As Labour MPs filed out of Portcullis House on the last day before parliament rose – and Andy Burnham ascends – one said they were struggling with a metaphor for how concentrated Burnham’s power had become. Flailing for something that did not sound insulting, he gave up and likened Burnham’s absolute control to North Korea’s Kim dynasty.
It is a very congenial and receptive kind of dictatorship. But never in British politics has such power been concentrated in the hands of such a tiny number of individuals. Never in British politics have so many of Labour’s biggest beasts had so little influence or leverage.
No cabinet minister or rival leadership candidate has any card to play in their deck to cajole or threaten Andy Burnham into giving them a role. All they can do is wait.
Burnham’s plans are sealed inside what MPs call “the black box”. Inside the “box” is Burnham, his close confidante Louise Haigh and his new chief of staff and old cabinet colleague James Purnell.
If you are a plugged-in cabinet minister or a supportive MP – but you are outside the black box – you can hear rumours, you can have opinions, you can make educated guesses and you can talk directly to that triumvirate to try to understand their thinking. But they do not know for sure. Even some of Burnham’s closest staffers and parliamentary friends are out the loop.
It is sending most of Westminster into a state of near hysterical paranoia. Wes Streeting, who thought he could be prime minister a few weeks ago, openly joked at a recent summer drinks reception about a sponsorship banner that advertised retirement planning. There is no guarantee whether key figures of the soft-left, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and Lucy Powell, will get the roles that they covet.
Burnham and Haigh have deployed this strategy once before – when the stakes were last at their highest – as Burnham sought a seat for a byelection. At that time, the rumour mill about who would step down was wild – Andrew Gwynne, Jim McMahon, even Powell.
But when it came to the crunch, as Streeting looked as if he might trigger a contest, the WhatsApp groups went silent. Some of Burnham’s closest friends in parliament and outside admitted they had been cut out. When Josh Simons stood down in Makerfield, it came as a surprise even though it had been a possibility for some time.
That does not mean those who are now briefing the probable cabinet appointments are wrong. Among the serious operators, who are close to Burnham and who make it their business to be in the know – a consensus has formed that the incoming prime minister intends to give the chancellorship to Shabana Mahmood, not Ed Miliband.
They will be able to sense the responses to their lobbying efforts to keep the energy secretary out of No 11. But those inside the black box say they have not communicated a final decision to anyone.
There is a major downside to this. When no one is speaking for you officially, anyone can say they are speaking for you unofficially. This vacuum of information has not always been helpful to Burnham.
He is said to have been extremely irritated by the cabinet briefings and by those who claim to know his plans. But when you have no staff and no ministers, but lots of enthusiasts desperate for patronage, everyone is an “ally” suggesting policy directions or appointments that they have no real knowledge of or influence over.
For a man who showed a huge appetite for risk when he decided to fight the Makerfield byelection, a seat where Reform had swept the board at the local elections, his strategy since having arrived in Westminster has been – whisper it – Ming vase-esque.
He has done one speech – with no questions from the press – one radio interview and one friendly podcast. There is no manifesto and there is no public strategy. He will arrive in No 10 on Monday with a policy proposition and a cabinet that exists pretty much entirely in his own mind. He will never again be as powerful as he is in that moment. But his supporters have to hope that somewhere in that black box is the plan they have been waiting for.
