Some disparate thoughts on a historic speech

Something fundamental changed this week. Andy Burnham has weaknesses - we’ll come to those in a moment - but he has accomplished something which we have not seen for decades. He has reset the terms of British public debate in a progressive direction. With a little luck, this week will mark a fundamental rupture with what came before.

The far-right has been defenestrated

For two years now, we have witnessed a resurgent far-right. We know the storyline. The burning demand for change alighted on Keir Starmer, then when Starmer failed it had nowhere to go but Nigel Farage. The election of Donald Trump made right-wing populism look pre-destined. Elon Musk rigged X to favour far-right content and enough mainstream journalists stayed on the site to drag those debates into people’s living rooms. Suddenly the world felt as if it were crumbling around us, as if we were trapped in a reenactment of the Weimar Republic.

What were once ‘legitimate concerns about immigration’ have now mutated into promises of mass deportations. What was once an anxiety about national identity now translates into an insistence that brown people cannot be English. A national consensus on climate change has crumbled. It was uncanny how effectively the far-right controlled the framing, how it dictated what would be talked about and the manner in which it was discussed.

Now look at what happened this week. Burnham’s speech was well received, but more importantly, it wrestled control of the news agenda. Suddenly we were discussing the issues Burnham wanted to talk about in the terms Burnham wanted.

He did this not by challenging Farage, but by ignoring him.

Some party leaders have emulated Farage by adopting a skimmed-milk version of his anti-immigrant policy. Others have attacked him by issuing a stark warning of the threat to come. And some have done both these things in sequence, seemingly unaware of how patently ineffective such an approach would be. But Burnham just acted like he wasn’t there. Instead of chasing after him, he established his own agenda, which was utterly disconnected from the Reform message: On the triple lock, on care, on electoral reform, on Brexit, on public control of utilities.

Doing so wrestled editorial control from Reform. If Burnham had simply spoken about these things it would have made little difference. But instead, he treated the news like a fucking machine gun, spewing out searing bullets of major newsiness every minute or so from the stage. It was unavoidable. It was unignorable. And by the end of the week, carefully selected progressive issues dominated the news agenda, discussed according to Burnham’s preferred framing.

The economic situation remains grim. But Burnham has shown how to tackle the other problem we face, which is the far-right’s death grip on the national conversation.

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Defeating populism is a cost-of-living measure

This is not just crucial to defeat a resurgent fascism. It is also crucial simply as a way of helping people with the cost of living.

Wherever populism wins, it makes conditions worse. Look at the track record: Brexit destroyed our trade relations, punished our exporters, hit our importers, pulverised British businesses. Trump’s trade wars knocked the global economy for no discernable gain and his war in Iran is driving up prices. Wherever they take power, they make the underlying situation worse, because their political arguments have no bearing on objective conditions.

Reform insists that it would solve our economic problems by deporting immigrants and stripping people of benefits. In fact, this will make us poorer and more chaotic. No great economic miracle follows from it.

The most important cost-of-living measure Britain can take is to prevent the emergence of a Farage government. By reducing the likelihood of this eventuality, Burnham is helping protect the pound in people’s pocket. He won’t get any gratitude for it, of course - voters do not reward political counterfactuals - but he deserves it. Those who might otherwise have voted Reform have been saved from the poverty which would have been inflicted on them as a result of their own folly.

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The left no longer looks haunted

British progressives are like the English football team: undone by their own deep-seated historic neuroses. As you grow up, you’re educated in the various tragedies of the past. The ‘longest suicide note in history’, the terrible timing of the Falklands, the incomprehensible emotional toll of the 1992 election, the grotesque injustice of a bankers financial crisis followed by austerity, the bleak irony of ‘chaos with Ed Miliband’.

Even when we think of progressive leaders who set out a clear set of principles, their position seems instinctively defensive. Tony Blair put forward a Third Way in the late 90s, but his ideological position was ultimately an attempt to find progressive space on redistribution within the Thatcherite consensus. Miliband put forward a genuinely forward-thinking and credible left-wing position as Labour leader in the early 2010s, but his approach was undermined by his own visible lack of confidence in the leadership position.

