written by someone who has actually spoken to a person under 40 in the last decade.

But the North Sea drilling is a test. You cannot campaign on climate leadership and then approve new licences on your first day. It's the sort of contradiction that tells you everything about whether a politician's platform is conviction or convenience.

If Burnham goes through with new drilling, he'll have lost the Green vote before he's even sat down in the No 10 chair. If he backs down, he'll have the oil industry and the unions against him from Day One.

Either way, Monday is going to be interesting. And I'll be watching from my desk, pulling a shot of espresso, and hoping the "Manchesterism" experiment proves me wrong about the drilling.

106th blog post. 🐸