Today’s speech by Andy Burnham underlines that he represents a shift in vibes. What matters, however, is substance, and on that front we still have more questions than answers.
Our soon-to-be prime minister made plenty of good noises. His speech was at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, which showcases the struggles of ordinary people – such as the Levellers, Chartists, suffragettes and trade unionists – for justice and democracy. He would “take inspiration from that history”, he told his enthused audience.
Much of what he said was an implicit indictment of the current Labour government. “We can’t go on like this,” he said, condemning two decades of falling living standards since the 2008 financialcrash. His premiership would be a “circuit breaker”. The whips’ system would no longer “create fear or close down debate”: a pointed rejection of Keir Starmer’s authoritarianism, which has repeatedly seen Labour MPs suspended for defying orders on votes.
Burnham noted that Britain is one of the most overcentralised countries on Earth, and promised the “biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”. Exciting-sounding stuff, but remember that George Osborne launched what he called “the biggest transfer of power to our local government in living memory” more than a decade ago. The critique then was that, in an age of austerity, this amounted to devolving cuts and weakening redistribution, while favouring richer communities with stronger tax bases.
This time, Burnham is pledging to hand mayors control over Whitehall budgets covering housing, social security and education. But these budgets are already being squeezed relative to need. Rising school costs, for example, have cancelled out increases in mainstream per-pupil funding. Ever louder siren voices demand cuts to the welfare state, even though welfare spending as a proportion of GDP has remained broadly static. Most of that spending goes on pensioners, while tens of billions are spent coping with the consequences of the housing crisis and a low-pay economy.
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The biggest applause understandably went to his commitment to the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period. Back in 1945, the Labour health minister, Nye Bevan, announced such a programme. He would later describe his desire to build “the living tapestry of a mixed community”, hailing “the lovely feature of English and Welsh villages, where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and farm labourer all lived in the same street”. Council housing was built to a better standard than private housing. The Tories competed with Labour over the number of units built, though alas, that often meant quality suffered.
Today, more than1.3 million people languish on social housing waiting lists in England. With home ownership an unaffordable dream for many, growing numbers have been driven into a private rented sector defined by rip-off rents. But with Burnham committing to sticking to the arbitrary fiscal rules, how will he restore Bevan’s dream? He notes the ruinous impact of the housing crisis on public finances, but would that satisfy the Office for Budget Responsibility, whose absurd stranglehold over governments needs abolishing? He would surely have to change how the Treasury treats public housing investment, or reprioritise spending, or raise taxes.
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Yet there was no mention of raising taxes on Britain’s booming well-to-do. Given his fiscal commitments, how else will Burnham secure the investment needed to deliver his promise of “good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart”? He has suggested reviewing taxes on wealth, but we still have no clarity. Without raising vast sums to spend on services and communities, the danger is that he is offering empty hope. After all, according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, average disposable incomes are set to fall by £740 a year by 2029, partly due to the aftershocks of the Iran war.
Burnham says he will give local government powers to take “greater public control” over energy, housing, water and transport, with Manchester’s bus policy as a template. But to be clear, that does not necessarily mean public ownership, and the termination of the failed privatisation experiment. A recent pamphlet on Manchesterism – co-written by Mathew Lawrence, director of the thinktank Common Wealth – fleshes out how public ownership could be achieved, including a bond-for-share exchange and new or expanded public corporations. If that is Burnham’s plan, we need to hear it from him.
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There are, to be fair, early signs of a change in direction as the Burnham era approaches. Starmerism wrongly believed the housing crisis could be overcome by reforming planning rules. It failed to address the legacy of the collapse in housing built by the public sector. Now the housing secretary, Steve Reed, is reportedly designing plans for a state-owned housing developer, which could borrow more cheaply than private alternatives.
There were other positive-sounding commitments, too, such as reversing the decline of the high street. Burnham has committed to cutting business rates for the struggling hospitality, leisure and retail sectors, but he should attach conditions on paying a living wage, secure hours and workplace access for trade unions. He promises reindustrialisation, but George Osborne committed to a “march of the makers” that never materialised.
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Starmerism did not implode because of vibes, but because of its failure to address a broken economic model. We still do not know who Burnham will appoint as his chancellor. Only Ed Miliband would offer a hope of overcoming the suffocating Treasury orthodoxy that has condemned Britain to stagnation and decline. That’s without even dealing with a parliamentary Labour party stuffed full of rightwingers by Starmer’s allies. A change in vibes, alas, will not overcome the crises that have fuelled Britain’s age of discontent.