Watching Burnham this week was like that second half England performance against Croatia at the World Cup. It was as if all the nerves had gone, all the self-doubt. It was brimming with confidence and gusto and utterly free of the timidity we’ve associated with progressive politicians for generations.

What we saw this week was a facing down of the left’s internal insecurities. Perhaps it’ll be a flash in the pan - to be followed by the political equivalent of a nil-nil draw between England and Ghana. But perhaps, just perhaps, this is the new way of doing things. And by doing things this way, Burnham will create an example which progressive politicians in future can follow. For now at least, that sense of inevitable progressive defeat feels very distant. Like a bad dream we once had.

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Finally, someone is willing to lead

The core distinction between Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer is not charisma. It is that he is willing to lead.

This is not the case on every issue. He is evidently not prepared to lead on immigration or on trans rights, although I think you can hear in his appeals to care workers a thwarted desire to speak comfortingly to immigrants, made impossible by his perception of present conditions.

But in certain key areas, where he has decided that he can make progress, he is setting a destination and running towards it. Watch him on social care. He has progressively built the case, deploying as much political skill as he can. He has built an emotional framework, a narrative framework, a political framework and the start of an economic framework. He has put his own prime ministerial authority behind it. And now he is trying to take hold of public opinion and lead it.

The last time I remember seeing anything like this was Tony Blair with the case for liberal intervention. Certainly Starmer didn’t have it. He seemed unable to conceive that a politician might challenge the public view. Before him, a long line of Tory prime ministers tried endlessly to mould themselves into whatever the public’s perception was - from Theresa May’s desperate contortions over the border in Ireland, to Boris Johnson’s outright lies on the same issue, to Sunak’s search for a personality. The only one who showed any real sense of leadership was Liz Truss and she was insane.

Now here is someone who is prepared to try and usher public opinion in a particular direction. It is important for the Labour party, sure. But it is also important for bigger, deeper reasons.

The public is often wrong. People don’t like admitting this because it sounds elitist, but it remains true nonetheless. Watch a vox-pop about an issue you know about and you will be staggered by the degree of confidently-expressed ignorance which you are exposed to. This is why we need a sense of leadership in politics and the political class generally - to peel the public away from objectively wrong opinions and towards ones grounded in reality, to open up the space for the necessary conversations we require if we are to solve the problems which affect us. Burnham’s demonstration of leadership is a significant step towards rejecting the tyranny of public opinion.

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Burnham’s economics are potentially a bit shit

There is a shadow here. The author and professional uber-nerd Jonn Elledge mentioned it as we were enthusiastically WhatsApping about the speech. “I worry his economics might be shit,” he wrote.

It’s a valid concern. For a start, Burnham’s 40-years-of-neoliberalism argument feels a bit dated. We’ve been done with neoliberalism since at least 2016, as you can tell by the role of state aid rules in the Brexit debate, or Labour’s active programme of state intervention under Starmer. Few people now seriously claim, for instance, that the free market will solve climate change. The era when regulation was a dirty word and competition was the great virtue is over and has been for a while. Only Blair and Truss still believe in it.

Burnham speaks a lot about reindustrialisation. This is not, as some of his detractors claim, a return to coal. But it is nevertheless quite telling, when you consider how little he speaks about services.

The university sector, for instance, was one of the crown jewels in Britain’s cultural and economic life. It has been left to wither and die by successive governments, first in order to prevent a rise in tuition fees and then as a way of reducing immigration numbers.

I was speaking to a group of academics this week and they told me that their university had cancelled its cleaning contracts. From now on, the academics would be given a vacuum cleaner and told to clean their own offices. It seemed a fitting symbol of a sector going into terminal decline.

What does Burnham have to say about that? Very little. But we are, it’s worth remembering, a services economy. Britain is perhaps unique in having a political class that seems to hate the way it makes money. During Brexit, the Conservatives never really thought to mention services. During the Starmer government, so-called post-liberals like Maurice Glasmann became obsessed with the ‘lanyard class’. The broader Labour party kept trying to hark back to a time when it represented the real working class - hard lads covered in soot doing a man’s job, instead of the clean, effete management duties undertaken by a typical Labour voter now.

