Andy Burnham's political identity has been closely associated with place, devolution and his experience of leading Greater Manchester. Will this identity shape his role as Prime Minister, or will the role slowly shape him?
In the second of three blogs, in which Newcastle University academics offer different perspectives on Burnham's first months in power, Dr Martin Farr considers what Burnham's first days in power tell us about the tension between a leader rooted in regional politics and the demands of Britain's international role.
Contents:
- A localist in the international spotlight
- A change in leadership style
- When Burnham met Trump
- The challenge of defence
- An inheritance of conflict
- Bringing it home
A localist in the international spotlight
That it took Andy Burnham four weeks, and Keir Starmer four days, to travel abroad as Prime Minister accords with the already established narrative that saw the change from one to the other: the outgoing preoccupied with abroad, the incoming with ‘growth in every postcode’; a prime minister happiest anywhere, being replaced by one rooted in somewhere.
Yet Burnham, when eventually he did go, took the same convoluted train journey to Ukraine as Starmer so often did, marking the remarkable consistency in policy of successive governments to Russia's invasion. It took five weeks for Burnham to receive his first visitor, appropriately enough from a neighbour always near yet also far: the President of France: Emmanuel Macron. Together, they oversaw the undeniably magnificent, grandiloquent, loan of the Bayeux Tapestry, eliciting perhaps inevitably a flotilla of jokes about small boats unstoppably arriving from France.
A change in leadership style
Starmer hadn’t intended to be a foreign policy premier, but that he left parliament to return to the world of summitry ought not to have surprised. Initially, his inexperience had been betrayed by his uncritical response to the Israeli government’s retaliation after the Hamas terror attack of 7 October 2023.
This was the earliest of several misjudgements that came cumulatively to characterise his leadership.
Leaders of the Opposition – and indeed mayors of combined authorities – don’t have to think about foreign affairs. Rather than bus timetables, Burnham’s sun-baked, vibes-based August was after he had hand-written four letters of last-resort, to be read from beyond the grave by a commander of one the four Royal Navy submarines bearing Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Starmer's domestic underachievement made the appeal of abroad the greater; not unlike Boris Johnson, a Prime Minister who squandered a large majority sought succour abroad.
When Burnham met Trump
That Burnham met Trump in New York rather than Washington DC, and at the United Nations rather than the White House, would have been a source of relief. The greater the mise-en-scène, the less prominence the meeting and opportunities for awkwardness.
What opportunities there were were declined by a Trump typically solicitous at first: their 45-minute meeting and the 12-minute press conference went as well as could be expected. Practical British support for Saudi Arabia's war against the Houthis had been decided with an eye on Burnham's likely reception, and alongside the President, the Prime Minister duly flagged it.
Yet however discreetly he may seek distance, the economic consequences of Trump's war with Iran may overwhelm Burnham's government.
It was while Burnham had been airborne, heading for New York, that the militarily negligible but diplomatically not insignificant RAF support for Saudi Arabia in its war against the Houthis in Yemen was announced.
It had been during the previous period of Labour government that that the Attorney General, under pressure from Riyadh, discontinued Serious Fraud Office investigations into UK-Saudi arms deals in the 1980s, which meant the Eurofighter Typhoons could be sold. So British forces will be servicing British-made assets.
It had been conceived with an eye on the response of the Americans, and Burnham duly reminded Trump 'we accepted a call from Saudi Arabia', and responded positively as evidence that Britain will 'play our part' in peace in the Middle East.
The challenge of defence
On the day that the British Army announced that it could no longer afford large-scale training, President Javier Milei announced Argentina’s renewed claims to the Falklands. Britain was able, just about, to reclaim them in 1982; it certainly wouldn’t be able to in 2026. Not only given Britain’s own means, but given Britain’s main ally: in 1982 US support was critical, and in 2026 it is notional.
The key – and the greatly overlooked failure of 1982 – lies in prevention and deterrence. Countering another cynical, manufactured escalation over the Falklands by a floundering Argentine government requires a strong diplomatic posture led by Andy Burnham. The Falkland Islands stand at this year’s Labour Party Conference was unusually busy.
The reluctance to increase defence spending to 3% by 2030, and 3.5% by 2035, and moreover by a Chancellor who had resigned from Starmer’s government and indeed precipitated its fall, may come to define the government.
Increasing defence spending is always culturally challenging for the Labour party. In 1946, it split it for a generation.
An inheritance of conflict
Like Starmer, Andy Burnham is an innate Remainer; however, unlike Starmer, he does not represent an inner-London constituency that voted heavily to remain in the EU.
Indeed, Makerfield is so Leave a seat, that it was one of Reform UK’s main targets. That Labour – or Burnham – could win such a constituency further complicates his government's vaunted EU reset and hard-to-pin-down UK-EU summit. Burnham went as far as he could in his leader’s speech at conference to plan a route back to 'Europe'.
