If Andy Burnham wanted to demonstrate he was the anti-Keir Starmer, the first fortnight could not have gone better. Instead of painting a gloomy picture of tough times and an economic black hole that would only improve with sacrifices such as cutting winter fuel allowance, Burnham’s first week was a blitz of small wins including cutting bus fares.
But the new prime minister can only control so much. And like Starmer, within his first days in office he found himself facing immediate decisions where every call will make you unpopular. And – like Starmer – blaming your predecessor counts for nothing with an angry public.
On Monday, the first day of the prime minister’s planned holiday with his family, the call had to be made on the early release of prisoners to stop the prison system becoming overwhelmed. Burnham excluded those convicted of rape, serious child sexual offences and grooming from the scheme. But some killers – including two who were convicted of the manslaughter of PC Andrew Harper – will be eligible.
In an article for the Telegraph, where frustration seeped from every syllable, Burnham admitted he had not wanted to take that decision and had hoped to find a way to stop even more convicts from being released early, some just a third into their sentences. “The truth is I wanted to go even further … I have pushed to the very limits of what is possible to do,” he said.
Unlike the situation that Starmer and the then justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, faced, this was not quite the emergency early release that was needed in 2024 because prison capacity was at crisis level.
The government cannot in this case escape that this was the culmination of months of planning and legislation. This was the designed effect of the Sentencing Act, which was due to come into effect in September, a more managed way to avert the same issue. But whichever way you look at it, releasing killers, abusers and sex offenders early will always have a high human cost.
Ministers who were in Starmer’s first cabinet still talk with fury about the situation they inherited from the Conservatives in the summer of 2024, when just a handful of prison places were available in some regions before police would have had to stop making arrests.
Mahmood in particular was scarred by the experience of the summer riots following the Southport murders, when prison capacity threatened the state’s ability to arrest the brawlers.
But the careful planning of this managed early release – while the state builds more prison capacity – met the reality of the human impact over the summer as letters began to land from victims and families, including Harper’s widow, about the early release of perpetrators.
Burnham paused the scheme when he entered office as criticism mounted – but he could not avoid the decision for ever. Even with the exclusion of sex offenders, he will please few with the choice to proceed and is likely to have to revisit the issue in the coming months if prisons start to reach crisis capacity again.
In his article, Burnham made clear the impossible choice he had faced, one which might give him more sympathy for his deposed predecessor. “I know I can look people in the eye and say to them there is nothing more I could have asked for without risking the prison system collapsing within months,” he wrote.
There will be more of those big calls coming down the tracks where decisions will probably please no one and potentially inflame the parliamentary party – the immigration bill, welfare, Send changes, the war with Iran, the Palestine Action ban, North Sea oil and gas. The true test of enduring popularity will be how he navigates those hardest days rather than the sugar rush of his first fortnight.
