Shirley Franklin

NHS campaigners who twice helped save the Whittington Hospital’s A&E unit have told how Andy Burnham has work to do to win their trust.

The “prime minister elect” was serving as Gordon Brown’s health secretary when the order to cut back on services at the Highgate hospital came in 2009.

It was only after a defiant Tribune campaign to protect the emergency department and with a general election looming that Mr Burnham phoned our newsdesk personally to promise that the cuts would be cancelled.

He told us that night: “I will order a complete halt in the process that is being run and I’m asking NHS London to go back to the drawing board. As a government we only support changes in the NHS when the local clinicians propose them and when there is evidence that they will improve quality and save lives.”

Shirley Franklin, chair of the Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition (DWHC), said: “I always said that Mr Burnham gave birth to our campaign. I used to tweet him that we were coming to get him. At the time, Lord Darzi had a plan to carve up the health service. Each area had to lose an A&E, a maternity unit and an ICU [intensive care unit].

“We had this massive campaign and a huge demonstration. We had a day of action outside the hospital and invited all the leaders.

“In the end the night before that happened, Emily [Thornberry] phoned Burnham, and said she was on a knife edge at the election and he could save her skin. And he did.”

The pressure was on because the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had already pledged to keep the A&E open. The Tribune’s campaigning included leading thousands of members of the public on a march to the hospital with our double-decker battle bus.

Labour went on to lose power nationally in 2010, but held its two seats locally.

Ms Franklin said of his path to Downing Street: “I am joyous that Starmer has gone, but I have no illusions about Burnham. He is very Blairite, a neo-liberal. It doesn’t bode well for anything. We’re going to get more of the same. They will keep using the private sector.”

She added: “We need to write to him about Palantir.”

The DWHC is currently campaigning to stop hospitals agreeing NHS patient record contracts with the European arm of the American defence and intelligence gathering firm.

During his time as Health Secretary at the end of the 2000s, he called for a National Care Service – a publicly funded system of social care free.

It was never enacted in full and the idea fell away. The cost of social care will remain a big challenge for his government.

How a friend became a rival

Andy Burnham at a packed St Pancras Church in 2015

IN the backstage gossiping at Westminster where everybody seems to be allowed by the national press to say whatever they want anonymously, there has been talk this week that Sir Keir Starmer is burning with anger over the challenge from Andy Burnham, writes Richard Osley.

The word “betrayal” has even been used for the former Mayor of Greater Manchester’s steady march on his job.

Maybe that’s partly because Mr Starmer had been a prominent supporter of one of Mr Burnham’s past runs for the Labour leadership.

Mr Burnham is expected to ride into Downing Street due to the support of MPs, but when it was down to a wider members’ vote he twice failed to get picked.

It was during his defeat to Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 that Mr Starmer, then a new MP in the Commons, lent his support to the man who a decade on became bent on ousting him from Downing Street.

He went as far as holding a rally in St Pancras Church, which drew a large attendance.

There Mr Starmer and the former deputy prime minister John Prescott celebrated Mr Burnham’s candidacy.

Another event was held at Netley Primary School as the candidates to succeed Ed Miliband as leader targeted areas where there was a high concentration of Labour members.

Mr Starmer said at the time that Mr Burnham was the right man for the job because “he has extensive parliamentary experience and an ability to keep the party united while we debate our future purpose and vision”.

Mr Burnham, meanwhile, told the gathering at the church: “We are no good to anybody if we are beating ourselves up, if we are internally arguing. A Labour government of any complexion is better than a Tory government.”

Mr Burnham did not stand in the next general election two years later after already becoming a mayoral candidate in Manchester.

The two men met for the first time since Mr Starmer’s resignation speech on Tuesday afternoon, and Mr Burnham will be given access to civil service briefings.

He could become prime minister within weeks, depending on whether or not anybody else says they want to stand and turn a coronation into a contest.

Number 10 said this week there would be no “new major policy or spending commitments” until a new prime minister is in post.