Andy Burnham’s ascension from Manchester Mayor to Prime Minister has given the public a surge in optimism for the Labour Party, but experts have told GB News the so-called ‘Burnham bounce’ could be at risk of becoming a paper tiger as he treads a fine line between placating loyalists and enticing new voters on the Left.
The Prime Minister pledged to be “a circuit breaker for Britain”, adding he wanted to “change politics, to make it more collaborative, more about problem solving than point scoring”.
However, he is facing a dilemma to recapture voters who may have previously voted for the party under Jeremy Corbyn but left Labour under Sir Keir Starmer, joining either the Green Party or the Islington North MP’s new Your Party, which he co-founded with Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana.
In his first few days, Mr Burnham has already pledged to implement sweeping radical policies, including a major shift towards public control of essential services, ending rough sleeping and the introduction of a national £2 bus cap – moves branded “very welcome” by Mr Corbyn.
“He is the last chance for Labour,” one voter from Shropshire told GB News.
“I think we’ll just have to see. I used to live in Manchester and he’s got that charisma that Starmer just doesn’t have.”
Martin, from Edinburgh, added: “Having been both a previous Green Party and Labour voter, I feel like I have become disinterested in the Greens’ policies of late and Labour’s reign under Keir.
“I had joined the mailing list for Your Party, which has turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Andy Burnham is a charismatic character and I feel like he has done a lot as Mayor of Manchester, my favourite city in the UK, and I feel like I could be swayed to vote for him at the next election.”
However, others warned Mr Burnham from straying from progressive policies, calling on the party to take a harsher stance on Israel.
Matt, 27, from Gloucestershire added: “I’m certainly intrigued by Burnham, and he seems like a normal human being, which is more than can be said of Starmer.
“But if he refuses to push back on Israel then my hope for change in the party under Burnham’s leadership will quickly fade.”
Polling from Ipsos found Mr Burnham’s support is strong among left-wingers who want radical change (net +29 per cent) and the small group of left minimalists (net +26 per cent).
Senior Labour figures were quick to insist the party needed to be a broad church and welcome back progressive voters into the fold.
“I think it is absolutely possible to bring back left-leaning voters who voted Green…while remaining with an appeal to the centre ground,” former party advisor Matthew Laza told the People’s Channel.
“Is it possible to bring a coalition like that together? Yes. Can you do it without putting off one side or the other? Yes. Will it take a lot of skill and careful consideration? Yes.
“I think Andy’s message to voters who have voted Green will be, ‘I’m sorry that the party seemed at times not to listen to your concerns.’
“He needs to say ‘We’re going to talk to you about your concerns, yes… but I’m not going to give in to every single thing that somebody like Zack Polanski or Jeremy Corbyn says’.”
Green Party figures, meanwhile, suggest Andy Burnham’s Government will be no different from Sir Keir Starmer’s, with prominent figures remaining in post and dismissing his boost in the polls.
Chair of the London Green Party Eugene McCarthy told this broadcaster: “Andy Burnham will be no different to Keir Starmer…there’s no Burnham bounce. Everything else is Starmerism 2.0.
“Listening to what Mr Burnham’s actually talking about… nothing is really any different to Keir Starmer. The only kind of difference really is devolution.
“Mr Burnham is an arch-Blairite at the end of the day. All the figures that he’s appointed to his inner circle are Blairites.
“There’s nothing new, there’s nothing practical, there’s nothing to shake things up. It’s just a marketing scheme at the end of the day.”
The ongoing situation in Gaza also represents a sticking point between Mr Burnham’s Labour and the Greens.
Last weekend, there was a strong presence of uniformed officers for Saturday’s National March for Palestine, where Mr Corbyn told the crowd Israel “deserves the toughest sanctions against it because of what it is doing”.
His message to Mr Burnham was: “Your country is involved in supporting the acts of genocide, stop it, change it and shut the arms supply to Israel.”
Mr McCarthy agreed, adding: “Andy Burnham was a very prominent member of Labour Friends of Israel… He’s hardly critical of that country, so I don’t think there’ll be a dividing line there.
“This is coming at a time where the Palestinian cause is more popular than ever, I think something like 60 per cent of the British public believes that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, like it’s not a fringe belief anymore.
“It’s very commonplace, I think more than a third of Tory and Reform voters believe that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. So we need something different. There’s no other party willing to call it out besides the Greens.”
This was a topic addressed by Mr Burnham earlier this month, when he told The Guardian the Labour Party “didn’t get it right and I am sorry about that” as he pledged to “strengthen our approach” on the issue.
The Makerfield MP said the UK was too slow to call for a ceasefire and should look at further sanctions. Mr Burnham, in his video posted to social media, called for “measures to ban trade in goods with illegal settlements”.
He said the UK should be “clear in our criticism of what has happened in Gaza”, while also condemning Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, and subsequent acts of antisemitic violence in Britain.
But he stopped short of accusing Israel of perpetrating a genocide against Palestinians, as some Labour MPs and the Greens have.
Mr Laza said this was the right approach, adding: “He’s taking on board Green voters concerns, he’s addressing the things that they think have been wrong with the Labour Party, but he’s not prepared to compromise in what he thinks is right and what he believes is the right thing to do, and that is the key to beating the Greens, to getting back those voters, or in Scotland to get them back from the SNP, or Plaid in Wales.”
Beyond the war in the Middle East, Ipsos pollster Keiran Pedley argued tackling the cost of living remained the key to uniting the political spectrum.
He said: “You want to try and find unifying messages, as unlikely as that sounds, across the political divide. One of those is the cost of living. That is something that people feel on the left and on the right.
“Any Government that can offer tangible help on the cost of living that people feel, I mean, that’s the important point, people need to feel it, is likely to reap some degree of political dividend.
“I don’t think we should confuse the fact that other issues are really important to some people…with the fact that the most important issues for people do still tend to be around the economy and the cost of living.”
However, Mr Pedley concluded Labour was reliant on progressive voters if they wanted to win the next General Election.
The pollster said: “There is certainly the potential for a Burnham-led Labour Government to win over Green support, centre-left support, in a way that Keir Starmer was currently unable to.
“But the truth is I don’t think there’s any path to re-election for Labour that doesn’t involve winning a significant number of Green voters back.”
