There is, of course, one big, central political story today. A change of Prime Minister is not the rarity it once was, but it is no small matter that Andy Burnham will take up the role later this afternoon.
It is in the country’s interests that he succeeds in making us a more prosperous, secure and harmonious nation, but there are good reasons to be apprehensive.
To date, he has been prone to say what his audience of Labour Party members have wanted to hear.
His analysis of why the Starmer administration failed relies heavily on the contention that is was insufficiently true to Labour values, which is a convenient but inaccurate explanation. He has shied away from confronting his party or the country with the realities of the country’s predicament and the trade-offs that have to be made. There is a tendency to think that difficult and longstanding problems exist purely because no one in Downing Street properly cared about them, and will now be solved because Burnham uniquely really, really cares. Expectations are set of a revival in manufacturing jobs and growth in every postcode which are unlikely to be met. There is insufficient emphasis on the need for economic growth, and a clear, realistic argument for why growth should be prioritised over other objectives.
It is not too late for these shortcomings to be rectified, but the task is harder for the fact that do so will require Burnham as Prime Minister to be a very different politician to Burnham the aspiring Prime Minister. Such a transformation would inevitably be greeted with cries of betrayal from erstwhile supporters.
There are aspects of this situation that are very specifically about Labour and its character as a party. At times, Burnham appears to want to re-fight the 1987 General Election campaign, convinced that the country would be a much better place if only Neil Kinnock had prevailed. There is also a sentimentality to Burnham’s worldview that appeals more to those on the left than the right.
There are, however, some similarities with recent Conservative history to which I will return after a detour to discuss a different political story that is more parochial but nonetheless significant.
In recent days, Kemi Badenoch confirmed that she is applying a purity test for Conservative Party Parliamentary candidates on the issues of net zero and membership of the European Convention of Human Rights. Anyone who does not agree with her position on both these policies is not, in her words, “a serious person” and is blocked from applying to stand. Badenoch also revealed that former MPs and Ministers have failed in their attempts to get back on the candidates list on this basis. This was then followed by the news that Gavin Barwell would not receive the Tory whip when he returns to the Lords following a leave of absence. His recent criticism of Badenoch’s political strategy has apparently put him beyond the pale. All of this was presented gleefully in right-wing publications as a “purge of the wets”.
There is much that could be said about the merits of the policies on net zero and ECHR membership, the need to attract talented people to stand as Conservative Parliamentary candidates (I know of very capable people who have been blocked or have declined to put their names forward because of these tests), the unprecedented nature of these actions, the need for robust debate about political strategy within the party, or the rights and wrongs of individual cases. (As it happens, Gavin is a good friend of mine and we are both on the board of Prosper UK but – even if that were not the case – I would still think he has been treated very shabbily.) But the relevant point for this column is the political logic of the approach.
The thinking is that it is imperative for the Tories to win back those voters who – either before or after the 2024 General Election – defected to Reform. The reason those voters defected, it is argued, is that the 2019-24 Conservative government “talked right but acted left”. This resulted in a loss of trust that will not be recovered unless the party demonstrates that it has changed. Only then will the 2019 coalition of supporters be convinced to give the Tories a second chance. Demonstrating that the party has changed can only be done by purging the party of the liberal wing that stymied the delivery of properly Conservative policies.
There are some glaring weaknesses in this analysis. For a start, the Tories have lost supporters in all directions and in the vast majority of constituencies that need to be won back, the larger group are those who have defected to parties of the left or are not voting, not the populist right. And of those who have gone in that direction, not all are recoverable.
To argue that the liberal wing was all-powerful over this period is an extraordinary rewriting of history.
It was – as I recall only too clearly – largely purged in 2019, leaving the right dominant with its own candidate (Boris Johnson) triumphant and a Cabinet selected on the basis of loyalty to his hard Brexit approach. If immigration policy was too loose in the early 2020s (and in some areas it was), responsibility lies with the then Prime Minister or his Home Secretary, Priti Patel, hardly a closet Lib Dem.
As for the decline of the Conservatives’ popularity, polling shows two obvious moments when the public turned against the party. The first was Partygate, the second was the Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget. Both were depressingly predictable. There was always likely to be a moment when Johnson’s lack of integrity was likely to cause a political crisis; there was always likely to be a moment when Liz Truss’s recklessness was likely to cause an economic crisis. Plenty in the liberal wing of the party warned of the risks, but the right of the party got their way with the party members in the leadership elections of 2019 and 2022.
After disaster struck, Rishi Sunak should have distanced himself from his disgraced predecessors but pulled his punches. Why? Because he did dare not take on the powerful right of his party. Political recovery became impossible. The party’s liberal wing was not to blame.
The real problem was that what the party offered in 2019 was incoherent and implausible and relied on a coalition of supporters that was inherently unstable. Johnson’s policy thinking was not robust enough to survive contact with reality, and his outstanding communication skills – demonstrated over many years as a regional mayor – were insufficient to compensate. The unwillingness to confront the party membership and its natural supporters with the policy trade-offs, instead of telling them what they want to hear, stored up problems. And implausible but popular promises on levelling up or reviving manufacturing industry that won over the support of Red Wall voters occupied the space that should have been filled by a hard-headed plan on delivering higher economic growth.
Does this sound familiar, perhaps even topical?
There are some important lessons to be learnt from this experience. And not just by the Conservatives.