Steve Hay

The words that come into my head when I think about Andy Burnham as prime-minister-in-waiting are “president” and “Boris Johnson.” As I said on News at Ten last night, his ambition to transfer significant financial and policy powers from Westminster to the regions - mayors and local government - would weaken the power of his cabinet while enhancing his, with his planned Downing Street North as overseer of this distributed power. This is redolent of French or American separation of presidential/executive, parliamentary and state/municipal powers more than the British tradition. It may be a good thing. It may be the sine qua non of narrowing the wealth and income gaps between London/south-east and the rest of the UK. But we do not have a directly elected president. And even if this kind of constitutional change bores you to tears, it matters: we’ve had a parliamentary system that has muddled through for 250 years, give or take. Although it may make very good sense to end the near absolute power of centralising Westminster departments and their often ove-confident secretaries of state, while transferring vital economic decisions to elected mayors or councillors who know what their communities actually need, it is not so conspicuously the case that MPs themselves need cutting down to size. They should think hard about what kind of role they want in this new system of newly distributed power. There is a case for saying they - in some kind of British version of American confessional committees - should have more oversight over Burnham’s much expanded Office of the Prime Minister, mayors and economic regulators. If they don’t hold the new quasi presidential system to account, who would - especially when so much of Burnham’s personal authority will flow from a presidential style of talking to and directly connecting with voters? Which brings me to the Boris Johnson echoes. They are that First, Tory MPs saw him - just as Labour MPs see Burnham - as some kind of election winning messiah. Second, Johnson talked an incessant talk of narrowing the gap between north and south, which he called “levelling up”, his version of Burnham’s “Manchesterism” - but no serious transfer of decision making to local people ever accompanied “levelling up”, and most would say it was hot air Third, Johnson - like Burnham - exploited his figurehead status as a former mayor, his popularity and a personal connection with voters that he ruthlessly cultivated. In Johnson’s case, he capitalised on all that to call a snap general election, which he won handsomely, more than two years before he needed to do so - and it is not far-fetched to say that Burnham will also feel the siren call of securing a personal mandate from the electorate (whether he executes on that or not). I don’t know whether Johnson is a model, or a warning or an augury of things to come. But if Burnham and Labour MPs need a lesson in what can go disastrously wrong when a leader is chosen mid term in a tide of messianic fervour, they have access to a case study whose consequences are still being played out.