‘What a fitting venue to be sat in – The People’s History Museum’. So began the introduction to Andy Burnham’s great descent from Mount Sinai to declare his programme for government. It was delivered by Bev Craig, Labour’s candidate to replace him as Manchester mayor. She delivered it in a tone and nasal burr which suggested she was announcing that a rail replacement bus service had been delayed.
His promise of ‘a new era of possibility’ was a lot of style – mingled with some inevitable Burnhamite sentimentalism: ‘hope in every heart and good growth in every postcode.’ It made me long for a gun in every hand and a cyanide capsule in every drawer
However, she was right – it was a fitting venue! Normally anything with ‘The People’s’ before it is guaranteed to be something in which ordinary people have had absolutely no input. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Liberation Army, the People’s Princess. You get the picture. Hilariously though, the People’s History Museum in Manchester is a perfect embodiment of Burnhamism; it has hit the headlines twice in recent years. Once when it U-turned on EU branding and another time when it U-turned on transgenderism. Pretty much the perfect place for Burnham then.
There were some classic moments in Craig’s warm up. She declared of Manchester that ‘It was built by people’. As opposed to what? Cocker spaniels? Walnuts? Aliens? It was a very selective presentation of what ‘Manchesterism’ is and was. Craig claimed that a feature of it was that ‘It doesn’t accept that the market is enough’. That will come as news to the corpses of Cobden and Bright. ‘Hope doesn’t just mean a soundbite’, she added (but soundbites were what we were going to get!)
However, when it came to platitudes Craig was a pale imitation of Burnham himself. ‘Are you ready for this?’ he gurgled before announcing that, ‘I’m sounding like I used to sound when I DJ-ed across this great city’. He made jokes about his T-shirts and his running shorts. Embarrassing wasn’t even the word. It screamed ‘recently divorced uncle who had somehow been invited to his niece’s 21st’. Anyone listening automatically squirmed, it felt like spines were evacuating across the hall.
Burnham joked that he had to get ‘special permission’ to wear his ‘Manchester clothes’, the black T-shirt/blazer combo. Which slightly implied that he has different clothes for different parts of the country. Presumably, he’ll dress up as a surfer if he goes to Cornwall, or one of the Wurzels if he goes to Somerset. What are his ‘London clothes’ going to be? Will he come dressed as a Beefeater, or a pearly king?
When he actually got onto policy, in fairness, he did identify the problem of a hugely unaccountable, massively centralised state. The problem is he then spoke in that state’s language. It was almost like an instruction manual for it: ‘parlez-vous Blob?’ We were treated to classics: ‘Long term not short term’, ‘an inclusive team at the very highest level’, ‘reimagining for the 21st Century’, ‘innovation nation’, ‘laser-like focus’.
Solutions wise, it became a tribute act. Burnham centred on a call for more devolution, a ten-year plan and fiscal responsibility alongside social change. He is presenting this as ‘doing things differently’. This was the ‘circuit breaker Britain needs’, as opposed to just some phrases which sounded worn out by the end of the 2000s. It also ignores the fact that devolution has often been a catastrophe. Maybe he’s never googled the name ‘Peter Murrell’.
Policy wise then, Burnham seems set to be the microwave prime minister, simply reheating failed Blairite policies long after their use-by date. The architects of the Prague Spring famously tried to offer ‘socialism with a human face’: Britain now has ‘Blairism with a northern accent’. He proudly announced that, ‘No. 10 North will be the nerve centre of a rewired Britain.’ One is reminded of the fact that it is during rewiring projects that most heritage buildings burn down.
Though he refused to name any cabinet appointments, rumours suggest that Burnham is planning to bring back James Purnell and David Miliband as part of his attempt to reboot Labour. Once again it suggests there really are no ideas. It’s not a dynamic new cabinet, it’s a series of pub quiz answers from 2007.
Tellingly, Burnham was so ‘confident’ in this programme that he refused to take questions from the press afterwards, having recently run away from his own victory rally in Makerfield to evade journalists. Britain’s very own Comical Ali– ‘stair Campbell’ that is, a figure even less trustworthy than the original Saeed Al-Sahaf – took to X, to tell everyone how this was a good thing actually, as it meant there would be fewer distractions. Somewhere, I am sure, Saddam Hussein is laughing.
For all the folly of this opening salvo, Burnham will probably be blessed by his enemies. Doing anything that annoys a rancorous, sulking Starmer – our very own Aldi Ted Heath – will probably gain him popularity.
Fundamentally though, Burnham’s speech might well have sounded nice, might even have begun the process of identifying some of the underlying problems. But his promise of ‘a new era of possibility’ was a lot of style – mingled with some inevitable Burnhamite sentimentalism: ‘hope in every heart and good growth in every postcode.’ It made me long for a gun in every hand and a cyanide capsule in every drawer.
Burnham claimed this would be the biggest change in our lifetimes; he just didn’t say how, and what he did announce was more of the same. After clapping his own speech, Burnham was frogmarched away from reporters by Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram.
The giddy excitement of Manchesterism seems unlikely to last long: nothing we heard today suggested there was anything behind the T-shirt, the eyelashes or the curtain.
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