The Burnham moment will be short lived if he does not offer serious plans and face scrutiny. Curiously absent from Westminster since his by-election win on June 18th, the assumed next Prime Minister remains an enigma; beyond a vague commitment to devolution and a No. 10 North, little is known of his policy agenda for government.

Governing a nation requires an entirely different skill set than managing a city-region; it forces a leader to choose between competing priorities and make heavy political choices that depend on total clarity of purpose. While Burnham has evaded scrutiny, we do know that he will be taking over a parliamentary party that balks at basic welfare reform and is unwilling to forgo its pet projects to sufficiently fund our Armed Forces.

Last summer, more than 120 Labour MPs signed a reasoned amendment to thwart the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill, forcing Starmer into a humiliating climbdown from which he never fully recovered. Twelve months later, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband—now rumoured as a potential Chancellor—refused to cut net-zero spending to fund defence.

Starmer has left behind a £4.7bn black hole in his Defence Investment Plan and has failed to set out a credible plan to meet our NATO commitment to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035. Meanwhile, welfare spending is projected to soar to a staggering £406 billion by 2030. No amount of devolution will slow Labour’s slide towards bankruptcy.

A properly funded Defence Investment Plan provides an exciting opportunity to spread opportunity to every region of the UK. If we get this right, Plymouth and the surrounding area can emerge as major winners. As a local MP, I will remain a fierce advocate for 42 Commando and the pioneering defence firms leading the marine autonomy sector at Turnchapel Wharf and the Plymouth and South Devon Freeport. But against a backdrop of anaemic growth, an inflated public sector, and national debt approaching 100% of GDP, Burnham will have to persuade his party to prioritise defence over further state spending. It remains an open question whether he possesses the political will and authority to take on his own party.

Nor should Burnham's devolution agenda escape scrutiny. Unless Burnham addresses the challenges I have outlined, devolution will simply redistribute a shrinking pie. The so-called ‘King of the North’ would also do well to remember that the deep regional inequalities which exist in our nation extend beyond Manchester. Consider public transport investment, a key metric which Burnham has used to build his brand as the Mayor of Greater Manchester. According to the House of Commons Library, transport spending in 2023/24 was £429 per person in the South West, compared with £1,313 per person in London, £729 in the North West and £706 in the West Midlands. Many people in the South West feel overlooked by the North-South framing of devolution, and rightly so.

The irony in all this is that Labour’s decision to frustrate devolution locally under the previous Conservative government means that we will be unable to benefit from much of Burnham’s devolution agenda because we do not have a mayor. The Labour-controlled Plymouth City Council has opposed local devolution, pulling out of a joint Devon and Torbay deal in late 2023 and later dismissing a grass-roots campaign for a directly elected city mayor. This move was short sighted, and our voice is quieter as a result. I will do everything I can to fight our corner in Westminster.

Locally and nationally, Labour is riven with contradictions. The country will be watching to see if Burnham is able to pull his party in a direction where his predecessor could not.