‘Brexit has done more harm than good’, he said to a party largely, though by no means wholly, hostile to Brexit. Britain has, he said, to ‘decide on a long-term relationship with what is still our largest market’, and, he added pointedly, ’there are different options.’
Some believe that the Burnham government made the historic decision to sanction Israeli-occupied territories in order to win a seat as distinct as Holborn and St Pancras, which had been vacated by Keir Starmer as he returned to the international stage.
The shift in Labour's attitude to Israel has changed with the nature of the Israeli state.
Ed Miliband’s Israel policy of late Britain is one of an unusually domestic bent. It’s certainly had annual foreign secretaries, but this one is powerful, and the Prime Minister is uninterested.
No issue animates activists and demonstrators more than Palestine, and Miliband has lanced that particular boil.
Grievances remain – there was a large Palestine Action demonstration recently – but Labour’s friends of Palestine had more to claim credit for than did Labour’s Friends of Israel. It is a policy almost written by Labour delegates. Last year, they had to content themselves with passing a motion; this year, no need for a motion. Or, to put it another way, it was a policy fully in accord with ‘Labour’s values’.
Burnham decided that Britain should lead a concerted international response to the excesses of the Netanyahu government that included France and Canada (also members of the J7: the seven largest Jewish diaspora countries).
Starmer had inherited a war. Asquith had gone to war in 1914 to defend Belgium against external aggression, Chamberlain went to war in 1940 to do the same for Poland, and Boris Johnson in 2022 (effectively) did similar for Ukraine. Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Starmer also inherited the war, but Burnham has also inherited Iran, which included as collateral damage Starmer’s carefully constructed relationship with Donald Trump.
It was Starmer's most significant mis-step, notwithstanding public and party approval.
It demonstrated how ‘events’, particularly foreign ones, can be the most public tests of a prime minister. They can cement an administration (Falklands, 1982) but, more often, upend (Korea, 1950; Suez, 1956; Lebanon 2007; Brexit, 2016).
Burnham has already conceded, under US pressure, a review of the planned surrender of sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. Artificial Intelligence (AI) regulation is another point of contention with Trump. Burnham's rhetoric about Russia in his UN General Assembly speech was strikingly hostile.
Except at the margin – as the four Gaza independents historically demonstrated in 2024 – there are few votes in foreign policy. That is a significant reason there is no longer a prime minister Starmer.
At Labour Party Conference, this year’s surprise – as in their identity – foreign speaker was effectively the same as last year: a Labour Party head of government who managed to get re-elected. In 2025 the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, this year the Prime Minister of Norway.
‘It’s fun to be elected,’ Jonas Gahr Støre told a friendly audience in the main hall, ‘but it’s better to be re-elected’.
Advice freely was shared, but Andy Burnham, sitting next to him, would have been too polite to say that there’s really no need, thank you: cost of living, energy costs; ‘equality in everyday life’. Burnham knows that all politics are local.
And they can be no more local than when speaking at his party conference on the docks where his grandfather worked as a lorry driver. The Prime Minister's remarkable speech at Labour Party Conference did not alight for long on foreign affairs. There was no mention of China, and only one of Russia; Donald Trump, curiously, did not feature. Most significant were Burnham’s words, and his disposition, to Europe.
Bringing it home
But Andy Burnham will discover, however powerful his foreign secretary, that there are decisions that he, and only he, can take, and international meetings only he can attend, and indeed host. It is a coincidence sent from heaven itself that the G20 summit to mark the UK presidency next year happens to be in ... Manchester. No happier conjunction of the international and the local could be imagined. Bewildered heads of government will experience the peculiar joy of chips and gravy, which will no doubt ensure that their likely first visit to Manchester will not be their last.
At the recent Labour conference at the end of September, Burnham did not appear as expected at the Wales and Scotland regional receptions. The possible terror attack on RAF Fairford required him to be elsewhere, chairing a COBRA meeting. Suspicions were that the base may have been targeted because the US Air Force use it to bomb Iran. Many of the by-then well-refreshed members and delegates in Liverpool were nevertheless disgruntled.
It is but one episode, but there will be others.
The Prime Minister may not wish abroad to be the measure of his premiership, but it has a good chance of determining it.
You might also like:
- explore some of Dr Martin Farr’s other recent writings:
- read the blog: Does the International Day of Neutrality still matter?
- read the blog: A new King: A historian’s commentary on the Coronation
- listen to Dr Martin Farr on the From Newcastle Podcast:
- read part 1 of this series, in which academics offer perspectives on Burnham's first months in power: Can Burnham bring stability to British politics?
- find out more about Dr Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History at Newcastle University
- explore how the past informs our future at Newcastle's School of History, Classics, and Archaeology
