It’s all starting to feel very real now. Or so Andy Burnham said on the day he in effect became Britain’s official prime minister-in-waiting; a moment both heady and sobering.
The papers are signed, the die cast. Keir Starmer has yet to leave the building, but his party is already talking about him as if he somehow couldn’t hear. On Friday, Burnham made his first brutal break with his predecessor, apologising over Starmer’s head for Labour’s handling of the war in Gaza. The government should, he said, have called for a ceasefire earlier, and should now be increasing pressure on Israel.
