Andy Burnham must be willing to take his party into areas where for too long it has been afraid to set foot, writes the trade union activist and author
Andy Burnham’s premiership is already on borrowed time. That isn’t his fault, of course – not yet, at any rate – but such is the febrile nature of our politics, and so deeply unpopular is the Labour Party throughout much of the country, that Burnham will almost certainly be denied the luxury of a honeymoon period with the electorate and will, if he isn’t to go the same way as his predecessor, be required to produce near-instant results.
Because that’s where we are now. British voters are no longer willing to demonstrate patience with their political leaders. After two decades of economic stagnation, plunging living standards and calamitous state failure in a number of policy areas, they have no tolerance for mediocrity and drift. And why should they?
Many years ago, I spoke on a platform with Bob Crow, the late, great leader of the RMT union. Exasperated with repeated pleadings by Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, for trade unionists to show patience while Labour slowly tried to fix the country, Crow thundered, “The problem is, sooner or later we’re all going to be dead.”
His point stands today. Great chunks of our lives are passing by while politicians attempt – largely unsuccessfully – to improve our country. And as the decline gathers pace, so the status quo becomes more discredited, public anger intensifies, and populist forces on both Right and Left sweep up support. That’s why Burnham does not have the luxury of time.
As a Labour Party member for over three decades, I want to see a social democratic government that delivers economic justice and gives us a country that is well-governed, safe, ordered, and cohesive.
I imagine that Burnham wants those things, too. But whether or not he is imbued with the boldness and courage necessary to achieve them is the great unanswered question.
He invests much in good communications, and his social media output is slick and irreverent. “I’m an ordinary northern bloke,” is the message he wants to convey. But a flashy comms strategy matters far less today than it did 20 years ago. And that’s because our problems as a country are more acute than they were then – and everyone knows it.
What matters now is delivery, pure and simple. It’s all very well pledging to “reindustrialise Britain”, but what will Burnham do to make our economy more productive and competitive? Will he abandon the Net Zero madness that is throttling our productive industries? Will he stand up to vested interests in the City and ensure that the demands of the real economy – and especially our long-suffering manufacturing sector – no longer play second fiddle to those of finance capital? Will he relax ex-Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s “ironclad” fiscal rules, which prevented the Starmer Government from doing what was necessary to stimulate real economic growth?
If Burnham doesn’t do these things – and swiftly – the economy will remain in the doldrums, and so will Labour’s poll ratings.
And salvation for the Government and country won’t come only with an economic turnaround. If the small boats keep coming across the Channel, public disquiet at the constant penetration of our national borders by large groups of undocumented young foreign men will only deepen. Shabana Mahmood’s reform of asylum and immigration laws are a step in the right direction, but only genuinely radical measures – such as a Rwanda-style offshore processing system – are likely to provide a lasting solution. Burnham should consider such measures – even if it incurs the wrath of his party.
Britons want to see speedy and tangible improvements in a host of other areas. Even those of us who support the concept of a generous welfare system know that the current model is broken, with the benefits bill having exploded in recent years and a dependency culture beginning to take hold in many families and communities. No serious Prime Minister should ignore such an obvious ticking timebomb.
People cannot get in to see their GP and linger for months on hospital waiting lists. Violent offenders are released from prison prematurely because capacity has dried up. Work is often insecure and wages low. Hundreds of thousands of youngsters cannot find employment at all, and the chronic housing shortage now constitutes a national emergency. Meanwhile, state-sponsored multiculturalism, far from leading us to the sunlit uplands of cohesion and harmony, has caused a level of fragmentation and social disintegration never before seen in our country.
In other words, the “fundamentals” are profoundly unsound, and only an intensive dose of shock therapy will remedy things. Andy Burnham must start to think the unthinkable and be willing to take his party into areas where for too long it has been afraid to set foot. Cheaper bus fares and ending rough sleeping are all very well, but it will take something far more radical than “Manchesterism” and a few cliches about “hope” and “positivity” to turn Britain around.
Most crucially, there is little point in Burnham harping on about the damage caused by 40 years of neoliberalism if he isn’t then prepared to break free of the economic straitjacket into which previous Labour leaders have locked themselves. Similarly, his talk of bringing the country together and building a “new national sense of unity” and “common purpose” will prove idle if he isn’t willing to challenge the hyper-progressive ideology that has captured our public institutions and caused so much division.
Burnham says he will “bring forward a 10-year plan, laying out a path from where we are now to where I believe we all want Britain to be”. In reality, he won’t have the luxury of a decade. He needs to understand that, after so much failure, millions of restless voters want results in much shorter order.
Their demands are justified. After all, sooner or later we’re all going to be dead.
