Expect the changing of the guard in Downing Street to take place on around Monday, July 20. Sir Keir Starmer set out a twin-track transition timetable in his resignation speech, where he would need to remain in office until early September if Labour MPs nominate more than one candidate to contest the leadership election.
It is now overwhelmingly likely that Andy Burnham will be the sole nominee – demonstrated by the rapid shift in allegiance of the sole declared candidate, former health secretary Wes Streeting, and symbolised by Burnham’s own celebratory selfie with half of the Labour parliamentary party.
If he is the sole candidate, then Burnham will be acclaimed as the Labour Party leader at a special conference on July 17, and Starmer would then go to the palace after the weekend to advise the King to appoint Burnham as prime minister.
Intriguingly, the party timetable means Burnham would become new Labour leader while Starmer remains prime minister, when the football world cup final takes place that Sunday (19) night. Maybe Lionel Messi’s Argentina and Kylian Mbappe’s France will contest this year’s final, again. Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane will need to step up in form for a world cup winners parade in the Mall to give the King, Starmer and Burnham the happiest of scheduling conflicts.
Burnham may have to put his own love of football largely on hold for most of this summer, now that he has just three weeks to plan a government. His first major speech in Manchester on Monday (29) committed to a new Number 10 North to symbolise his commitment to devolving power from Whitehall and Westminster. Burnham suggested he has yet to make final decisions about his key appointments, to seek to calm speculation about whether former Labour leader Ed Miliband, home secretary Shabana Mahmood, or another might be his Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mahmood has been much the most hyperactive member of the cabinet since the prime minister’s resignation with a nightly blitz of press releases for the first editions of the next morning’s newspapers.
There was the tough message that the use of RAF bases would be ramped up to accelerate the closure of asylum hotels, though the planning processes and costs make this an unlikely route to clearing the hotels. There was the pro-compassion message, announcing more details to enact the government’s pledge to provide safe and legal routes for refugees to come to the UK. This was followed by a tougher message that ministers would be given new powers to charge refugees around £10,000, in the style of a student loans style system to claw back the costs of asylum accommodation.
There was an extraordinary spat between the home secretary and her Home Office minister, Mike Tapp, over his Times article acknowledging that the Home Office was working on plans to let care workers settle without waiting fifteen years. Mahmood’s briefing that the minister should be sacked was turned down by Downing Street. Bizarrely, this fierce row appeared to be premised on an agreement that the settlement policy needs to change to avoid hundreds of thousands of people losing their legal status.
Did this media blitz advertise Mahmood’s desire to retain her current role – or to ensure a change of government means continuity, not change, on immigration - if she does move on? Mahmood’s strong sense of patriotism could make it difficult to turn down opportunities to serve as chancellor, foreign secretary or as defence secretary on the increasingly crucial challenge of national security.
How far Labour rebalances its voice on immigration remains contested internally. Mahmood’s voice has tended to split opinion between Labour MPs facing populist or progressive challenges in their own constituencies. This risks becoming a binary argument about the necessity or risks of tough language on control.
Yet Burnham’s government will be judged primarily by the outcomes it achieves in 2029 – not how many more headlines it can generate this summer and autumn.
So the new prime minister asked the home secretary to refocus its capacity of the Home Office into real world plans to deliver workable controls: an annual immigration plan in parliament can make the case for the migration the government seeks to keep.
A programme to close asylum hotels at greater pace could save funds to support an expanded community sponsorship programme.
The government plans to start its safe routes small – and to expand them once it has stopped the boats. But a more ambitious approach to expand them should be its key offer to grow routes and return deals with France – a much more plausible route to visible control of the Channel by 2029 than complex plans to reassess temporary refugee status every three years for two decades.
The challenge for Burnham’s government is to show how an agenda for fair controls – fusing control and compassion, contribution and cohesion – can bridge rather than divide the coalition of people and places that his government needs to reach.
