Andy Burnham has one weekend left before Downing Street becomes his new address, and he is already tearing up Starmer’s playbook. His digital ID and North Sea policy will offer the first clues to the government he intends to build when he enters Downing Street on Monday.
Across Westminster, the usual guessing game has already begun. The phones are ringing to scope out who will rise, who will remain, who will spend the weekend beside a telephone waiting for a call that may never come.
By Saturday evening, the first answer had arrived: digital ID will not be coming with him. Burnham has announced that he will scrap Sir Keir Starmer’s plan and redirect the resources behind it toward what he calls “people’s everyday priorities.”
Starmer’s government had presented digital identification as a way to tackle illegal working. On Monday, Burnham will arrive bearing instructions to bury it.
Digital ID, it will turn out, is the easier decision.
Burnham’s North Sea Policy Could Divide Labour
Burnham is expected to announce greater support for oil and gas production. His government will also have to decide whether to approve Jackdaw and Rosebank, the two Scottish fields that have become symbols of a much larger argument over Britain’s energy future.
Burnham has promised to unite the Labour Party. The North Sea may test that promise before his new Cabinet has properly settled around the table.
The argument for continued production is practical and immediate: Britain still receives just under half its gas directly from the North Sea, and supporters of further exploration argue that maintaining production will reduce the country’s dependence on imports from uncertain and dangerous parts of the world. The energy industry has spent the past week pressing that case, and labor unions have joined them, arguing that production at home protects jobs, strengthens energy security, and may carry a lighter environmental cost than fuel shipped in from overseas.
Ed Miliband once called Rosebank “climate vandalism.” On Monday, it will no longer be merely a slogan, it will become a decision for Burnham. Approve it, and he could provoke Labour MPs who believe further drilling is incompatible with the climate crisis. Reject it, and he will face an increasingly determined alliance of energy companies, labor unions, and voters who see North Sea production as a matter of jobs, national security, and economic survival.
There is an electoral warning, too. Last month, the Conservatives won Aberdeen South in a parliamentary by-election after campaigning in favor of more drilling. That marked their first such victory in Scotland in fifty years.
Westminster notices victories.
Shabana Mahmood, meanwhile, is emerging as the frontrunner for the Treasury.
On Monday, Andy Burnham will walk through the door of No. 10 as Britain’s prime minister. Digital ID will already have been marked for removal. Rosebank and Jackdaw will be waiting on his desk. Between them lies the first outline of the government he is spending this weekend preparing to build. And then there is President Trump. Burnham will not have long to introduce himself, explain himself or repair whatever needs repairing. Across the Atlantic, Washington will be watching. The new prime minister will have to make nice with President Trump—and quickly.
For Burnham, the premiership has not yet begun. The difficult choices already have.
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