What sort of PM will Andy Burnham be?

Makerfield was never just a by-election and so it has proved. Andy Burnham’s emphatic win in the early hours of Friday morning has turned the ex-mayor of Manchester into Keir Starmer’s worst nightmare.

The current prime minister’s dignified resignation was inevitable and given Wes Streeting has thrown his hat in with Burnham, it looks unlikely that there will need to be an election of any sort – more a coronation. So, we will have our seventh prime minister in 10 years, not a record any of us can be happy with. That said, all eyes now turn to just what sort of leader Burnham will prove to be.

We know he’s ultimately a pragmatist, happy to work with Blair, Brown and Corbyn, but he now faces several key decisions that will define his premiership and in turn determine whether this is a one-term Labour parliament or something more substantial.

He will need to decide what changes to make to the current cabinet. Rachel Reeves is top of the list given her at best mixed and at worst frankly dismal term at the Treasury. But while Ed Miliband is said to be keen to take on the job, Burnham must surely know that the energy secretary’s obsession with forcing net zero, his refusal to contemplate drilling in the North Sea despite the clear logic for doing so and his apparent indifference to the highest energy prices in the developed world make him the last person you would want to promote to an even more vital office.

Burnham will need to find room for Angela Rayner, possibly at the expense of Starmer loyalist Steve Reed given her previous form in the housing and planning job, and he will probably dispense with Peter Kyle’s services as business secretary, another Starmer loyalist who has not exactly inspired the business community.

We hear that Shabana Mahmood will almost certainly keep her job, which will not please some on the left of the party but will please most people in this country who do think we need to get immigration – both legal and illegal – under control.

Yvette Cooper will want a job and will undoubtedly appear round the cabinet table, but there are rumours that Burnham might ask Sir Keir to stay on as foreign secretary in her place – the one role for which he is widely praised. And there are precedents. Both Alec Douglas-Home and David Cameron were given the job having been prime minister and it would clear away much of the bad blood left by Starmer’s dethronement.

Louise Hague, who was obliged to resign as transport secretary when it became known she had been convicted of fraud by misrepresentation, is probably as close as any MP to Burnham and will likely be rehabilitated, and the current transport secretary Heidi Alexander is also a prominent Andy supporter.

There are those who argue that the change of PM should trigger a general election but the chances of that happening are zero. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and too many labour MPs know their parliamentary careers would be cut very short indeed. But if that means we have three more years of this government, the real question is not whether Andy is different from Keir, to which the answer is yes, but whether with his newly assembled cabinet he will be able to tackle our chronic lack of growth, our sky-high energy costs and a welfare budget that is now equivalent to what we raise in income tax. Fasten your safety belt.