Luke Akehurst: ‘Andy Burnham has succeeded in consolidating the left of British politics behind Labour’

Labour MP and NEC member Luke Akehurst has said that Andy Burnham has already succeeded in consolidating the left of British politics behind the Labour Party, as he reflected on the new Labour leader’s first few months in office.

In an interview with LFF, Akehurst, the MP for North Durham, said he thought that the Prime Minister was on the right track when asked about his direction of travel since taking over from Keir Starmer.

“I’ve done lots of canvassing on my own patch and before the summer recess I still thought we could narrowly beat Reform but we were getting 37% of our canvass returns as Labour, close to summer recess 51% Labour and that matches data that was in a report that Think Labour produced this week that showed a very large 12 point increase in the Labour vote in the North East of England.

“Voters in my patch have picked up on the fact that he represents an area that’s similar and he’s shown he’s listening to red wall voters”.

He also praised Burnham for doing well amongst urban voters.

“The two most difficult bits of coalition Labour assembled in 2024 needs to reassemble. So, the people we might lose to the Greens in urban areas and university towns and the people we might lose to Reform in red wall seats, they both seem to quite like what they’ve seen from Andy Burnham.”

In recent weeks, some former members of Keir Starmer’s cabinet, including Darren Jones have been warning about the need for fiscal responsibility and not reverting to Labour’s comfort zone of only throwing red meat to the party membership. There have been concerns in some quarters that there is now a new cohort of experienced, opinionated former ministers on the backbenches with the potential to make Burnham’s life difficult.

However, Akehurst disagrees and says that generally the mood in the party is ‘pretty cohesive and united and pleased with the direction of travel’.

Could Akehurst see any flashpoints over the budget next month? “Clearly there are things which will provoke debate but he has to lead, he’ll listen and people will have to respect that the buck stops with him.”

While Labour may be leading in the polls following Burnham taking over as party leader, the threat from Reform is far from over, with a number of polls predicting a hung Parliament.

How does Akehurst think the Labour Party can win over those voters considering voting Reform?

“Delivery matters”, said Akehurst.

“For people flirting with Reform, the question is do we continue to drive through the successful work Shabana Mahmood has done on controlling illegal immigration and then we need to keep telling people about that, because there’s scepticism about ‘are the numbers real?’ If you watch GB News you’ll think there’s still lots of small boats crossing the channel.”

On the threat posed to Labour’s left from the Green Party, Akehurst thinks a lot of what Burnham has already done has suppressed the Green vote.

“We’re talking down to about 8% which is where they were at the last general election rather than 18 or 20% that they were at peak and I think he’s already succeeded in consolidating the left of British politics behind Labour, particularly in seats where there’s a competition between us or Reform and the Tories. 

“We’ve also started to make headway on winning back some people who were concerned about small boats and there’s more that can be won over.”

Akehurst believes that Burnham is well placed to hold Labour’s voter coalition together and bring back former Labour voters.

“Andy has demonstrated you can win both of those two groups of voters back.

‘The composition of the Labour vote we need to win in North Durham is radically different to the composition of the Labour vote we need to win Holborn and St Pancras and the trick of modern politics is to find the things that all of those sets of voters agree on and that brings them together, without going so far that you turn off people at the other end of the coalition.”