DAN HODGES: Without a mandate, Burnham is stuck in political purgatory. He needs to call an election... and fast

It's not unusual to see the agenda of the sitting Government being attacked by a senior politician on national television. But it’s not that often the attack is led by that Government’s own Prime Minister.‘If you’re asking me a very direct question, if I had held the pen on the current Labour manifesto, would I have written it exactly like it is?’ Andy Burnham told ITV on Friday. ‘Well, no is the answer to that question.’ Burnham was then asked what that meant for the timing of the next election. The next election would not be called until 2028 at the earliest, he replied.Last week was supposed to be the most significant of Burnham’s premiership to date. With the publication of the Budget, the political phoney war – being waged on TikTok and Gogglebox – was meant to end. At that point, hard choices would be made and the myriad problems facing the nation finally confronted head on.Instead, the governance of Britain has effectively been placed into suspended animation. It’s not hard to see why Burnham is keen to wash his hands of his predecessor’s manifesto. It was a vacuous document, designed solely to gain access to power, rather than a serious blueprint for national recovery or renewal.So if the Prime Minister had said, ‘Look, I don’t agree with Keir Starmer’s plan. I don’t think it’s sufficiently radical to tackle the huge issues the country is facing. I’m ripping it up and starting again’, that would have been one thing.There would have been a debate about the legitimacy of his new programme. Constitutional experts would have dined out arguing over the precedent of His Majesty’s First Minister seeking to lead the nation without a specific mandate. But at least the British people would know their Prime Minister had a template for addressing problems ranging from war in the Middle East to the small-boats crisis. Andy Burnham and John Healey, who said there would be a reduction in the welfare bill prior to the next election but was forced into a humiliating U-turn after causing panic inside No10That, however, is not what Burnham is planning to do. By his own admission he intends to stick – for at least the next 14 months – with a strategy that he, and everyone else, knows is flawed.Raise this with members of his team and they point you to his ‘Ten-Year Plan’. This hallowed tome was supposed to be published some point later this year. According to one Government source, ‘the Prime Minister said it would be published some time in 2027, and that is still the ambition’.Yet if this timetable is still going to be met, it’s going to require some speedy penmanship. Last week, Spectator columnist James Heale reported that Peter Hyman is about to be brought into No10 to write the document.Hyman is well known in Westminster, having served as Tony Blair’s speechwriter, and more recently as an adviser to Starmer in the run-up to the 2024 election. An education specialist, he is well respected in policy circles and is close to Burnham’s chief-of-staff James Purnell. But his proximity to Blair and Starmer raises serious questions about the extent to which the Prime Minister’s new agenda will genuinely represent a break from the Labour groupthink of the past 30 years.And even if it does, on Downing Street’s own timetable it won’t be implemented for years. Burnham and his allies have been clear. Even though he has publicly disowned the Starmer manifesto, he remains bound by it. ‘He is going to stick to our manifesto,’ Labour Deputy Leader Lucy Powell told the BBC back in July. ‘He’s been very clear about that.’Which means the Government is now effectively paralysed. The Prime Minister himself admits the blueprint adopted by Starmer is inadequate. But he has also stated he cannot divert from that blueprint until he has achieved a fresh mandate. And that he has no intention of seeking that mandate until 2028 at the earliest.That pledge can be taken with a pinch of salt. Only last month Burnham was telling journalists there would be no election till 2029.But the reality is that the country has now been consigned to month after month of political purgatory. The pensions crisis. Brexit. The cost-of-living crisis. The social care crisis. Anaemic growth. Soaring debt. The hollowing out of our Armed Forces. All of these issues haven’t been put on the back burner so much as plunged into deep storage.In the short term that will probably not exact a major political price. Partly that’s because the Prime Minister’s opponents have made a misjudgment in attacking his interventions on low-level quality of life interventions, such as bus fares and parking fines.He has started his term of office by demonstrating to the voters he intends to meet them where they live, and for now they are responding positively. But in the medium to long term, Burnham is playing with fire. John Healey’s Budget initially landed well. The markets remained stable. The snap polls showed people regarded it as a fair settlement.Then in the space of 24 hours, it had descended into chaos. In an interview on Thursday morning, the Chancellor declared there would be ‘a reduction in the welfare bill’ prior to the next election.This caused panic inside No10, who immediately briefed that was not the case. By the end of the day Healey had been forced into a humiliating U-turn, stating: ‘It’s not correct to say that we’re going to bring this welfare bill down in this Parliament because we’ve not set a timetable for that.’Up until that moment the Budget presentation had been skilfully managed. But the chaos over welfare is just a foretaste of what we can expect if Burnham continues to try to defer the big decisions.Sooner or later he and his Government will be hit by a serious emergency. It may be precipitated by a vengeful Donald Trump, lashing out after his expected humiliation in the mid-term elections. Or additional adventurism from Vladimir Putin.Perhaps the bond markets’ patience will finally be stretched to breaking point.And at that moment the Prime Minister will be brutally exposed. By trying to govern without a clear and settled programme, he is driving at 90mph on the motorway without a seatbelt or airbag. When the collision with reality comes – and it will come – it will be messy.The current strategy, or non-strategy, is simply unsustainable. Burnham needs to call that snap election before it’s too late. For both him, and the country.