‘There is a feeling in Labour that if you’ve been disloyal, you get a promotion’
Day one of Andy Burnham’s time in Downing Street – but are the knives out for him already inside his own party?
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What’s the story?
Has the Burnham backlash already begun?
In less than 24 hours after becoming prime minister, Andy Burnham has faced disruption from within the Labour Party, following the announcement of his first scheme to give people “space to breathe” in the cost of living crisis.
From October this year, VAT on electricity will be axed, saving households £45 per year. It will be funded with cash saved from scrapping the planned digital ID scheme proposed under Starmer’s government.
But there’s a problem with that – there was allegedly no money put aside for the ID scheme.
That’s according to Darren Jones, Labour MP for Bristol North West and, until Monday, Starmer's chief secretary when Burnham announced his new cabinet.
Good news that VAT will be cut on electricity bills. It’s a simple way for families to save a few quid, and to mechanically help to keep inflation that little bit lower.
— Darren Jones MP (@darrenpjones) July 21, 2026
But the DigitalID program was unfunded.
The government will have to set out how it will pay for its new… https://t.co/3iqrTFf1Nv
"He didn't wait long before he slipped a knife into what Andy Burnham was doing as prime minister," says Jon Sopel.
"There is a feeling within the government that if you have been disloyal, you get a promotion.
"If you were loyal to the serving prime minister, you're out on your ear."
Wes Streeting walked out of Starmer’s cabinet, Ed Miliband called for the PM to step down, while John Healey delivered what Jon describes as a the “coup de gras” that ended his time in Downing Street when he resigned over the government’s proposed defence spending budget.
All of which have secured top spots in Burnham’s cabinet.
"This doesn't strike me necessarily as quite the flex that Darren Jones might think it is," says Lewis Goodall.
"He's basically saying they came up with this thing, but had no idea they were going to pay for it.
"That in itself is not necessarily a complete model of good governance."
What have we learned from day one of Andy Burnham's government?
Darren Jones is among the close allies to Keir Starmer who have been "dispatched" from front bench roles under Andy Burnham.
Lewis says the new PM has "remade this government in a manner which he thinks reflects him."
Burnham has stressed the top priority of Labour under his leadership is the cost of living crisis.
"One of the problems with the Starmer government was that it seemed it never had any particular clarity on what it was focused on," Lewis says.
"Sometimes it was growth, sometimes it was cost of living, sometimes it was standards, sometimes foreign policy – and of course all of these things are interconnected.
"Burnham has concluded that the public bandwidth for their attention is highly limited. He just wants to hammer that message again and again, that this is a government which is focused on what voters are concerned about."
But this strategy, he adds, does not come without risk.
"Anchoring your politics around cost of living can be tricky and could backfire, because obviously there is so much about cost of living that the government cannot control," Lewis says.
"We've seen that with the Strait of Hormuz, international energy prices, food inflation, and Ukraine. This happens again and again.
"The counterpoint to that, is that Burnham's probably right, he knows this is what people care about."
Could the Tories offer some advice on changing leaders?
The News Agents say the Labour Party will back Burnham and his new government, perhaps because they know it is their "last roll of the dice", but believe there could be more outlying troublemakers like Jones.
Jon says Labour only needs to ask the Conservatives, who experienced exactly the same during their years of a seemingly endless revolving door policy at the top of the party.
"When you kill off a leader, there will be a bunch of people left behind who were loyal to that leader who are going to cause trouble. It's happened again and again," Jon says.
"Sure enough, you've got a whole bunch of people, not a majority, on the Labour backbenches now who have held high office, who feel disaffected, who feel p**sed off, who don't know why they're getting up in the morning.
"They haven't got teams of civil servants there waiting for their every command, and they're thinking: Well, maybe I'll cause a bit of trouble."