I agree that it can be argued that those who won GEs as leaders of their respective parties such as Blair, Cameron, etc have more legitimacy as PMs than those who inherit the role such as Brown, Truss, Sunak and Burnham. However, I don't agree that Brown, Truss and Sunak have any more legitimacy than Burnham. Burnham was hardly an unknown. He was a former prominent cabinet minister who was in situ as Mayor of the UK's third biggest city, a role for which he had received national attention. Moreover, and most importantly, he stood on a Labour platform to get elected as a MP. His views could have been gauged from that.
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