BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
There is a primal brutality to the schoolyard pick. It is a distillation of human worth, stripped of all social veneer and political correctness—a moment of unvarnished truth where utility is measured in cold, kinetic terms. At prep school, the scholarship cohort was a tragicomedy: thirteen of us, anointed as the brightest, yet a mere four could coordinate hand and eye well enough to catch a ball. The two of us who possessed even a shred of athletic credibility were made captains, and our frantic race was not for the glory of claiming the first-choice athletes, but to avoid the stigma of being left with the burden of the dregs.
The final selections were an anchor—a statistical deadweight so profound that you would rather have conceded the goal or run the relay short-handed than suffer their inclusion. They were acts of charity. Pity picks. Chosen not for their capacity to contribute, but because the rules demanded a full roster, or because your own nascent conscience couldn’t bear the spectacle of their isolation.
What talent, not.
Observing the Labour Party’s recent, breathless scramble for a standard-bearer, I am seized by a profound sense of déjà vu. Their parliamentary ranks, once a formidable bench, are now a barren wasteland of political talent, so thoroughly denuded of credible leadership that they have been forced to scour the regional leagues for a saviour. The man they are turning to, Andy Burnham, is the apotheosis of the ‘last pick’—not because of what he offers in terms of national vision, but because of what his inevitable coronation reveals about the catastrophic state of the team he seeks to captain.
To understand why Burnham’s ascent is less a triumph than a damning indictment of his party, one must first confront his political obituary. The myth of the ‘King of the North’, the putative saviour of the Red Wall, crumbles under the weight of his own electoral history. He has not simply lost a leadership contest; he has been systematically routed twice, each time by figures he was presumed to outclass.
In 2010, he finished a distant fourth, eclipsed by the pathetic Ed Miliband. Then, in 2015, he entered the race as the anointed favourite—the establishment’s great white hope to quell the Corbynite insurgency. He failed. Spectacularly. He was crushed by friend of Hamas and the IRA, Jeremy Corbyn, a backbench socialist Steptoe whom the party elite had dismissed as a laughable footnote. Burnham managed a paltry 19% of the vote to Corbyn’s 59%. This is the man who could not defeat the very figure his party now considers its historical anathema.
To compound the humiliation, a recent clarification from Full Fact was forced to note that Burnham did not, in fact, lose to Keir Starmer—because he lacked either the courage or the support to even contest the 2020 leadership. He had already retreated from the Westminster fray for the safer, more congenial pastures of Greater Manchester. He sat out the fight. And now, after the catastrophic implosion of the Starmer project—with the party’s poll ratings sinking to historic lows and its MPs in a state of blind panic—they turn to the man who has already proven, beyond doubt, that he cannot win a national contest.
Burnham’s defenders point to his mayoral record. He dons a flat cap, speaks of ‘levelling up’, and performs the role of regional champion with a certain avuncular conviction. But let us scrutinise that record with the cold eye of a political surgeon. As the Daily Express rightly observes, his recent speech on ‘rewiring Britain'”‘ was an exercise in utopian vagueness—a lexicon of buzzwords masquerading as a coherent economic strategy. He promises a grand reindustrialisation while championing the very green agenda that is crippling British industry with the highest energy costs in the Western world.
However, it is the stain on his character that truly disqualifies him from the highest office. His record on the grooming gangs scandal is indefensible. As Zia Yusuf has meticulously detailed, Burnham served as a Home Office minister while evidence of systematic, state-sanctioned abuse was being systematically destroyed. He was in a position of power. He did nothing. As mayor of Greater Manchester, he resisted calls for a proper, public inquiry for years, only launching a limited, internal review after the public pressure became unbearable. When survivors of these horrific crimes heckled him at public meetings, he did not engage or apologise; he accused his critics of fostering hate. This is the man who aspires to be Prime Minister. A man who failed the most vulnerable in his own jurisdiction, and who now seeks to extend that failure to the entire nation.
The Labour Party is not choosing Burnham because they believe him to be a visionary. They are choosing him because they are out of options. This is not strategy; it is the politics of existential desperation. They look at Burnham and see only a negative image of their current woes: someone who isn’t Keir Starmer, who isn’t Wes Streeting (who has already endorsed him, presumably for a future portfolio), and who, crucially, isn’t the spectral revenant of Jeremy Corbyn.
It is a tragic re-run of the Conservative Party’s fatal ‘coronation’ of Liz Truss—a decision made in a vacuum by a party that had lost its compass. The internal consensus is that Burnham’s campaign is “not very ready” for the rigours of government, with a notable lack of developed thinking on defence, energy, and welfare. His proposed cabinet is being assembled not by talent, but by a giddy desperation: Ed Miliband as Chancellor? Seriously? The man who lost to David Cameron and was resoundingly rejected by the electorate? It is a case of the blind leading the blind into a ditch of their own making.
Burnham is the charity pick. The last man standing, not because he is strong, but because everyone else has already fallen. As one incisive critic put it, “Burnham’s record is municipal pragmatism, and semi-competent management within a broken system, not systemic overhaul.” He offers not a new vision, but a slightly warmer shade of the same failing establishment.
The Labour Party is so intellectually and politically bankrupt that they are forced to look outside their own team. And even then, they have settled on a man who has already lost twice—to Miliband, to Corbyn. He is not the leader they need; he is simply the last one left. And in the unforgiving schoolyard of national politics, picking last rarely, if ever, wins the game. They are not choosing a captain; they are choosing a placeholder—a testament to their own terminal, post Blair and Mandelson decline.
Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine, works in finance, and is the author of five and a half books including Dear Townies and Conservatism (2024).