Ironically, this fetish for manual labour took hold of the political class precisely as manual labourers themselves disappeared from it. In 1979, 16% of MPs had done manual jobs and just three per cent were professional politicians. By 2015, those figures were reversed, with just three per cent having done manual jobs while 17% were professional politicians. Some 14.2% were lawyers and just over 30% were business people. In other words, the yearning for manual labour is a fetish by people who have never done it, like Second World War dads from the Home Counties watching the History Channel and daydreaming about how accomplished they’d have been in a Spitfire.

Burnham’s frame for talking about the economy suggests he is part of this dispiriting trend. It’s troubling, a cloud on the horizon. It is hard to imagine the British economy succeeding until we are governed by people who are interested in it as it actually is, not how they wish it to be.

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Burnham’s manner can help repair the British state

I am increasingly fascinated by how Burnham presents. He is more confident than any of his immediate predecessors - arguably than any prime minister since Blair. But his vibe is modest, self-deprecating, humble, with a distinct sense of vulnerability.

This is a really specific form of charisma. Demonstrating vulnerability allows you to bring the audience onto your side, to get them behind you, rooting for you. Look at the way the hall reacted when Burnham struggled to speak before he spoke about his father. I’m not saying this is cynical. I think it’s genuine. I’m just trying to explain it.

Usually, vulnerable people lack confidence and self-belief. But there are many human mixtures available and Burnham seems to have stumbled on one which combines it with a big ego and buckets of personal conviction. It’s a powerful combination.

It is also very rare in politics. There are lots of people with no vulnerability at all in politics - people like David Cameron, hyper-confident, sociopathically thick-skinned, domineering, entitled, a bit broken when the spotlight isn’t on them. And there are many who are extremely vulnerable and lack the confidence to get on. But we rarely see this specific personality type which combines them both.

I have seen many little tyrants in my life. The general manager, the ticket inspector, the ward sister, the teacher. Humans are often so desperate for status that they will go mad with what little power they are given. It is to Burnham’s credit that he has been given the ultimate power but seems largely unaffected by it, at least so far. It is a properly commendable demonstration of character.

One of the rare effective periods of governance in this country came during Blair’s second term, when he put Michael Barber in charge of the policy unit. One of the reasons for that was Barber’s personality. Instead of the usual shouty-crackers bullshit, we finally had someone with a sense of academic curiosity, someone who wanted to know how things worked, someone who wished to invest prime minister authority rather than spend it. Unsurprisingly, he got things done.

Burnham is naturally more ideological than Barber - obviously, he’s a politician - but his openness and susceptibility suggests that he will mould a state in this direction. That would be very welcome.

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If not now, when?

As this week made clear, we are now lumbering up for a vast battle. Over the next ten years, some of the biggest issues in British politics will either be resolved or lost forever.

Electoral reform has the ability to rationalise a voting system for an era of multi-party politics and to create incentives which reduce tribalism and encourage political cooperation. It would change the operating system of British politics. It would do more than perhaps any other measure to improve British public life.

Reversing Brexit gives us the chance to put the populist genie back in its box, repair economic damage, restore our place in the world, and create a united European front against Russia and a US teetering on the edge of becoming a rogue state. It will ensconce us alongside like-minded nations.

Once Burnham signalled the opening stages of these debates, you could see the usual suspects try to bully him away from them. Anonymous trade unionists and Cabinet ministers started to chat to journalists about how electoral reform would make a future Labour majority impossible. Brexiters like Andrew Neil took to the airwaves to warn Burnham that “he’ll come to regret” bringing the Brexit issue back. Farage smiled woolfishly and said that talking about Brexit again would give him a “career boost”.

