Like any new monarch at their coronation, Andy Burnham had some essential duties to fulfil during the Labour Party’s special leadership conference.
Anointed by the high priestesses of the party’s left and right, Lucy Powell and Shabana Mahmood (who looked as though it was she who had won the lottery of political life), he did not disappoint – at least, not the relatively few who had gathered in a room at TUC headquarters to watch history being made.
Mr Burnham is the coming man, and he promises “new politics”, renewal, and radical reform. But – although this may be unintentional – it sounds as if he is offering something different: a “better yesterday”.
Even a sovereign can’t turn back the clock. The “King of the North” had to make appropriate gestures of obeisance to members of the party’s nobility who had shown up – and in doing so, he harnessed the maximum sentimental goodwill, with his warm personal tributes to David Blunkett, Margaret Beckett and Neil Kinnock, all present and tearful.
There was no sign of Sir Tony Blair, as (presumably) one of the guilty men and women who had presided over Britain during the past 40 (supposedly) disastrous years and had allowed, as Mr Burnham put it, political power to be stripped from communities by centralisation, and economic power to be surrendered through privatisation.
Some rather businesslike and pro forma words of thanks were offered to Sir Keir Starmer, but this was all about looking back to a more distant past – to a pre-Thatcher era, one that Lord Kinnock tried and failed to resist. As Mr Burnham said during the by-election campaign in Makerfield, he wants to reclaim the Labour Party. In his first speech as leader, he told its members that his aim is “the return of the Labour they know” (ie the version they remember fondly, from before it started wearing “Tory clothes”).
Mr Burnham acknowledged – how could he not? – that he himself was part of the generation of Labour politicians who “let people down”, but this prodigal son has returned. “I will be better” was offered by way of penance. From now on, things will be “distinctly Labour” – code, a sceptical observer might say, for “old Labour”, and the soft-left government the party’s members yearned for but never quite won at the ballot box under Lord Kinnock and Ed Miliband.
Mr Burnham, as is universally acknowledged, is a better communicator than Sir Keir. He has a nice line in homely, self-deprecating wit, and talks with a more modulated voice, a softer accent, and an apparent sincerity that, indeed, makes for a nice presentational change. Nonetheless, this was a bold blancmange of a speech, atavistic but also vague.
For sure, the ambitions set for the Burnham administration could scarcely be loftier. He wants “good growth in every postcode”. Drawing on his experience in Greater Manchester, he will work with other parties. Point-scoring will be replaced with politicians working together. Power will be returned to “where people live”.
“Take back control” is an erstwhile slogan of the right that Mr Burnham now wishes to appropriate. The entire country – the North, the South, the east and west, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – will be both devolved and united in “common cause” (though he seems to have forgotten the Midlands).
The new prime minister will “bring back the hope”, and redress inequalities in wealth. He will also reindustrialise once-proud towns, and revive high streets. In what might be startling news to Sir Keir and Sir Tony, their successor, with no hint of irony, declared that under him there’d be an end to “factionalism” and to the “insidious briefing culture”, and that he’d been loyal to every Labour leader in his lifetime.
As ever, what was tantalisingly, frustratingly absent from Mr Burnham’s address was an idea of what he will do, how he will do it, and when it will be done. At the moment, he doesn’t do detail, and is shy of scrutiny – which is hardly encouraging. He proclaimed “I have a plan!”, but there was no real sign of it.
Despite his long denunciation of “decades of neoliberalism”, privatisation, Thatcherism and free-market capitalism, Mr Burnham styles himself as “pro-business”. That might have been a workable approach in a municipality where he could choose and negotiate with private contractors, armed with a block grant from the Treasury – but not in a role that requires unpalatable choices to be made about taxes on employers, and setting the national minimum wage.
We are no closer to knowing how “public control” can be achieved without public ownership – which matters, because a transport company, say, that has its charges and its services dictated by the state might find itself commercially unviable.
If the nation needs council houses and must borrow to build them, then that could indeed mean a saving on the housing benefit bill, as Mr Burnham and his allies argue. But investors might still conclude that it doesn’t guarantee an adequate financial return.
Joining the few dots of the Burnham fiscal plan that are visible, it looks inevitable that there will be yet more tax rises for the rich, via some form of a wealth tax, and changes to capital gains seem almost certain. But it is equally unclear whether these will raise anything like enough revenue to have the transformative impact on society that Mr Burnham talks about.
Nowhere is this more true than in the long-running saga of funding social care – an issue that is familiar to Mr Burnham, as his father has been diagnosed with dementia.
The nation knows what Mr Burnham has on his mind, and what he doesn’t – at least, if this speech was any guide. He didn’t mention climate change, or Europe, or, more surprisingly, defence – though, to be fair, he has in the recent past. “No 10 North” was also curiously absent – perhaps so ethereal that even he couldn’t summon its presence.
He did talk about his regional agenda, what’s been termed “Manchesterism”, changing political culture, and what Boris Johnson, another former mayor on a mission, once called “left-behind” communities – those that are experiencing urban decay, but also neglected coastal towns and poorer rural areas. He wants Labour to be “for them”.
There is everything to be said for that, and every reason to wish him well and raise our hopes. However, that plan of his will need to be unveiled sooner rather than later.
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