The Great North summit sounds like it should have been a peace conference attended by Peter the Great. Instead, it is actually a talking shop attended by Andy Burnham. Its logo is, appropriately, an arrow in the act of a U-turn.
It was there that Burnham had come today to fire the starting pistol on his campaign to march on London. It happened on the same day that it was announced that Josh Simons had officially resigned the seat of Makerfield, thus paving the way for Burnham’s return. This meant that Burnham spent much of his speech shoehorning references into his speech about places in his would-be constituency while also trying to put forward a national plan for his premiership.
Much of Burnham’s appeal seems to lie in a) the fact that he has big doey eyes – like a cartoon drawn by a Japanese pervert and b) that he is not Sir Keir Starmer. That this is considered enough to have a serious go at running the country says a lot about the state we are in. And make no mistake, that is Burnham’s aim. He’s not standing because he cares about Makerfield or because he misses the fruit cake(s) in the House of Commons tearoom.
You could tell that said eyes were on a bigger prize due to his forced chummy demeanour in his Great North speech. There is the air of the wannabe cool uncle about Burnham, the ‘midlife crisis’ bomber jacket beloved by centrist dads everywhere, a lame joke about his running shorts giving just the right scintilla of grossness too.
There is the air of the wannabe cool uncle about Burnham
Much of the speech was the sort of stuff we’re used to hearing. There are only so many times a Labour politician can say ‘the country needs to change’ while committing to a complete maintenance of the status quo on managerialism, immigration and the economy. These platitudes aside, there were some differences to Starmer: ‘49 years of neoliberalism have failed the north of England,’ claimed Burnham, who served as a junior minister in perhaps the most neo-liberal government in history, that of The Blair.
But still this was very much a speech which identified London as the problem – not something you’re likely to hear from Keir Starmer, who believes that the M25 represents the known limits of civilisation. Burnham is clearly wanting to make out he is in some sort of latter-day version of the Jarrow Crusade: the performative northernness will continue until morale improves.
Yet there was still much of the political insider about Burnham’s presentation. He promised ‘a by-election like no other’, which to the politics nerds in SW1 sounds positively erotic but to most people is like promising a root canal treatment or an earwax syringing like no other. Clearly mindful that most people loathe politicians, he made some nods to the discontent he will inevitably find on the doorstep: ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘should you have faith in politics if it cannot fix something as simple as a pothole?’ Which is a good point but one it’s brave to make when you’ve been the supposed pothole fixer-in-chief for almost the entire previous decade.
Apparently Burnham’s solution will be ‘maximum devolution’. Or put another way, having seen that the state is massively bloated in the capital, he thinks it should be bloated at a regional level too. For all that his faux earnestness rings hollow, Burnham did show that he is a better politician than Sir Keir. Not that this is difficult (there are woodlice with sounder instincts for politics than Starmer), but it is significant.
There was much talk of ‘getting our country back’ – a not-so-subtle attempt to win over would-be Reform voters. Likewise, Burnham’s insistence that he now had no intention of rejoining the EU, having expressed this wish at the Labour party conference less than a year ago – before there was a by-election in Leave heartlands to be won. Outdoing Starmer in the field of opportunistic U-turning is one way to provide continuity, I suppose.
If this speech was the start of Burnham’s long march to Downing Street, then, as the Tories did before them, Labour has essentially bequeathed us a summer of nonsense. A four-month version of the Russian roulette scene from The Deer Hunter, re-enacted by some of the least impressive politicians the country has ever produced. The doe-eyed Bambi’s Mother locked in a death match with Kermit the Frog. A Mexican stand-off in a Petri dish. Lucky us!
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