Is Andy Burnham Labour's saviour, or just its best bet?

By Laura Kuenssberg Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg "Do you want a chat about the saviour?" a long-time Labour contact joked when I asked to pick their brains about their old colleague Andy Burnham, who is poised to enter No 10 in less than a month. It certainly is time to talk about the Greater Manchester mayor. Only 10 days ago, he pulled off an impressive victory, in what one former minister described as a "Russian roulette" by-election in Makerfield, beating Reform and defying Labour's lack of popularity. But can he pull off the far bigger task ahead, and really be the "saviour" that Labour craves? Labour MPs desperately want Burnham's project to work. You could see how they crammed into Westminster Hall to surround him for a giant photo on his first day back in Parliament. One MP says Parliament has had a "strange atmosphere all week, with people crawling over each other to try to get to him". Another member of the government said "ministers are sweating their connections to try to get an audience". It's not just about red boxes and posteriors on the seats of government cars. We've seen Labour MPs gulping down the Burnham Kool-Aid this week, turning eager hope into belief that, as prime minister, he can face down Nigel Farage, help Labour keep its seats, and preserve at least a decent chunk of its epic 2024 majority at the next election. The simple reason for this hope? He's a popular politician at a time when most politicians are not. That's not to say that every single member of the public is going to be enamoured. Another colleague from Burnham's first time round at Westminster says: "He'll have to go from cock of the north to national champion". The "north", of course, is also not just Manchester. Another contact told me: "He needs to drop this man of the north a bit – he'll hack off people. It's deeply upsetting to people from Leeds and Newcastle to think that Manchester is THE north, let alone Scotland. It's trite." But Burnham has a rare ability to grab public attention and make voters feel heard – often literally. An ally from his time in Manchester told me: "It used to drive me mad that he was late, but every conversation is important to him. I could be stuck waiting having to make small talk with an ambassador, because he was stuck outside having a conversation with someone about the buses". In a profession where politicians are only too happy to be rude about each other, Andy Burnham is very well liked. Image source, House of Commons/EPA/Shutterstock "Affable", "warm", and a close ally says he's a "really nice person – politics is a contact sport and it's not contrived". One MP calls him a "good bloke", adding that "sound would be the Manchester word". They describe his "social dexterity": an ability to communicate with colleagues and the public in real life and on social media. But there is a niggling question among many of his colleagues and, in fact, expressed neatly on his Facebook page, where a member of the public wrote: