But if Andy Burnham stands as Labour leader, he may well become a modern-day Icarus

British prime minister Keir Starmer was busy last week writing the king’s speech for the state opening of Parliament in between fending off “the slings and arrows of outrageous” scheming and plotting by members of his party in and out of Parliament.

The king’s speech is the government’s legislative programme for the parliamentary year written by the prime minister and delivered by the monarch from the throne in parliament. 

Rumour has it that the palace was so concerned Starmer might not survive in office they telephoned Downing Street to make sure the king’s speech would go ahead on Wednesday.

The cabinet met on Tuesday and ever the lawyer Starmer told his cabinet that there was a procedure for challenging his leadership of the Labour Party and as it had not been triggered it was business as usual.

There was a truce for the state opening of parliament on the Wednesday out of respect for the king but attempts to remove the prime minister resumed in earnest early on Thursday morning when Angela Rayner, a possible challenger, let it be known that she was cleared of alleged tax evasion.

The revenue investigated whether she wrongfully paid purchase tax for a sole home when she was already a trustee of a property for her son and decided that although the property she bought attracted a higher purchase tax as a second home, she was cleared of any deliberate or careless wrongdoing.

Angela Rayner’s announcement was not, however, accompanied by a challenge to Starmer’s leadership; either she did not believe she had the support of the required 81 MPs to trigger a leadership election or she did not think she could win. It seems the Labour party finds it difficult to elect a woman leader and prime minister — in Kemi Badenoch the Conservatives are on their fourth woman leader.

By lunch time on Thursday the health minister, Wes Streeting, resigned but again did not trigger a challenge to Keir Starmer and the chance of Britain having its first openly gay prime minister fizzled out for the time being.

Streeting represents the transition from New Labour to Smart Labour as he is very clever, very articulate and tech and AI savvy. He was on manoeuvres for a long time but as the poet tells it he was prepared “to wound but afraid to strike”.

In his resignation letter he paraphrased Margaret Thatcher’s olive branch rhetorical “where there is discord may we bring harmony” to mock Starmer with “where we need vision, we have vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift” but for all his manoeuvres he is not ready to plunge yet or does not have the numbers.

Streeting has not blown his chances completely, but by early evening on Thursday a third possible challenger emerged who overshadowed both Rayner and Streeting. Andy Burnham has had a repressed ambition to lead the Labour party since he was defeated by Ed Milliband in 2010 and by Jeremy Corbyn in 2016.

In 2017, feeling rejected and dejected, he resigned his seat as a Member of Parliament (MP) and went north to become mayor of Manchester where he is now so popular many rebels want him to take over from Starmer as soon as possible.

The rules require a challenger to be an MP and what happened on Thursday was that the MP for Makerfield in Wigan, Josh Simons, decided to resign his seat to make way for Burnham to become an MP.

It is an all or nothing gamble by Burnham because Reform UK won all the wards in the Makerfield constituency in the local elections on May 7 just over a week ago and the Labour majority of 5,400 in the 2024 general election could easily be overturned.

When Harold Wilson won the UK general election in 1964, he wanted to appoint Patrick Gordon Walker as foreign minister but he lost his seat at Smethwick in the West Midlands because his Conservative opponent played the racist card – much like Reform UK does today though not as crudely.

Undaunted Wilson appointed Walker as foreign minister anyway and found a safe seat for him to fight in a by-election in Leyton in January 1965. The sitting Labour MP was sent to the House of Lords against his will to make way for Walker, but the voters of Leyton would have none of it and elected his Conservative opponent overturning a previous Labour majority of 7,000.

Burnham, however, says he welcomes the chance to show he can beat Reform UK both by winning Makerfield and not losing the mayoralty of Manchester for Labour.

It is folly for Burnham to tempt fate as an outsider parachuted in on someone else’s constituency in order to be parachuted on poor old Starmer in Downing Street, ignoring what would happen if his parachutes malfunction – like Icarus  in the end he might indeed be the man who fell from the sky!

He has been away from national politics for nine years having previously been rejected twice as leader of the Labour party. Starmer won the Labour party leadership in 2020 and a five year mandate by a landslide in 2024. He is entitled to a fair wind and although it was his party that won the election it did so on a manifesto that has his imprimatur as leader.

It is a very bad precedent for a prime minister to be removed as a result of local government elections so early in his premiership – it is undemocratic and arguably contrary to the conventions of Britain’s unwritten constitution. 

The prime minister holds office by virtue of his or her ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, which in turn commands the confidence of the electorate as expressed in a general election – not that of the electorate expressed in local or regional elections.