The words were good, but judge Burnham by his actions
Andy Burnham’s first Leader’s Speech at the UK Labour Conference was always going to set the benchmark for his tenure as Prime Minister. The UK doesn’t have a presidential system of government and so his coming to office outwith a general election is a feature not a bug of the parliamentary system that we do have (the last Prime Minister of the UK to have both entered office and left office as a result of an election was Edward Heath who entered in the 1970 General Election and left as a result of the 1974 one).
This does, however, have the side effect that Burnham is at least nominally bound to Keir Starmer’s 2024 election manifesto. He can change it – he has the Parliamentary majority to do it and his unopposed leadership challenge at least nominally signals that he has the backing of MPs – but in popular perceptions and in terms of being able to force the House of Lords to back him, he may struggle if he pushes things too far.
He also seems to be accepting this and using the time between now and the next election to lay the groundwork for things to come if and when he wins a second term after the next election (presumably in 2029). A lot of his speech was based around the idea of building up consensus on options (such as the future relationship with the EU) or promising to create a plan on complex topics (such as a National Care Service) that could be put to voters as a developed policy in the next manifesto. This is a canny move and something the Scottish Government could learn from, where the environment in Scotland has too often been to announce a policy (e.g. Local Government reform) and then to try to work out what it means.
For the Left, there’s reason for optimism. Big social programmes like the care service or the prospect of more public ownership over national infrastructure in the electrical grid and English water networks were met with loud cheers, as was the promise to look seriously at electoral reform. The speech was certainly a much more ambitious programme on offer than Starmer’s grey managerialism.
But as with all politicians, it is best to judge by actions rather than words. The promise that water company nationalisation was on the table was one thing, but it was couched in enough caveats that it remains doubtful that any nationalisations will actually happen. There is both a small and a large difference between “we don’t want to nationalise, let’s try other options first” and “we’re open to nationalisation, if other options don’t work”.
There are ambiguities, too. The state pension triple lock (where pensions increase by the highest of average wage increases, average inflation rate or 2.5%) will stay for the remainder of the Parliament but will then drop to a double-lock of the highest of inflation or 2.5%, except that pensions will also “maintain their value in relation to wages”. This could be interpreted as a floor where pensions are defined by wage rises, but this contradicts Burnham’s other statement that the scheme will overall save money. It appears more likely that the pension will be uprated in relation to wages only in some years rather than every year that wages outstrip inflation. The primary purpose of this double lock is likely to prevent extraordinary scenarios like the last few years, where COVID caused wages to drop and then the rebound created very large, if illusory, wage increases that broke the model. One must hope that a once-in-a-century event like a pandemic won’t happen again soon, though, so perhaps changing the system to suit the extraordinary isn’t as strategic as it might appear? It also seems questionable that a National Care Service can be adequately funded via “savings” in a pension scheme, which are really just unknown and unpredictable reductions in future costs.
The mood in the room was optimistic, and there are good reasons for that optimism. Burnham’s words have gone a fair step beyond “Starmer with better PR”. However, many of the actions may be years away yet, and it is those that will be the real test of whether or not he can change the UK for the better.