“This coup d’état is a great advert for an unwritten constitution,” a Labour veteran from Lancashire remarked yesterday to ConHome.
Even after allowing for his delight at the triumphant arrival of the new Lancastrian regime, one must admit there is much truth in his observation.
Countries with written constitutions usually have to have to wait years to get rid of a lame duck leader. At Westminster we operate a sudden death system, and he or she can be thrown overboard within months.
Dismay has been expressed at the rapid turnover of PMs since David Cameron stepped down in the summer of 2016.
But this might equally well be taken as evidence of British liberty. Our PMs serve only at our pleasure, and their chief function, which even the most foolish of them is able to perform, is to take the blame.
Sir Keir Starmer was perceived by his own MPs to have become deeply unpopular with voters. He was unable to explain what this unpopularity was for, or how by the next general election he intended to win voters back, so out he went.
Andy Burnham believes himself to be a more gifted politician than Starmer, and has spent his first days in office demonstrating his superior gifts as a communicator.
Yesterday morning he announced a minor cut in business rates for pubs, which will take effect next April, and went to a pub at Harlow, in Essex, where he declared:
“I made this commitment in the Makerfield by-election because we’re losing pubs. Pubs need to know that, you know, the cavalry is coming. This is to me our heritage. It’s working-class culture. Once pubs are gone they don’t come back.”
The language is significant. Burnham expresses his loyalty to the past, our heritage and working-class culture, which he wishes to save from destruction.
Here is a small-c conservative appeal. Many pundits fall into the error of supposing that the way to voters’ hearts is to be more progressive than one’s rivals.
Burnham realises that, on the contrary, we are a small-c conservative people, who feel a pang when we see a pub close its doors.
In a good pub, an unforced equality reigns, alongside a respect for regulars who are understood to enjoy the standing, and the place to sit, which spring from 40 years of drinking.
One may say whatever one wishes in the pub, can abuse the scoundrelly politicians, and perhaps feels more inclined to do after a couple of pints.
But one also has a perfect right to sit in companionable or indeed grumpy silence. News of the locality is exchanged by those who claim to know it. The landlord or landlady acts as master of ceremonies, and preserves order.
I recall reporting many years ago from a council estate in Coventry which was beset by rioting. Gangs of youths, some of them no more than ten or eleven years old, roamed in the middle of the night across the open spaces, pursued by police officers in vans.
The quietest place to be was in the pub, run by a burly landlord who would take no nonsense on his premises. For him the poor, harassed police officers were superfluous. He kept a baseball bat to hand, and dogs on the flat roof above the bar.
All politicians like to be photographed at election time pulling a pint of beer, but the man who has stepped forward for the past 30 years as the true champion of the man in the pub is Nigel Farage.
By going yesterday to Essex, a stronghold of Reform UK, Burnham threw down the gauntlet to Farage. The new PM wishes to demonstrate that he, not Farage, is the regulars’ friend.
The regulars could certainly do with a friend. Charles Moore recently pointed out in The Spectator that the price of a pint of beer has increased in an excessive and intolerable way since the 1970s.
Here is proof that our politicians no longer care about the working man.
When Burnham suggests that he wants to return to the 1970s, there is a kind of commentator who supposes that the reforms of the 1980s are about to be undone. Allister Heath, writing in The Daily Telegraph, warns:
“Burnham’s monstrous alter ego, currently repressed, is that of a revolutionary socialist committed to obliterating conservative Britain, to undermining private property, to rigging the rules of the game to ensure a permanent socialist hegemony, to welfarism and to destroying educational standards.”
It will be difficult to judge before the Budget whether this is correct. Burnham has sought, by his early announcements, to win a hearing from small-c conservatives.
It will be for John Healey, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, to show in the autumn whether a grip has really been taken on the public finances.
Kemi Badenoch yesterday rebuked Burnham for lack of ambition. If the new PM is just pretending to be prudent with our money, he will soon be found out and thrown overboard.