{"id":1102,"date":"2026-07-22T16:11:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=1102"},"modified":"2026-07-22T16:11:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:11:20","slug":"can-andy-burnham-save-britain-wait-what-would-that-even-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=1102","title":{"rendered":"Can Andy Burnham save Britain? Wait, what would that even mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

However long Andy Burnham may last as the United Kingdom\u2019s prime minister, he has already made clear he won\u2019t play the role of international anti-Trump liberal dreamboat previously held by Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau (and currently occupied, however awkwardly, by Canadian premier Mark Carney).<\/p>\n

Read more \u201cPrincess Mononoke\u201d is a warning we didn\u2019t heed<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s just as well. Scratch that; there\u2019s no \u201cperhaps\u201d about it. As every single article about Burnham\u2019s accession to power will inform you, he is now Britain\u2019s seventh prime minister within the last 10 years, going back \u2014 not at all coincidentally \u2014 to the Brexit vote in 2016 that ended then-P.M. David Cameron\u2019s career and sent the U.K. down the slippery slide into international irrelevance and permanent financial crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Brexit defenders can still be found in the wild, such as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, the right-wing renegade who hopes to replace Burnham two or three years from now (the imprecise scheduling of elections being a distinctive feature of British democracy), they are starting to sound an awful lot like the MAGA apologists who embrace Reflecting Pool conspiracy theories or willingly go on television to explain why the Iran war was a genius idea. No one seriously disputes that the abrupt separation from the European Union has cratered the British economy. Several studies suggest that GDP per capita has declined by at least 6%, a serious recession in a period when most other major nations have seen modest economic growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Furthermore, while Brexit was supposed to give the U.K. greater control of its borders, the globally troublesome issues surrounding migration have only gotten worse. Net migration into England, Scotland and Wales from all sources \u2014 undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, students and tourists who overstay visas \u2014 spiked to unprecedented levels between 2017 and 2023, and nearly 20% of the British population is foreign-born. (That number is roughly 15% in the U.S.) Whether that\u2019s a positive or negative in cultural or economic terms is at least somewhat subjective, but it\u2019s indisputably a political hot potato that none of Burnham\u2019s five or so predecessors has known how to handle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, Burnham has no time, and no political latitude, to stand athwart the battlements of history facing down the forces of Trumpism, especially as the formerly formidable MAGA juggernaut collapses into the D.C. swamp, howling as it dies. Having staged a remarkably successful coup within Britain\u2019s ruling Labour Party in response to outgoing leader Keir Starmer\u2019s chronic irresolution on virtually all issues, Burnham has calculated that he needs to appear decisive and pragmatic straight out of the box. The former Manchester mayor comes off as a gregarious, upbeat fellow with an admittedly nerdy overlay. If he\u2019s not exactly John F. Kennedy, he clearly outdoes Starmer on charisma (not a high bar). He begins with a considerable reservoir of goodwill, but whether improved vibes can correct the Labour government\u2019s toxic drift remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

His will be a \u201ccost of living\u201d government, Burnham said after entering 10 Downing Street this week, simultaneously dedicated to reducing fuel and food prices for working people while also, somehow or other, pumping up the U.K.\u2019s defense budget as part of a long-term commitment to NATO\u2019s response to Russian aggression. Those may well be defensible or admirable policy goals, but if they sound at least somewhat contradictory and also unlikely to inspire the liberal-progressive Labour left that came to despise Starmer for his ideological fecklessness and united around Burnham as the \u201csoft left\u201d alternative, you have correctly understood the new prime minister\u2019s predicament.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more The \u201cOdyssey\u201d casting furor obscures a deeper history<\/a><\/p>\n

Furthermore, if all this has the depressingly familiar feeling of a repeated bad dream, it probably should. The enduring parallel between British and American politics has always been slightly out of sync \u2014 Maggie Thatcher was a year and a half ahead of Ronald Reagan, while Bill Clinton preceded Tony Blair by more than four years \u2014 and Burnham seems at immediate risk of the \u201cJoe Biden syndrome\u201d that torpedoed Starmer and has undermined other centrist leaders, including Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As political challenges go, Burnham\u2019s would seem to fall partway between unlikely and impossible. He\u2019s betting everything on being perceived as a competent and effective manager of the British economy, which is likely to involve closer ties with the E.U. but not quite undoing Brexit, in order to dampen the culture-war currents and anti-immigrant fervor boosting Farage\u2019s party, while also being just enough of a social democrat to keep the disgruntled Labour left largely onside.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To raise the difficulty level several more notches, all of that is necessary at the same moment when the U.K. has suddenly become a multi-party democracy, more or less on the European model, rather than an American-style duopoly. While Reform UK swept local elections in both \u201cMiddle England\u201d regions formerly dominated by the borderline-irrelevant Conservative Party and the previously Labour-friendly post-industrial north, the resurgent Green Party has made major gains on the left in London and other major cities and the centrist Liberal Democrats remain solidly entrenched in middle-class suburbia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not much of an exaggeration, in fact, to suggest that the current British situation is something like the Democrats splitting into three different parties and the Republicans into two. Whether that\u2019s likely to lead to greater or less political coherence and national conflict is impossible to say, but both systems will face severe stress tests in the years ahead. Burnham has suggested that his government will offer Britain one last chance to fend off the far right. That has the ring of self-serving mythology, but one thing seems almost certain: This will be the U.K.\u2019s last one-party majority government for years to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Featuring Trump on US coins and bills would put America in rare company<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since Brexit, the UK has been on a downward economic and political slide. Can improved vibes really fix that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[849,850,4,852,853,854,855,856,857],"class_list":["post-1102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-andy-burnham","tag-britain","tag-commentary","tag-keir-starmer","tag-labour-party","tag-nigel-farage","tag-reform-uk","tag-u-k","tag-u-k-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nCan Andy Burnham save Britain? 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