Labour commentator Paul Embery explains why Andy Burnham needs to come clean on what he really stands for
As news channels cut to Euston railway station in London on Monday, just as the new MP for Makerfield, Andy Burnham, was embarking on the final leg of his journey to the House of Commons, I was half expecting to see the man of the moment sitting astride a donkey and being lauded by crowds waving palm branches and laying down their cloaks in front of him.
Burnham’s triumphal entry into Westminster certainly had a weird messianic feel about it, encapsulated most strikingly by a rather odd photo in which he posed before a phalanx of his fellow Labour MPs who seemed to be gazing upon him as some sort of saviour, though presumably of their jobs rather than their souls.
Say what you like about Jesus, he never shirked from saying what he truly felt, even when doing so made him unpopular.
Burnham, on the other hand, has a consistency problem, and the disciples now falling at his feet might like to think about that.
So far, as Burnham has any guiding ideology, it is hard to decipher the nature of it.
And where he has set out his stall on certain big or contentious issues – such as the bond markets, trans rights, the EU and immigration – he has revealed a tendency to backtrack when the pressure comes on or the public mood changes.
Pragmatism in politics is fine. But politicians who, on key topics, chop and change their stance with alacrity risk being seen as weathervanes rather than signposts.
To his advantage, Burnham does come across as a normalish sort of bloke. Critics will say, with some justification, that, having spent most of his working life in politics – he started out as an MP’s researcher in his early twenties – Burnham is a classic establishment politician.
But he does at least seem to recognise that a world exists beyond the M25, and in a Britain that is fracturing politically and culturally – not least because voters in such places have for too long been ignored – that is an important quality.
Let us cut to the chase, though. Unless Burnham, as Prime Minister, is willing to take some of the bold steps necessary to put our nation back on the right path, all the northern mateyness and charm will swiftly prove worthless.
Turning around Britain’s failing economy is a key task. Burnham has apparently said that he wants to prioritise growth while sticking rigidly to Rachel Reeves’s “ironclad” fiscal rules.
He needs to understand very quickly that it is those rules that are inhibiting growth and hastening a recession. He may as well say that he wants to grow a lush new lawn while issuing a drought order.
Reeves herself will be gone soon, and there is much speculation around who Burnham will appoint to replace her.
Whoever it is, he or she must break with the Treasury orthodoxy – rooted in neoliberal ideology – that has strangled our economy over decades and instead be willing to use the massive fiscal capacity available to governments of sovereign, currency-issuing nations to deliver investment-led growth.
The financialisation of Britain’s economy has proved disastrous. A Burnham-led Government should resolve to rebalance the economy away from the interests of finance capital and towards those of the real economy – the productive sector where goods are made and wealth is produced.
A resurgence of vibrant productive industries providing solid well-paid jobs would go a long way to bringing a restored cohesion and ease to communities suffering the effects of decades of deindustrialisation and decline.
But success for a Labour Government under Burnham will not begin and end with economic improvement.
After all, our problems as a nation run far deeper than sluggish GDP growth. Will Burnham be bold enough to get behind Shabana Mahmood’s attempts to repair our broken asylum and immigration system – the cause of so much public anger over recent years?
Will he abandon his party’s embrace of militant cosmopolitan liberalism that has alienated millions of traditional working-class voters and undermined social solidarity in their communities?
Will he ditch the Net Zero folly, which is threatening our prosperity and security, as well as throttling Britain’s productive industries?
Will he honour Brexit and resist all attempts to usher Britain back into the arms of the European Union?
If he doesn’t do these things, he will find that the Red Wall – whose votes he simply could not do without if Labour is to secure a second term – will be in no rush to return to the fold.
Burnham’s supporters may point to his victory in Makerfield as a sign that Red Wall electors can be persuaded to vote for “progressive” politics over Reform’s populism.
But Makerfield in a by-election – where local voters knew that the outcome would determine the fate of the most unpopular Prime Minister in history – is not the same as the entire Red Wall in a general election.
And, at any rate, we simply don’t know precisely how progressive - or indeed conservative - Burnham is on many issues on account of the fact that he has been either too vague or inconsistent in his statements.
Burnham is almost certainly heading to No10; that much is clear. But if he is to refute the charge of being nothing more than “Keir Starmer in jeans”, he will need to set out in clear terms his guiding beliefs and core policies.
And if these things are too far removed from the demands and desires of an impatient and resentful electorate, which knows its country is in sharp decline and whose communities are increasingly afflicted by economic stagnation and social disharmony, he will go the same way as his predecessor.