The man being touted as Britain’s prime minister-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, was “totally absent” from the fight to oust Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, a Number 10 insider has said.
Corbyn presided over an antisemitism crisis in Labour, which was found to have broken equality law and discriminated against its Jewish members during his time as leader.
Speaking to the FT, the Number 10 source said that even though the party was “bankrupt financially and morally” at the time, Burnham did not follow dozens of other shadow ministers when they resigned after the 2016 Brexit referendum.
“We were sticking our necks out and standing up for traditional Labour values and Andy was helping facilitate the hard-left takeover,” one MP told the FT.
“The thing that has engendered the most resentment is what happened in the Corbyn years. Lots of MPs who bear the scars of that period remember that over five years — when there was a takeover by the far left — Andy was just absent from the battlefield,” a former cabinet minister said.
Other Labour insiders take the view that Burnham shied away from the fight against Corbyn because he wanted to be mayor of Manchester and he needed the support of Labour’s membership – which were heavily pro-Corbyn – to achieve that objective.
When Burnham announced he was quitting the front bench to focus on Manchester, he insisted he had always put the party above “factions and personalities”.
“I have given exactly the same loyalty to all four of the Labour leaders I have served,” he said at the time.
A New Labour-era cabinet minister who worked closely with Burnham told the FT that although Burnham had charm and empathy, “He’s a people pleaser. He is very effective at saying what people want to hear but there was never any question at all of Andy saying or doing anything difficult, and that’s a huge problem.”
Burnham has opposed the BDS movement, however, and last October stood with Manchester’s Jewish community following the terrorist attack at the Heaton Park Synagogue.
After October 7, he unequivocally condemned Hamas’s barbaric attacks and affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself.
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