One man is preparing for Downing Street. One is fighting a by-election against a man from “outer space”. And one is discovering that in politics, timing can be everything.
This week sees Andy Burnham setting out his vision for a potential new Labour government, Nigel Farage facing Count Binface in Clacton, and Al Carns weighing up the opportunities and challenges that come with a leadership bid.
Read this week’s Who’s Top, Who’s Not – brought to you by Whitehouse’s Max Wilson
Flying above the atmosphere – Count Binface
Our intergalactic overlord is soon set to conquer Clacton as he gears up for the political battle for the ages. Forget Healey v Benn in ’81; we’ve got Farage v Binface in ’26!
To deflect accusations that he is the British parliamentary wing of the Thai cryptocurrency sector, Nigel Farage has pre-emptively launched a by-election in his own seat ahead of the parliamentary standards investigation into whether he has broken any parliamentary rules on undeclared donations. Should he be found guilty, we could be looking at another by-election in the autumn.
Farage’s 4D chess abilities were somewhat undermined this week when all of the major parties refused to play and so Farage is left to fight his ‘anti-establishment’ campaign against the noble Count Binface.
This risks Farage looking somewhat silly, cynical and inward-looking. In a few short weeks, Andy Burnham will be on the steps of Downing Street outlining his vision for the future of our country. At the same time, Nigel will be shouting at a bin.
The short-term risk is that Reform have to abandon any hope of winning the Manchester mayoral by-election and must send their exhausted activists to pound the streets of Clacton when they could be on holiday. But the longer-term risk is that with the dodgy funding allegations hanging around his neck and his determination to play silly political games with unnecessary by-elections, Farage begins to look more and more like the establishment he claims to despise.
Middle of the field – PLP
Andy Burnham is days away from becoming prime minister and he is using that time to set out how he intends to govern. On foreign policy, he used a Times oped to set out how he wants to both rearm and reindustrializing the UK, carefully folding his foreign policy into his domestic narrative.
But as well as becoming PM, Burnham is also becoming Labour leader and as such he has set out new commitments to MPs in Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). In a letter to Labour MPs this week, Burnham has said that that he will never use party discipline to “stifle debate” and says they should raise problems and policy ideas “without fear or favour”. Political engagement between ministers and MPs will be prioritised and the whips office will become “our HR department”.
This is all very noble and has been well-received by Labour MPs who have been praising it on social media. But will this idealism survive first contact with government? What happens the first time that the Burnham government has to make a tough decision that upsets parts of the PLP? Greater transparency and more effective political engagement will undoubtedly help to bring some MPs along on some difficult choices, but to govern is to choose and to choose is to upset some individuals.
Undoubtedly much of this letter is aimed at creating goodwill with the large number of Labour MPs that Burnham simply does not know. Doing this in advance means he is setting out on the right foot in the hope that he can bring Labour MPs with him on tough votes. But this letter is also about defining himself against something and clearly that target is Starmer. That is fine for now and with this audience, but very soon Andy will need to define himself against Reform/Tories/Green Party and his audience will be the British public.
Sinking quicky – Al Carns
Action man Al Carns has this week bowed to the inevitable and won’t be standing against Andy Burnham in the Labour leadership contest.
In truth, this was never likely and was an exercise in profile raising. And whilst WTWN has no problem with politicians being political, the prolonged nature of Carns’s bid may have been a mis-step.
Carns is far from the first politicians to use a nascent leadership bid to jockey for a prominent position in the next cabinet/shadow cabinet. But the key to doing so is leverage. How can you demonstrate to the eventual winner that you carry a body of parliamentary MPs that will be crucial to effective party management in the months ahead. Sometimes you can do so by sheer force of numbers (e.g. Starmer having to appoint Rebecca Long-Bailey to his first shadow cabinet) and sometimes you can do it by hinting at how strong your support from a particular parliamentary wing might be (e.g Wes Streeting this year).
In truth, Wes has shown his political experience by opting out of the leadership contest at the right time. The risk for Carns is that by leaving his backing for Burnham until the last minute, he has burnt through his political capital and potentially made enemies when he didn’t need to.