- China crisis - 15th July 2026
- Burned out again - 14th July 2026
- Broken - 13th July 2026
Former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is likely to become UK Prime Minister (PM) without a General Election (GE) mandate in less than a week, but critics worry that this could further hasten an already steep decline in voter turnout, and it stands in stark contrast to other ballots, such as the recent democratic one for the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC).
It is entirely possible that Mr Burnham could be the ONLY candidate for the Labour leadership, and will therefore automatically become PM a few days later.
Wes Streeting, the centrist former health secretary, had been seen as the MP most likely to throw his hat in the ring, but that changed shortly after Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation, when he instead endorsed Mr Burnham and indicated he would not fight for the leadership.
Once Mr Burnham reaches 323 nominations, it is mathematically impossible for a rival to reach the 81-MP threshold needed to run against him, and he will then inevitably be handed the keys to 10 Downing Street even without a GE.
This is all entirely constitutional, although it is unique for it to happen only two years into a parliament, where the incumbent has swept to power with a thumping majority of 411 MPs, and onlookers fear that this bizarre situation could further undermine voter disillusionment, with it making unfortunate headlines in UK newspapers, such as “Who voted for Burnam?..” in The Times.
There is also huge concern that this strange event could speed up an alarming decline in voter turnouts at elections.
In 1945 the turnout figure was 83.9 percent, but at the 2024 one it was about 60 percent, the lowest since 2001, when it was 59.4 percent.
This 2024 figure came even after the drama of Brexit, and the extraordinary spectacle of witnessing ministers, as well as PMs come and go.
Mr Burnham has also made plenty of promises in relation to spending, but could be unable to implement many of them, because the UK is in such deep financial trouble, and this, too, may endorse the view among voters that there is little point in trudging to the polling booth, as nothing changes.
Mean wages have grown by just one per cent in real terms since 2024, and by a paltry 4.5 per cent since April 2008 (a third as quickly as American wages).
More trouble could lie ahead too, if Artificial Intelligence (AI) displaces the legions of white-collar knowledge workers who make up the UK economy’s backbone.
Low growth is also bad for the ailing public finances.
Public spending has risen from 39 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019-20 to 45 per cent today.
An ageing population and rising defence commitments could push it higher still, with tax revenues (37 per cent of GDP) struggling to cover Mr Burnham’s largesse.
Nor will greater borrowing help, because debt interest this year will cost £109 billion (more than the education budget), and bond investors charge the UK higher interest rates than any other big rich country, so they jump at the slightest hint of profligacy.
Since warning last year that we are too “in hock” to the bond markets, Mr Burnham has toned things down a little – suggesting that he supported the UK Government’s current fiscal rules and would have a plan to get debt down.
By their nature, the rules (self-imposed limits on borrowing and debt), are a straitjacket worn by successive administrations to reassure those in the £2.9 trillion market for UK government debt that Britain is a safe bet.
Voters may look enviously at how, unlike at a Westminster level, there have been many other genuinely democratic elections across the UK, including at the WP/SC where the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru (Plaid) gained power without a coalition for the first time in 27 years, with a new First Minister of Wales (FMW) (Rhun ap Iorwerth).
So it won’t be easy for our likely new PM Mr Burnham. It is may be even worse, though, for the poor voter…
The memories of Phil’s extraordinary decades long award-winning career in journalism (when the turnover of senior political leaders was nothing like as great as today in the beginning), during which he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – during 42 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon) for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, it has always been paramount to keep up with societal changes, such as attitudes towards women – but new evidence today appears to show that this isn’t happening in one country: China.
