I was in Thailand twenty five years ago when I first came across one of my favourite phrases.
My mum, a teacher, had taken a role in private school in Bangkok and moved out there with my stepfather and brother. Their eleven years there were the experience of a life time and I’m lucky to have been able to share multiple times.
I can’t remember what of the ubiquitous Thai souvenirs I was buying; a suit, a metal Buddha head, fake Rolex, decorated puppets, fabric throws, those prism shaped pillows – the usual.
The trader showed me something that at first glance was identical and I must have said so, because she smiled and said: “Same Same….but different” where upon she drew my attention to the actual difference.
I’ve borrowed it ever since and it’s proved highly useful.
Andy Burnham, however, has the reverse problem and it brings its own richly Anglo Saxon phrase: “same **** different wrapper”.
Even as Starmer was teetering on the cliff of his own fall, and we waited to see if Labour pushed him, there was talk that Burnham would leave his beloved Manchester to come to London for a better job. We know now from Louise Haigh, his right hand woman – new government mobile phone held in the left – that the plan to take over was at least a year old.
The Conservatives chose a clearly signposted strategy:
“The problem isn’t Starmer, or Burnham – it’s Labour”
When, over the weeks nobody could properly challenge Burnham and whilst Labour Comms tried to highlight via tik-tok, soft soap broadcast interviews, and distributing slew of personal trivia – just how different a personality, the new PM is, it is bizarre how in just ten days he’s proved how much all that guff is poor camouflage for being a differently wrapped copy of the government that just fell.
We’ve learned in a very short time, as we did with Starmer, don’t focus on what he says so much as what he does. Not surprising the Tories would pick that up, because, to bend another of my favourite phrases, it’s exactly the petard they got ‘hoisted’ on.
But Burnham may have morphed the concept of “we talked right and governed left” into “we’re talking different, and governing the same”
His Chancellor who resigned over Starmer’s denuded defence spending plans that John Healey could not see implemented, has simply switched offices and is now implementing them with that smirk-smile he deploys whenever it’s mentioned.
The Chagos Islands deal which would be money better spent on the above, is still in play. Diego Garcia would remain our base even if we didn’t and it’s absurd to suggest otherwise, and add the infuriating coda ‘but honourable members opposite are well aware we cannot discuss why’
I have news, they aren’t the only ones privy to this knowledge – and it’s phooey.
I’ve said before, what are they worried about: a Mauritian SEAL team taking out the Americans and seizing the base in protest?! It’s like Milei, who will have seen the whole Chagos Islands fiasco play out, trying to sabre rattle over the Falklands.
Labour welfare cuts – that were the beginning of the end for Starmer and were certainly curtains for the career of Liz Kendall – weren’t even cuts but a slowing of the rate of increase.
Even that couldn’t get through, and Burnham will not be able to move on it either and you sense he knows it. Rather he will tax and barrow to keep it going and shore up his base.
Donald Trump has made the extraordinary statement that he will give every US household a $5000 ‘dividend’ if the Republicans hold Congress and the Senate. Barefaced as such a transparent electoral bribe as that is – at least it’s transparent.
Ed Miliband’s statement on sanctioning Israel’s West Bank settlements and language around why they’ve done it, is partly a collective response with many nations to stop the appalling settler violence but if you thought it wasn’t also an attempt to spike Polanski’s guns and woo voters they fear they’ve lost to the Greens, I have a flat in Tel Aviv to sell you.
It’s not new either, Starmer was doing the same when he recognised a Palestinian state. It’s an irony his early departure from the Commons is the reason Burnham needs to hold the Greens in check, now.
The boats, asylum accommodation, old military bases, early release, the cost of living, gender based rights all the issues Starmer and Reeves were unequal to, Burnham has already run into the same brick walls – and whilst telling us how well he’ll scale them, and how nobody should doubt he can, he has only taken the most hesitant steps back and forth at the bottom.
‘Oh come on give him time, it’s way too early to judge’, he supporters say. That’ll last as a flak barrier about as long as the infamous and bogus “22billion black-hole” did. A line eventually so stale when they kept wheeling it out, the sell-by-date walked off in embarrassment, and they had to throw it away.
Now Burnham has, whilst being held to account by Badenoch – not Farage who still seems to be in some form of self-imposed public purdah this week – has gifted the Tories a defining attack line.
When we spend three times as much on paying down the national debt as we do on defence, and Burnham rejects the Conservative plan to do both by cutting the welfare bill, it is again bizarre he’d say out loud that ‘national security can’t come at the expense of social security.’
It may have had his backbenches cheering in a way they’d forgotten under his predecessor, but you could see the look of surprise on the Opposition front bench.
In political communications you often frame an attack line and see how it lands. It’s been a while since Badenoch tried “They’ve stopped being the party of labour and become the party of welfare”
If you are the party on the end of that criticism it’s not terribly smart to prove them right, especially when you are delivering a line you think is hurting them. That is the very definition of hoist by your own petard.
A Labour Chancellor called Healey once said:
“Once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.”
Oddly enough Dennis Healey had been Defence Secretary before he was Chancellor, and had served as a decorated artillery officer in World War 2.
I may be wrong about it, but if Burnham keeps talking the talk but we don’t see him walk the walk – he’s publicly suggested the coming Budget will reveal the answer to the question ‘how are you going to pay for anything you’ve suggested?’ – then I think he’s making his long pitch to the country.
He keeps talking of working together with others. It’s possible we have the question he might try to pose in any 2027 election. ‘These are the things I want to do, and haven’t, yet. Now give me the mandate to keep spending on them’
It seems very hard on current polling not to suggest he might come out the diminished victor, and aided by the Lib Dems and accompanied by a cheeky victory Tik-Tok, proceed to drive the economy and public finances over the same cliff he pushed Starmer.
Same same action horribly different result.