Andy Burnham was sworn in as Prime Minister promising the “biggest changes in 40 years.” And doesn’t Britain need it. One in five adults live in relative poverty. One million young people are not in work or education. A “lost generation” is enduring stagnating wages since the 2008-09 crash.
Can Burnham deliver it? He is certainly more adept at slogans and speeches than Keir Starmer was, although that’s not hard. His rhetoric so far has made a clear effort to relate to the anger at the cost-of-living crisis, desire for change, and as above, even hints at a critique of neoliberalism.
✨Vibes✨
This may well give him a short honeymoon – but there is only so long you can run a government on vibes alone.
The truth is that Burnham’s project is bursting with contradictions. On the one hand he is trying to reconnect Labour with the sense of desperation in Britain about rising bills, stagnating wages and decimated public services.
On the other, he is pulled by pressure from the markets. Since he stated last September that Labour shouldn’t be “in hock” to them, the press – led by the usually more circumspect Financial Times – have hounded him, demanding he backtrack.
Burnham readily buckled, announcing he will stick to the economic orthodoxy and be bound by the fiscal rules that were set by Starmer’s chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Continuity or break?
His cabinet and staff appointments reflect one of the pressures Burnham is bowing to. This isn’t just a Starmer tribute act. There is continuity with the worst of Blairism. Take his chief of staff, James Purnell: minister under Blair, former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and someone the disgraced Peter Mandelson called “one of my boys.”
Burnham’s decision to go with John Healy as chancellor, chosen after the markets blocked soft left Ed Milliband, is a reassurance that his government will prioritise warfare over welfare. Shabana Mahmood, architect of the brutal war on migrants, has been heavily praised by Burnham and has been chosen to stay on as Home Secretary. And one of Burnham’s first announcements to approve North Sea oil extraction, as Britain scorched under record temperatures, was letting the oil companies know their profits were safe under him.
In other words, Burnham might have a more human face, but he represents a continuation of the worst of Starmerism.
The former mayor of Manchester will come up against the same realities that broke his predecessor. The economy remains trapped by sluggish growth and risks being pulled into a deeper quagmire by the unending Iran crisis and the fragility of the AI bubble. The two potential remedies floated by the centre left, taxing the rich and increasing spending, are anathema to the markets and won’t fit into the fiscal rules.
Fractured politics
So it’s possible the new Prime Minister might get a short bounce, but style over substance is unlikely to fundamentally reverse the crisis of the political centre and the fracturing of British politics. What does Burnham mean for the left?
First, millions of workers in Britain will feel more hopeful now he has replaced Starmer, with many thinking there is a possibility for things to change. It would be wrong to telescope the process and denounce him as a sell out from the sidelines. Burnham’s promises – likely unfulfilled – of action on the cost-of-living crisis open up the opportunity to make real demands and initiate campaigns around rent freezes, price controls and pay restoration.
Second, we should guard against the idea that Burnham represents some kind of firewall against Nigel Farage and the far right. It’s good to see Farage on the rocks for being exposed as being in the pocket of millionaires. But any idea we have reached “peak Reform” is mistaken given the new threats further to the right from Restore Britain and the street movement around Tommy Robinson.
The left can do much better than propping up the political centre against the far right. Burnham’s popular frontism is more attractive than Starmer’s, and could pull in the Greens, Lib Dems, SNP and Plaid Cymru. But any pressure for the left to be part of it will mean dropping anti-racism, criticisms of what Tariq Ali calls the “extreme centre” and the crucial question of mobilisation.
Instead, we will be told that we have to accept Burnham’s fiscal continuity with Starmer, and a continuation of the scapegoating of refugees and migrants – both of which have paved the way for Farage. The alternative is deepening the movement against racism, which put half a million on the streets of London on 28 March, in working class communities across Britain.
Radical
Finally, the business-as-usual approach of the new government points to the likelihood that the political polarisation will eventually deepen under Burnham.
The intensification of the breakdown of the traditional methods of organising liberal capitalism is producing new horrors: record temperatures, the far right topping the polls, imperialist carnage in Gaza and Iran. Burnham’s government, like those before him, has tethered the British state to a fractured Western imperialism that is struggling to maintain order.
The far right think they will be the ones who benefit, but the left isn’t short of opportunities. The Greens have surged to over 230,000 members, most of whom are inspired by Zack Polanski’s radical interventions into the political debate – even if the Greens as a party don’t offer more than a socially liberal electoral project. The Your Party debacle started with so much hope and optimism when only a year ago 700,000 people signed up, but it illustrated the limits of the politics of the Labour left – even outside of the Labour Party.
The project of building a new left, rooted in communities and campaigns, principled on Palestine, imperialism and anti-racism, and – in the words of Lenin – prepared to be “as radical as reality itself”, is made more necessary by Burnham’s crowning as Prime Minister, not less.
