Brian Wilson - Burnham enters amid hope - but not euphoria - as his real test begins

There is already uneasiness that the process to date has been a bit grubby. I do not expect a backlash of pro-Starmer nostalgia but neither will there be unqualified admiration for the route used by Andy Burnham to replace him in 10 Downing Street.

How much collusion was there with those whose own resignations pushed Starmer towards the exit? What promises were offered in return? And does the change Burnham represents rely on translating Manchester success onto a much, much bigger stage?

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My own preference would have been for a contest in which ideas and competence under fire could be tested but it seems the choreography of events will deny us that. So, within a few weeks, we will have another Prime Minister for whom nobody voted in that role.

It is not a great advertisement for Parliamentary democracy but now all the main players are so tainted by it that none of them (including the SNP) can sensibly complain, though that is unlikely to stop them. Changing leaders in mid-term has become the rule rather than rare exception.

All this backdrop points towards one absolutely certainty. It is that Andy Burnhan will be given very little time to establish himself as a popular Prime Minister. He will surely not have forgotten that it was Starmer’s first hundred days or less which guaranteed his Premiership would end up in the dustbin of history.

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Even before Labour’s victory in 2024, it was a matter of puzzlement to those of us who lived through the equivalent period pre-1997 that its most basic lessons were ignored. Starmer always looked like a man without a plan or even five attractive, attainable objectives on a pledge card which he could be measured against.

I have never come close to understanding how or why this lack of preparedness was allowed to happen. Instead, the policies which defined the Starmer era and from which it never subsequently escaped might have been drafted to cause offence to an electorate which had granted this huge mandate for progressive change.

There always seemed to be a lack of basic political nous to Starmer’s public persona. The couple of speeches I heard him deliver in Scotland, to audiences who wanted to like him, were woeful. There was no driving sense of mission which might convince, far less inspire.

Following the early and severe mis-steps (in which Rachel Reeves was equally culpable), I don’t think Starmer was a particularly poor Prime Minister, but neither were there any serious signs of recovery. That might have changed over the next couple of years but nobody surveying the May election results would have put money on reversing the direction of travel.

Starmer was entitled to recall his successes yesterday – from clearing out the Corbynite stables as Labour leader to progress on immigration and the NHS as Prime Minister. He also did pretty well on the world stage and will be judged favourably by history for having kept us out the Iran war.

He departs with dignity rather than in disgrace. Burnham arrives with hope but not euphoria.