DAN HODGES: 'Either Andy succeeds or Labour dies': Ministers admit Burnham is party's last hope… but backbench MPs vow to stop him cutting benefits

In the wake of last year’s Labour Party conference, which was widely perceived to have been a successful one for Keir Starmer and a bad one for his potential challenger Andy Burnham, Starmer’s team began circulating an old Westminster joke. ‘A Blairite, Brownite and Corbynite walk into a pub. And the barman goes, “Hello Andy.”’Labour’s new leader had the last laugh on Friday, accepting his accession by telling his party: ‘When a Burnhamite walks into a bar in the future, I want the barman to say, “Great to see you. We don’t like factional politics in here.”’It’s to be hoped that in the months and years ahead, Britain’s 59th Prime Minister proves better at governing than he is at stand-up comedy. But there is truth in the idea Burnham’s route to Downing Street has seen him embark on a long and winding political journey. But it’s not the journey his critics perceive it to be.I got to know him when we were researchers working out of the House of Commons in the early 1990s. At the time Andy was working for Tessa Jowell, who was basically the Godmother of Blairism. Jowell once famously said she would ‘jump under a bus for Tony Blair’ and the Andy Burnham I first met would have loyally held her coat as she did it.At that time he was as much of an evangelist for the New Labour ‘project’ as his boss. The only talk among us back then about bridging the North-South divide centred around how to transfer votes from the party’s working heartlands to the middle-class southern constituencies we needed to form a government.As one former colleague remembered: ‘We were New Labour foot-soldiers. Andy was a stormtrooper.’This loyalty helped him secure the safe seat of Leigh in 2001, and rapid promotion to Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary and then Health Secretary. But as Labour’s term of government progressed, Burnham began to become uneasy.One of his ministerial colleagues from that time recalled: ‘There was this joke going around for a while about Peter Mandelson, and how he’d walked into a fish and chip shop in his constituency in Hartlepool and thought the mushy peas were guacamole. And Andy said, “Yeah, we’re all laughing at it. But there’s something happening out there. That’s how working people are starting to see us. It’s not good.”’ On Friday, Labour's new leader told his party: ‘When a Burnhamite walks into a bar in the future, I want the barman to say, “Great to see you. We don’t like factional politics in here.”The moment when those concerns crystalised was at Liverpool’s Anfield football stadium on the afternoon of April 15, 2009, and the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster which claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool supporters.As Burnham was reading out a message from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a lone voice cried out: ‘Justice!’ This was taken up by the crowd, which began applauding and then chanting ‘Justice for the 96!’ Burnham initially looked stunned, then slowly began to nod.I saw him a few weeks after and asked how he was feeling. ‘It was rough,’ he admitted. But it was also a defining moment. Both for him and, as it transpired, the country. ‘That was when Andy realised politics just wasn’t working for the people he grew up with,’ a colleague told me. ‘It’s become a cliché now but it’s true. It was when he finally realised the whole New Labour “southern strategy” had run its course.’This conversion on the road to Makerfield was in evidence in the opening paragraphs of Burnham’s address to his party last week.‘We won’t try to out-Green the Greens, or out-Reform Reform, or do what we’ve done in the past, wearing too many Tory clothes,’ he vowed. A pledge that earned him an immediate swipe from Nigel Farage, who branded him a ‘chameleon’.But Reform’s leader is wrong. The Andy Burnham who has committed to transferring economic and political power out of Westminster, and into Labour’s neglected Red Wall bastions, is sincere. And when he enters Downing Street tomorrow, for the first time in decades Britain will have a Prime Minister who genuinely understands – and intends to govern for – working people. The problem is whether his party will allow him to.Take an issue such as immigration. A close ally told me last week that Burnham realises this is a totemic subject, and that he is going to have to adopt a robust stance.‘He’s been speaking to colleagues about this and reassuring them that there will be no backsliding,’ a minister revealed. ‘The thing people forget about Andy is he’s from Wigan, not central Manchester. He understands how working people feel about this. He’s on their side.’ He also has the benefit of already having made the Labour Party feel good about itself. The army of MPs and activists who decamped to Makerfield ended up relishing the experienceBut that will prove unpalatable to many of Burnham’s metropolitan colleagues.Similarly, the issue of welfare reform. It’s impossible to see how he can even begin to address the problem of the nation’s spiralling debt mountain without finally getting to grips with the soaring £216billion benefits bill. Yet, as one MP told me: ‘The Parliamentary Labour Party won’t wear it. They faced down Keir over it. And if they have to they’ll do the same with Andy.’Again, Burnham’s allies insist he is up for the fight. As another explained: ‘There’s this image of Andy as a pretty-boy charmer. But he’s actually hard. You can see it in the message he’s been spreading over the past week. He’s been saying, “Look, I want you with me. But if you don’t think you can be, you’d better not try to get in my way.”’If Burnham is going to engage in a fight with the more truculent elements of his party, he has some advantages over his predecessor. The first that, unlike Keir Starmer, Burnham does understand, and relish, politics.‘He’s a completely political animal,’ one old friend said.‘He’s been in the Labour movement his whole life. He understands the party. He’s not like Keir, who basically had no idea what he was doing, and left it all to Morgan McSweeney.’He also has the benefit of already having made the Labour Party feel good about itself. The army of MPs and activists who decamped to Makerfield ended up relishing the experience. As one told me: ‘You don’t know what it was like to knock on a door for the first time in two years and not be told to f*** off.’And he has one other thing going for him. The majority of Burnham’s colleagues know he basically represents Labour’s last hope. Having ousted one leader there simply is no time to act in another round of fratricide.‘There are a couple of Wes Streeting diehards already muttering about how Andy’s got 12 months to turn everything around,’ one minister told me. ‘But the reality is we’re not going to get another go at this. Either Andy succeeds or Labour dies.’Andy Burnham walks into a pub. The barman says: ‘You had better not let my regulars down again. Because if you do, you’re barred for life.’