ANDREW FISHER has spent the week at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Liverpool, where the new Prime Minister continued to confound political editors and expert pundits
A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into bar. The barman asks: “What are you having, Mr Burnham?”
Political journalists love the joke, but it also shows how they are struggling to define the new Prime Minister.
Burnham was a minister in Tony Blair’s government, a cabinet minister under Gordon Brown and later shadow Home Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn before he left Westminster to become Mayor of Greater Manchester.
As I walked into the press area at the back of the Liverpool Experience Centre, with my Inside Croydon press pass, I was accosted by more than one lobby hack who wanted to know my view on Andy Burnham, how to define him and what he is really going to do. Burnham is a puzzle they still cannot finish.
Not being easily pigeonholed is, I think, a strength for Burnham. With the exception of a tiny cabal of embittered ex-ministers under Starmer, the new Prime Minister can count on the goodwill of his MPs and party.
Professor Jane Green, president of the British Polling Council, says that the polls show that he is popular, and that there has been a genuine “Burnham bounce” for Labour. But there was a warning, too: , Labour’s polling lead “is still fragile,” she said, “there’s a lot still to prove.”
When Burnham arrived in Downing Street in July, he argued that “from the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns”, as he said he would set out “to end 40 years of neoliberalism”.
While Tony Blair said he saw his role as building on Margaret Thatcher’s settlement, Burnham has declared he wants to rip it up. At least in part.
One minister who served under Gordon Brown told me this week: “He’s a Blairite, 100%. That’s who he is”.
Is it? Or is that who he was back then?
Take back control: Burnham’s buses in Manchester have led the way for other metro mayors, including in London
As Mayor of Manchester, Burnham was elected with his own mandate and set about using the limited powers he had to rip up the one part of the Thatcherite settlement that he could: bus deregulation.
Burnham paved the way for other metro mayors to follow on bus re-regulation, fighting the bus companies in the courts, before improving services and capping fares. Sadiq Khan has announced his own, albeit limited, move to take control of London bus routes this week.
As Mayor, he also called for more radical breaks from Thatcherism, including rent freezes and suspending the Right to Buy.
Speaking to some of those working in government today under Burnham, there is a positivity, “we can get things done”, after two years of drift under Keir Starmer. Burnham, and the atmosphere around the Cabinet table, is described as “decisive” and “efficient”.
And so came the big speech on Tuesday, when Burnham spoke to the nation in his first leader’s speech at the Labour Party conference. He did so with a more united party, but with a niggling unease that no one was quite sure how radical he might actually be.
So it was fitting that he came onto the stage to music from The Farm, and the lyrics, “All together now, in no man’s land”.
Burnham started with bold statements. He would “put the country on a new path” and deliver, “Britain with belief again. People with hope again.”
He said: “This country isn’t where any of us would want it to be.”
Then he started diagnosing the problem. “Britain has been on the wrong path for a long time: Deindustrialisation… Deregulation… Privatisation… Austerity… Brexit.
Required reading: Labour’s 2017 General Election manifesto
“The wealth we had created for the many was seen as an opportunity for the few.
“Homes. Water. Energy. Transport. Care. Broken up and sold off.”
Using that “for the many/few” formulation was not an accident. The phrase comes from Shelley’s poem The Masque of Anarchy. In modern Labour circles it references the 2017 manifesto, For the Many, Not the Few, which represented a radical break with Thatcherism and won more than 40% of the vote at that year’s General Election.
By now, a couple of friends were texting me – I think tongue-in-cheek – to ask if I had written Burnham’s speech or had hacked the autocue (for the sake of absolute clarity, it’s no to both).
Having framed the problems, Burnham began arguing for policy in moral terms.
“On my first day in this job, on the steps of Downing Street, I set an immediate mission to end the need for rough sleeping. Everyone in. Our new permanent national policy. Putting the right principles and standards back at the heart of this country.”
Continuing on housing, Burnham promised the “biggest council house-building programme since the post-war era”. He pledged to help councils build again, with no Right to Buy on new council properties, while allowing existing tenants to still have the option to buy their council homes.
Water reform: ‘where the shareholders never lose, and the public never win’
Burnham was clear that housing could no longer be left to the market. “I am specific about council homes because we need to restore stronger democratic control over our housing stock.”
He was even more explicit on water, calling it “a symbol of what has gone wrong with Britain. A service where the shareholders never lose, and the public never win.”
There would be tougher regulation of housing and water, with “public ownership of water companies” on the agenda again.
On social security, Burnham fleshed out his previous commitment to get welfare spending down in “a Labour way”.
He told delegates: “If we get council homes built, we will get housing benefit down.” And in none-too-subtle sideswipe at his predecessor he said, “Crude cuts [to social security] should never be the Labour way.” A very welcome change of tone
More detail was provided on his plans for a National Care Service: “Everyone contributes and everyone is covered … free at the point of use. Care that is about people, not profit, which protects people’s homes and their savings … This is the National Care Service we will build.”
Burnham controversially proposed reforming the triple lock on the state pension to fund the National Care Service. He argued those pensioners would benefit: “Older people with nothing more than the state pension, or only a little more, can find themselves paying care charges today from that small income. Under my plan, this will no longer happen.”
Hope again?: Andy Burnham’s first Labour leader’s speech was authentic and emotional
This bold new Prime Minister also promised to build consensus around electoral reform and a new relationship with Europe. There was no ducking of the big issues facing the country.
And he referenced his father, Roy, from the generation that built “a country of solidarity” that defeated fascism and built the NHS, in an emotional plea to draw a line under the division in the country.
Burnham was visibly still grieving the loss of his Dad, who died with Alzheimers earlier in September. It was a genuine moment: Burnham’s speech paused, the Prime Minister unable to speak until he regained his composure. This was real.
The new Prime Minister had delivered an authentic speech and left us in no doubt about who he is and what he believes. The real Andy Burnham did stand up, and he should be pleased.
I, for one, have some hope again.
- From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn
- Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- Shadow of Starmer lingers over Labour Conference in Liverpool
- Perry’s ‘comedy’ video claims are leaving the joke on Croydon
- As Brandt Report warned, we can’t afford to be small-minded
- Burnham’s challenge is to rebalance Britain yet cherish London
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