As Sir Keir Starmer can tell Andy Burnham when they pass each other going out and coming in, campaigning for office is very different from governing. Mr Burnham has made an impressive pitch to be prime minister, an opportunity for which he has been preparing for more than a year, as his campaign manager Louise Haigh admitted this week.
His sales push has been so persuasive that by the end of the first day of nominations yesterday, he secured enough endorsements to wrap up the contest. It is now impossible for another candidate to obtain enough nominations to stand.
Mr Burnham now needs to focus exclusively on preparing to govern. The challenges facing a refreshed Labour administration are daunting, so he needs to be ruthless in setting his priorities – and following them through.
To be fair, he made a start on this even before the opening of nominations, writing on Wednesday that national security will be his “first priority”. Most of his article was so light on detail as to be vacuous, but it was a statement of intent. If it means that the new government will find the money to pay for the Defence Investment Plan without resorting to Treasury accounting gimmicks, it is the right priority.
Looking for ways to fund higher defence spending should lead Prime Minister Burnham to two conclusions. One is that promoting economic growth needs to be taken more seriously. Another is that the forecast growth of public spending in some areas needs to be restrained.
Sir Keir repeatedly claimed that growth was his “top priority”, but he and Rachel Reeves too often made policy choices that inhibited it. Mr Burnham must change that. One of his first decisions as prime minister is critical. He must appoint a chancellor who commands the confidence of the markets: someone whose credibility in maintaining fiscal discipline will help to keep interest rates as low as possible.
But then he needs to look at whether it is possible to undo some of the damage done by Ms Reeves’s rise in employers’ national insurance contributions. This may involve some hard choices about the minimum wage and employee rights law, which are pricing young people out of the jobs market.
Beyond these issues lies the bigger prize for growth, as Sir Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, said in his interview with Geordie Greig, the editor-in-chief of The Independent. “The vast majority of British people know Brexit was a mistake,” he said. “The vast majority of younger people passionately know it’s a mistake and want ... to be plugged back into the European continent.”
A closer relationship with the rest of Europe is the most direct route to stronger growth. (Interestingly, Mr Clegg said that “our fate back in Europe in one shape or form will be very closely yoked to the fate of Ukraine”, which will itself eventually join the European Union.)
As well as a more effective growth strategy for the economy, the new prime minister will have to strengthen public finances by restraining the increase in public spending. This will mean tough choices in dealing with disability benefits.
The review of personal independence payments (PIP) by Sir Stephen Timms, the disability minister, confirmed that the system is not working as it should – but it will be a fiery test of Mr Burnham’s will to succeed where Sir Keir failed, not in cutting welfare spending but in simply reducing its rate of growth.
A growth strategy to underpin stronger public finances, in which the balance of future spending is tilted from welfare to defence, is the central challenge of the new administration.
But there are hard choices to be made too on immigration policy – with 80 Labour MPs demanding a U-turn on Shabana Mahmood’s policy of requiring the right to settle in Britain permanently to be earned. And Mr Burnham must find a way to offer Britain’s young people the hope of jobs, homes and a decent future.
So far, he has talked most about devolution, which sounds like motherhood and apple pie, but soon enough comes up against hard choices over resources.
Congratulations, Mr Burnham, on running such an effective campaign to become prime minister. Now the difficult decisions begin.
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