Most of this analysis is in fact a cynical way of expressing a political viewpoint. Brexiters don’t want the debate opened up again for various reasons, chiefly its utter failure and their personal culpability in that. They use these arguments to try to put fear in progressives. It’s a warning: remember how badly you got mangled up last time? Remember what it felt like to have us all call you traitors to your country? Do you want that again? Do you want to go back to that vicious old world where it felt as if the most vicious and brutal reactionaries were always in the ascendant? Because we are prepared to act that way again.

This is quite effective. Most progressives feel that fear, that anxiety. But let me put this simply: If not now, then when?

We are right now in the vanishingly rare situation of having a radical prime minister who is extremely competent. Until this week, ending the triple lock was considered politically unsayable, a toxic commitment that would ruin whichever party was foolish enough to propose it. Now look at the polling Survation undertook after Burnham’s conference speech.

When the triple lock and social care proposal were laid out to respondents, 64% supported it and 15% opposed, providing a net favourability of +49. Support outnumbered opposition in every age group, including those most affected. It won 61% support among the 55-64 age group and 55% support among the 65+ age group. You know what that is? That’s called competence. I know, it’s been so long since you last saw it you forgot what it looked like. It’s a competent fucking communication strategy. It’s a political leader who can frame a message and deliver it.

Now look at his opponents. Farage is accomplished at exacerbating division, but he looks increasingly thin-skinned and tetchy, unable to conceal the sense of entitlement at his core. Kemi Badenoch is a laughably ineffectual politician. Her interview with the Express today saw her promise that “badass Kemi” would face the prime minister down. This is just not a very formidable opponent.

They are beatable. And even if they were both more accomplished, the right-wing parties are competing with each other for hundreds of seats, cannibalising their own vote, while Labour and the Lib Dems aim for different seats and the Greens look subdued.

And underneath all that, there are the fundamental political and demographic conditions. People can see that Brexit failed. Many of the older voters who wanted out of the EU have died while many of the younger voters who want to be in the EU are now of voting age, especially now we have extended it to 16.

Yes, the debate will be difficult. Brexiters will say we are reopening a period of division. They will warn that we will have to join the euro and Schengen. They will issue apocalyptic predictions about the consequences of a return to free movement. Those arguments are hard to challenge but they are not impossible to defeat, with competent political leadership. They can be neutralised and then overpowered.

If we lose, we lose for a generation. But how is that a worse position than the one we were in before? Trapped in poverty by the demands of right-wing populists, who then trade off the ensuing misery to demand that we must follow their agenda to an even more extreme destination and insist that we cannot fix it because they might get upset again. Fuck that and fuck them.

This is a moment of opportunity. The stars are aligned, in a way that they almost never are - in terms of the quality of leadership, the radicalism of the ideas it is prepared to embrace, the weakness of our opponents and the underlying demand for change. A chance like this might not come along again for a generation or more.

It feels strange to suddenly be presented with a range of possibilities rather than the usual portfolio of despair. But it is not a dream, it is really happening, and we will never forgive ourselves - nor deserve to be forgiven - if we do not take advantage of it.

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Odds and sods

You can listen to this newsletter as a podcast at the top of the page or on Spotify. You can follow me on BlueSky, Instagram or TikTok.

Couple of pieces in the i paper this week - one on John Healey’s speech as chancellor and another on the return of the Brexit debate. We’re also rereleasing Origin Story episodes with a new intro for the next four weeks as we build up to Season Ten. This week it’s the Battle of Cable Street, which was not a battle and did not happen on Cable Street. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I’ve been playing the updated version of Starfox - one of my favourite games on the N64, now available and looking all pretty on the Switch 2. It’s such a strange experience to play something you played to death 30 years ago. You remember almost nothing and yet occasionally you’ll find your finger braking just in time to avoid an asteroid, demonstrating a muscle memory that has somehow sat unused in your brain all this time.

It is a delight to play a simple arcade game, without an open world or endless skill trees, and almost no complexity whatsoever. And it is nice to remember that rail shooters are just objectively very fun. There is precisely zero reason for this genre of game to have disappeared. I’m having a blast.

Right, that’s it for this week. I know it’s all troublingly optimistic at the moment, I don’t feel comfortable about it either. But be that as it may: fuck off.