This column’s long-term Andy Burnham-scepticism has so far been borne out by almost everything Burnham has said since re-entering national politics in May.
My personal favourite, at which I laughed out loud, was his pledge to ensure that all Labour MPs “are happy and fulfilled doing their jobs.” He believes, he says, that “the conscience of the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] will guide the government.”
Has he actually met any of these people?
Trying to keep everyone happy means, of course, that no-one ends up happy.
Burnham will start finding this out when he has to make any kind of difficult decision – something his government has been very clearly trying to avoid, the latest evidence being reports that it will push back a decision on the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas fields for reasons of “optics.”
The talk is that Burnham will approve Jackdaw and reject Rosebank, an option guaranteed to annoy almost everyone. The only difficult decision so far – not to exclude some of the killers of PC Andrew Harper from the early-release scheme – is being walked back under public pressure, a sign that Burnham, lacking any kind of real certitude or plan, is already being pushed around by events in the way his predecessors were.
There is one potential caveat to this.
Burnham’s words may be fathoms below what’s needed for Britain’s problems, a summer of minor giveaways, cheap shots at “neoliberalism” and nods to the worst instincts of the left. But his appointments have been more interesting, potential evidence of greater seriousness and a willingness to make real choices. Pat McFadden kept at work and pensions; John Healey at the Treasury; James Purnell as chief of staff.
It is, I suppose, just possible that all the gimmicks, nostalgia throwbacks to an industrial past and pandering are flannel to quiet the PLP airheads while the government draws up its “ten-year plan” of welfare cuts, rearmament and tax restraint… All right, even as I write those words, it does sound pretty unlikely.
Burnham is more likely to be what he actually seems to be, a man without conviction following his party’s dominant, disastrous mindset. That mindset is soft headedness – or, put another way, an unwillingness to confront hard choices or make difficult plans, and an approach where intentions matter more than outcomes.
Most people in Labour aren’t bad people; they do intend well.
But they don’t realise that, on their own, good intentions often lead to bad outcomes. Raising the minimum wage for young people means that more and more young people cannot find a wage at all. Setting high quotas for affordable housing in new developments means that fewer affordable, and other, homes are built. The left never seems to learn this lesson, moving on to new and even more calamitous demands of good-intentionism, such as rent controls.
None of this is confined to the port side of politics, alas.
Part of the Tories’ failure in office was that they didn’t make the argument against government-by-good-intentions, and they too often indulged it. Even now, under the optically more hard-choices rule of Kemi Badenoch, the party does not always prioritise outcomes over intentions or signalling. Reform, meanwhile, behaves like announcing an intention (deport loads of people!) is the same as having actual plans to achieve it.
The left-right divide in politics should be good vibes versus good plans. That divide is not yet clear enough, unfortunately.