Michael Murphy: Andy Burnham’s empty promise to ‘do more’ for the British people

As of last week, a British 10-year-old will have lived through seven prime ministers. Each arrived promising a fresh start only to leave the country worse off — economically and socially — than when they took office. It is under that cloud of false starts and disappointments that Andy Burnham, formerly mayor of Greater Manchester, arrived at Downing Street last Monday as the man pledging to turn things around.

Burnham is self-consciously unorthodox. Eschewing the lecterns that have traditionally marked the coming and going of prime ministers, he opted for two short, stabby microphones trained on his midriff. His first speech to the country was foreshadowed by another, to the Labour Party, in which he blamed “four decades of neoliberalism” for the lacklustre state of modern Britain, a country that taxes and spends more than at any time in 50 years.

That doctrine, introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, damaged working-class communities and has finally run its course, or so says Burnham. Britain, he continued, could now expect to undergo “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years.”

Both his addresses were notably light on the detail of how this change might materialize.

“We will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land so that they can do more,” he said. There is something about the cod-poetic register of “every postcode in the land,” and the bathetic vagueness of “so they can do more,” that gets to the core of Brand Burnham, which prizes affability over policy and, it seems, optimism over reality. If Burnham knew what precisely he meant by “do more,” he kept his Tarot cards rather close to his chest.

He promised to reindustrialize Britain using public procurement. He promised to provide more mental health support to young people, bring down the welfare bill and end rough sleeping. The shopping list included every warm and fuzzy offering one could think of, making the absence of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens all the more inexplicable.

That’s not to say Burnham doesn’t have a lot going for him. As things stand, his principal advantage is that he is not his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, whose wooden affect and government-by-U-turn made him one of the most unpopular British leaders in the 21st century. Burnham possesses some charm, wrapped though it is in a cartoonish attachment to all things Manchester: chips and gravy, the Smiths, Oasis, addressing everyone as “lad” and so on.

So fond is Burnham of Manchester that he has created another seat of government, the so-called No. 10 North, for official business to be conducted nearer to those post-industrial towns that feel left behind by “neoliberalism.” The weekly procession of ministers, their staff and security details up and down the country at taxpayer expense might not be the communications coup Burnham has in mind.

Yet this does not seem to bother him. Burnham has a formidable, almost Trumpian belief in himself and his vision. “I draw my strength from people,” he recently told the grassroots of the Labour Party, “I hear things, pick up straws in the wind.” This would pass muster as an excerpt from Benito Mussolini’s table conversation, yet it came from Britain’s Oasis-loving prime minister.

It is this faith uncoupled from much to support it that makes Burnham’s tenure all the more unpredictable. For all his stubborn obtuseness, one felt that, at core, Starmer lacked full confidence in himself and his convictions. While Starmer floundered and eventually left the stage, Burnham may attempt to follow his as yet foggy ideals through to the bitter end.

National Post