Andy Burnham isn’t just the unions’ candidate, he’s the Tory candidate too

“I’m the change candidate,” said Andy Burnham, settling down to the consolidation phase of his leadership bid. Chuka Umunna is out, so he is now the bookies’ favourite. He faces a conundrum: the brains of Labour want to tack to the centre, the money (ie, the unions) want to keep it to the left. So how can he keep both happy?

Andrew Marr this morning asked Burnham if he was happy to be the union candidate. “I’m the unifying candidate,” he said. He admitted that he has spoken to Unite’s Len McClusky – the union Godfather – but only as part of his attempt to “build support from all parts of the Labour Party.” And Charlie Falconer, Blair’s ex-flatmate, is backing him – so surely that’s enough?

Look closely and you can see what Burnham is up to. He is offering ‘change’ only on areas that the unions don’t care about. In an interview with the Observer today he gives up on the Mansion Tax, and is happy to admit that Gordon Brown shouldn’t have been running up those deficits in the boom years.