Andrew Gilligan is a writer and former No10 adviser.
Is Andy Burnham the new Jim Callaghan? The parallels are tempting. A folksier, more popular frontman coming in at the fag-end of an exhausted, bankrupt policy era pursued to destruction by governments of both parties; winning a temporary lift in the polls; but in the end lacking the will to change much, presiding merely over further decay, and making the counter-revolution all the more certain.
The same sort of small-bore, crowd-pleasing policies: remember Callaghan giving us an extra Bank Holiday? Even the hot summer, and the chancellor’s surname, are the same as in 1976.
We’ll have a better idea after the Budget. If Burnham does, as he says, want a fundamental shift away from 40 years of neoliberalism, he needs to get started. Instead, though personally very different from Keir Starmer, he seems to be making the same mistake.
Starmer became despised because he raised expectations of change that he did not meet. Burnham is making much bigger, bolder promises of change than Starmer without any sign of a plan to deliver them or pay for them. He is writing cheques that he cannot cash.
I’ve sometimes thought that Burnham’s main hope is to have an election before people realise this. If, as it looks, we get a holding-pattern Budget with some popular gimmicks but little that is changed or risky, then Labour’s gradual rise in the polls may continue to the point where it’s worth him going to the country. That is, though, a risk – not something Burnham is usually keen on: a risk that the election turns into a referendum on future tax rises; a risk that the bond markets take fright; a risk that he ends up a bit like Theresa May in 2017, swapping a big majority for something smaller.
Burnham’s calculation may be that his now-intensifying talk of a closer relationship with the EU can overcome all this in a 2027 poll. Rejoining the union or the single market unites most Labour voters, nearly all Greens and Lib Dems; it gives Burnham something that can be sold as a growth and tax revenue creation plan, plus an excuse why Labour haven’t done better in this Parliament. It’s a big idea which disproves, he’ll hope, the charge that he’s a gestures and vibes guy who can’t do bold and difficult.
But this is a battle the right can win. Not with an argument about sovereignty. Maybe not even with an argument about immigration. But because a renewal of the Brexit wars creates years of new instability and uncertainty, economic and political – years which are likely, I believe, to end in the British people voting again in a referendum to reject the single market or rejoining, if it even gets that far.
What nobody’s talked about yet is the other parties to the negotiation. All 27 EU states have to agree. Does France, for instance, want us back in the union or the single market? And even if some of the others do, how many of them want it deeply enough to face all the bother? They’ve moved on. They can live without us. They were lukewarm on even the far more modest moves closer proposed by Starmer.
The 27 and Brussels will also know that political parties representing just under half Britain’s electorate do not want a closer relationship with Europe. They’ll want to be sure that a future right-wing government does not take us out again. They’ll want us to prove our fidelity, so any deal will be tough. The rebate and opt-outs we had before will not be available. There may even be some kind of handcuff clause limiting our ability to leave again.
Today’s EU, too, is significantly different from the one we left. It is more expensive, having agreed to take on common debt during covid, and it is more intrusive. It is introducing new rules which, if we rejoined the union or the single market, would limit our ability to benefit from the technologies of the future, like AI. British businesses have adapted to Brexit, even if they don’t think it’s a great triumph. What they can’t live with is endless change in policy, not knowing what’s coming next, never being able to plan.
So here, perhaps, is where the Andy Burnham – Jim Callaghan parallel breaks down. Callaghan might have been able to win an election if he’d called it earlier – in 1978, as he was widely expected to. It wouldn’t have changed much in the long run, but it would have bought him a bit more time. With no majority at all by then, he also had less to lose. Burnham calling an early election would be more likely to end in failure.
There’s another possibility, of course. Yesterday, and not for the first time, some of Burnham’s musings had to be “clarified” by his spokesman. So maybe all this is just riffing. Maybe he just hasn’t thought any of it through.