It’s been barely two weeks since Andy Burnham entered Downing Street, and his premiership already looks like a study in contrasts. Where his predecessor was accused of caution to the point of paralysis, Burnham has come out swinging.
His opening salvo included scrapping VAT on electricity bills, reinstating the £2 bus fare cap, promising to end rough sleeping, and setting up a “No 10 in the North” in Manchester, all within his first fortnight in the job.
The results, at least so far, speak for themselves: Burnham’s approval ratings have soared to a net 19 points, comfortably outstripping anything Keir Starmer managed during his two years in office.
Whether this pace can be sustained remains an open question, but there’s a leadership lesson here that goes well beyond Westminster: decisiveness, visibly and quickly demonstrated, can do as much for morale and momentum as the substance of the decisions themselves.
A tale of two premierships
To understand why Burnham’s approach has landed so well, it helps to look at what came before it. Starmer entered Downing Street in 2024 with a majority most leaders would envy, but a mandate that was, in truth, considerably softer. Labour won that election with around a third of the popular vote, a figure that was notably less than Jeremy Corbyn managed, and would fall even further over the following 18 months.
Starmer’s instinct, both on the campaign trail and in office, was pragmatism: promise less, and be seen to deliver it. Given the scale of the challenge facing any incoming government after 14 years of Conservative rule, that caution was understandable, and arguably even sensible at the outset. Yet what might have seemed prudent in opposition looked very different in power. Two years in, voters and commentators alike were losing patience with a government that seemed to be permanently in the process of getting round to things, rather than actually doing them.
The issues voters cared most about—the cost of living, healthcare, immigration, pollution—continued to feel unattended to, even as the government expended significant political energy in more divisive areas like rapid homebuilding and foreign policy commitments. While there were some genuine achievements, they were frequently drowned out by controversies and own goals. The net effect was a government that managed to alienate both left and right simultaneously, without ever quite convincing the centre that it had a plan.
Burnham’s opening gambit
Burnham, by contrast, has clearly taken the lesson that voters can forgive imperfect policy far more easily than they can forgive inertia. His first speech as prime minister set the tone: he pledged to end rough sleeping as his opening instruction to the government, and promised, in his words, “the biggest changes in the last 40 years.” Whatever you think of the substance, the lack of ambiguity is a marked shift from his predecessor.
That same urgency has carried through into policy delivery. Within his first week, Burnham had announced or dropped a new policy roughly once a day, covering everything from tax thresholds to rent controls to devolution. Yet insiders around the new PM have openly acknowledged that few of these early measures will be immediately transformative for most households. The VAT cut on electricity bills, for instance, will save the average consumer only around £45 a year, even if this was still welcomed by the TUC as “a good first step”.
What Burnham appears to understand is that the perception of momentum matters just as much as the mechanics of a policy itself. A £45 saving is modest, but one announced on day three, alongside half a dozen other visible commitments, demonstrates a commitment to change. It’s evidence of a leader in motion after two years of inertia: someone making decisions and taking ownership of the challenges they face.
The risk in moving fast
None of this is to say decisiveness is a leadership strategy without cost. Moving fast and making bold, early commitments inevitably means less time for consultation, less room for course correction, and a higher chance that some of those decisions will need to be walked back. Burnham has already dropped some of his own previous pledges alongside those he inherited from Starmer’s government.
Substantial questions on tax, social care, and the economy also remain unresolved ahead of Chancellor John Healey’s Budget in October.Bold moves that don’t eventually deliver tangible results can just as easily turn into a reputation for style over substance, particularly once the initial shine wears off.
There’s also a subtler risk: that decisiveness can look like arrogance if it isn’t paired with humility. To his credit, Burnham has tried to strike that balance, framing his policy blitz as an attempt to “make politics work better”, and offer the country “breathing space” while he works on the bigger, more structural issues. Whether that framing survives contact with a difficult autumn Budget is another matter entirely.
What business leaders can take from it
Even if you never find yourself having to form a government, the parallel is a useful one for businesses. Organisations often find themselves in a similar bind to Starmer’s Labour, where cautious, consensus-driven decision-making starts out feeling responsible, but feels like an absence of leadership the more it drags on. Much like voters, employees tend to notice inaction far more readily than they notice nuance. A leader who visibly makes decisions, even imperfect ones, and owns the consequences, builds a different kind of trust than one who’s forever weighing up every option.
That doesn’t mean recklessness is a virtue in itself. The lesson from Burnham’s opening fortnight isn’t “move fast and break things.” It’s that acting quickly and clearly, and communicating what you’re doing, can buy a leader goodwill even before those actions play out. People want to know where they stand, and what’s coming next. Caution and pragmatism rarely read as such to the people on the receiving end of them.
Courses like our Senior Leadership Development Programme are built around exactly this kind of challenge: helping leaders develop the confidence and judgement to make timely decisions under pressure, without losing sight of the strategic detail that makes those decisions durable. Similarly, our Influence, Persuasion and Negotiation Skills course can help leaders communicate bold decisions in a way that builds buy-in, rather than simply broadcasting intent.
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Andy Burnham’s first fortnight in Downing Street won’t settle the argument about whether decisiveness or caution makes for better government; that verdict will depend on delivery, not just tone, and the real tests are still ahead of him.
What it has already offered is a useful reminder that in leadership, as in politics, momentum is its own kind of currency. People forgive imperfect decisions far more readily than they forgive the sense that nobody is making any at all.
