“Don’t look back in anger, don’t look back in anger, I heard you say”
This iconic Oasis anthem from the 1990’s is a fitting soundtrack to the first few days of Andy Burnham’s arrival in Parliament as Prime Minister.
Not only does he love the band, but they come from a place that if you don’t know, this Prime Minister will happily and almost immediately mention –Manchester.
As many pointed out yesterday “When I was Mayor of Manchester” is becoming akin to “my father was a tool maker”.
Of course, he’s already been Prime Minister two days shy of Liz Truss, which is exactly the number of days any politician has been able to question him, but now we know a few things that seem significant for the politics of the autumn and any future election, early or not.
Labour – and Reform – draw their fire from looking backwards.
The Conservatives have been forced to look relentlessly to the future, because that same past that their opponents want to keep harking back to, is exactly what’s shaping the changes in Conservative party and it’s shadow team. We are clearly into ‘phase two’ of Badenoch’s ‘Renewal’ plan. It’s not now just Badenoch now it’s brand.
The Conservatives have had two years of a Labour Government to watch, listen and absorb millions of voters ‘looking back in anger’ at them.
Some, so angry still, they say they’ll never vote Conservative again. Tories shouldn’t dismiss that. Some are still feeling so let down that if they are only just prepared to give Badenoch and her team a hearing it is reluctant and unenthusiastic – the ‘go-on-then-what-have-you-got-to-say-if-you-must’ style of listening.
And yet it is a hearing. The thing Iain Duncan Smith told the party was their sole mission in the rubble of July 2024.
And the reluctant lsitener can now be added to the many who are listening, with growing interest to Badenoch’s vision of the future. The trends in the polls show this. At times and by necessity the message is uncomfortable and brutally honest, and always indicating things have to change, as much as the Tories have had to change, and will continue to.
However, like it or not, and some of our readers – especially those who support other parties – do not, the Tory party isn’t dead and it isn’t dying it’s reviving.
Actually it’s slowly – certainly too slowly for some – building its own, and what it hopes will be Britain’s, future. It’s still – and any Conservative should accept this – an uncertain future for the party, but the party is increasingly certain it knows what has to be fixed, what mistakes to avoid, and what not to repeat to make that vision, into the country’s future.
Badenoch reminded Burnham yesterday that to be Prime Minister is to be a leader not a ‘people pleaser’, that Burnham will be judged not on what he says but what he delivers.
There’s some who still maintain the same ever staler lines that the Conservative party hasn’t changed and learned nothing. What more concrete example of why that’s not true could there be?
One of the clearest reasons apart from ‘talking right and governing left’ that the country gave up on the Conservatives was saying and promising things and then not delivering them – or allowing themselves to be stopped from doing so by a system that too often seemed not to work for them – which it’s supposed to – but against. Managerialism is what’s really dead. Delivery is the new deal.
For the Tories the punishment for failure on that has already been dished out. They lost two years ago, and have never lost so badly.
Now every single day for Badenoch is a battle to move away from that past and change what led to it – without promising unicorns, ‘back of a fag packet’ solutions, or grabby slogans that quickly fall apart into grubby excuses.
Badenoch’s not so interested in the past except what it can teach her to change her party and the country’s future.
Andy Burnham wants to change the future by going back to the past, to a time before Margaret Thatcher and Brexit; two historic seismic moments he blames for the lack of growth this country has seen.
Quite apart from the fact that that diagnosis weirdly erases the 13 years of a New Labour government, one, he, John Healy, Yvette Cooper, and Ed Miliband actually served in, or the two years of the Starmer government the rest of them, minus Bunrham, also served in, he’s given away a vital flaw.
If Thatcher’s economic model is the problem, then Burnham doesn’t have a solution.
The excellent Lord Hannan, former columnist of this parish, called Burnham’s diagnosis ‘displacement activity’ saying, quite correctly the real reason Britain has struggled to achieve higher growth, is ‘high spending, high taxes, high borrowing, high regulation, high energy prices’ Yes, the Conservatives have to, and have, acknowledged their part in that but what does Burnham think the country needs now?
More spending.
But with borrowing costs higher than they’ve been in 18 years, he’ll need either even higher taxes, or even higher borrowing, whilst the Milibandary of the last two years makes energy prices go up, not down.
In the past two days we’ve seen the bifurcation of political futures. The potential credibility of a ‘uniparty’ label from a pre-2024 past has now been cleft in two. Over two days Burnham versus Badenoch – he didn’t even bother to mentioned Reform – has created two distinctly different solutions, and Labour’s let me assure you, is no solution.
He didn’t even seem sure he had a solution yesterday. He’s already cashing cheques he cannot honour.
We knew that the digital ID scheme had no allocated budget, so why on earth would a PM say he’d abandoned the plan, in order to allocate the funding elsewhere? You move nothing to pay for nothing – you still have nothing.
He didn’t rule out tax rises in the Budget because he can’t. But he can’t tell us where else the money will come from unless he wants to borrow, and borrow more.
He’s not learning from the past – he’s going to try and repeat its mistakes. And when our national debt repayments are three times what we spend on defence, that is indefensible.
His Chancellor John Healey is the hidden black cloud in all this. I was one among many Conservatives who have described John as an honourable man. It has I have to admit been my entire career’s experience of dealing with him. But what are we to think today?
John Healey resigned because the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves, would not guarantee the money for increasing defence spending. He resigned because Starmer wouldn’t over rule her and Healey’s departure was the final nail in Starmer’s premiership.
Now Burnham, the clear beneficiary of that resignation, has made Healey Chancellor – and suddenly Chancellor Healey is offering his replacement as Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting – the man who found the nail to be hit in the first place – the same deal he could not himself accept.
‘Money’s too tight to mention’ for simple minds!
Burnham told the Commons and Badenoch that he has committed to 3% of GDP for defence spending by 2030, only to see Number 10 correct the record later and say he hasn’t. That, in pub parlance, is a proper ‘what the actual…’ moment
As if that wasn’t enough John Healey went on to social media to welcome the UK becoming a fully signed up member of “one of the world’s largest free-trade partnerships”
“This will open the door to new customers, contracts and investment for British businesses. We are backing UK firms to take full advantage.”
Great. I too am pleased because he’s discussing CPTPP a trade deal only possible since Brexit and signed by? Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
Burnham is a far more genial and likeable personality than Starmer but he’s Prime Minister not Mayor of Britain. Bus fares, and devolution won’t cut it from Number 10 – wherever it’s based. The problems for our politicians are bigger than ever.
Andy Burnham has got to ditch Labour’s mistakes of the recent past as much as the distant past. Otherwise we’ll all be facing a really bleak future.