Martin Ivens

No one ever went broke underestimating the survival skills of a UK prime minister. There have been six of them since 2016, each with their own often short and always inglorious tenure. Can Andy Burnham turn the tide? The critics say he is just a personable version of his robotic predecessor, Keir Starmer, who failed to restrain the Labour party’s profligate tax-and-spend habits. The best — and most difficult — way to prove them wrong would be to tackle welfare reform.

Everybody says the UK is a laughing stock. The economy is in the doldrums, the Royal Family has been besmirched by controversy and infighting and the country is about to have its seventh prime minister in 10 years. Britain, once a byword for political stability, has become an unserious country like Italy but without the good weather and the pasta, goes the argument. If only it were true.

Whenever there’s bad news, shoot the messenger. Last week Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, Britain’s hard-right populist party, found himself in an unlikely alliance with Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and second son of King Charles III. Both men share an animating passion: They blame the press or “the Establishment” for the wholly avoidable messes they have got themselves into.

When mischievously invited by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to offer some public advice to his successor Andy Burnham, Keir Starmer tactfully declined — at least for now. Stanley Baldwin, outgoing British prime minister in 1937, promised that when he left office he wouldn’t “speak to the man on the bridge or spit on the deck,” and kept his word. Baldwin, however, was an exception among his peers; in practice, few former prime ministers can resist semaphoring the new captain.

Bold, big-bang reforms will give the 56-year-old Labour leader the confidence to face the electorate, writes journalist Martin Ivens.

What a difference a change of leader makes. When news broke last week that two prisoners convicted for killing a policeman in the line of duty were to be the beneficiaries of an early prison-release program, the new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham immediately halted the process, saying nothing was more important than public safety. Keir Starmer would have dithered for days while the newspapers and social media tore into a government “soft on crime.”

Andy Burnham fulminates against forty years of “neoliberalism,” which he claims has laid waste to the UK and especially his native north of England. The prime minister’s solution, outlined before his recent return to Westminster, was explicit; “Put more things under public control: energy, housing, water, transport.” If he means a return to wholesale nationalization and the industrial policy of the 1970s, then “broken Britain” will stay broken. Nobody should want to turn the clock back by half a

When The Sunday Times hired the troublemaking columnist, I was told it would be my fault if things went wrong. You be the judge

In the battle between the bin and Nigel Farage, there was only ever going to be one winner. The leader of the populist Reform UK party romped home as expected in Thursday’s Clacton special election against 33 joke candidates, including his main antagonist and media darling, Count Binface, a self-styled space warrior with a trash can on his head.

Andy Burnham, the UK’s personable new prime minister, has been buoyed by his bounce in the opinion polls. But the day of economic reckoning is fast approaching, with the budget just two short months away.