A Labour MP, granted anonymity like others in this article to speak frankly, said their own engagement with Democratic New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team had hammered home “the politics of trying.”
“If people think you’re not even trying, which obviously is what they thought about Trump, then you’re just going to get blown away,” they said. By making small adjustments, the MP argued, Burnham has begun to “develop a coherent argument — which is actually voters have to see you trying on the cost of living.”
Yet beyond this apparent vindication of the PM’s basic strategy, members of his party see clear warning signs for the incumbent British government in the U.S. political shift. An administration only just coming out of a dire stretch in public opinion polls, they worry, could take the wrong lessons from the Dems’ triumph across the pond if they don’t heed the deep anti-incumbent sentiment that drove it.
Reasons to be fearful
Burnham has badged his fledgling administration as a “cost of living government” since he replaced Keir Starmer at the top of Labour earlier this year.
Yet he has faced criticism from some quarters that a government-wide budget unveiled last month lacked real ambition — and now the pressure is on to deliver before a general election, due by 2029.
Claire Ainsley, a former adviser to Starmer who works for the Progressive Policy Institute think tank on both sides of the Atlantic, told POLITICO that, despite arguments about the future direction of the Democratic Party, “what they’ve all had in common is a real focus on affordability.”