Labour are in Liverpool and, as their conference reached its apogee, I was put in mind of John Lennon. What could an entitled pseud, who preached tolerance and kindness while being intensely venal and malicious in his personal life, possibly remind you of in today’s Labour party, I hear you ask? Well, specifically what came to mind was Lennon’s hatred for particular, mawkish and sentimental parts of the Beatles’ oeuvre which he called ‘Paul’s Granny S***’. Think Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer or When I’m Sixty-Four.
Andy Burnham specialises in mawkishness, mass-produced sentimentality and ‘be kindism’. I actually don’t think Burnham the man – whoever that really is amid his myriad costume changes over the last few decades – is particularly sentimental, but he’s clever enough to pretend he is, whereas his predecessor wasn’t.
He’s clever, because he knows the British like this, just as they like McCartney’s rinky-tinky evocations of suburbia much more than they ever indulged Lennon’s self-centred, narcotic warbling. If anything, they love Paul’s Granny S*** more than they did when it first came out. The contemporary British public would most likely accept a boot crushing their face in perpetuity, provided there were stickers of Captain Tom and Paddington attached to its sole. If you look at the substance of what Labour have actually announced this week, from seizing people’s homes if they aren’t using them properly (!) to pushing through massively unpopular plans on migrant resettlement – that isn’t far off the mark. We now live in the era of Andy’s Granny S***.
The main rabbit out of the hat in Burnham’s speech was specifically not granny-friendly at all
Burnham’s speech was the classic mix. ‘My grandad was a lorry driver’ replaced ‘my father was a toolmaker’ but the Labour establishment’s addiction to putting on ‘working class-face’ at every opportunity remains unabated, even as their voting bloc becomes ever more middle-class and progressive. There was also plenty of the usual sickly-sweet faux optimism which anybody who has driven down a high street in a normal British town will know rings hollow. Burnham said he was going to ‘draw a line on a decade of division’. Quite how his party’s commitment to divisive policies on the countryside, taxation, migration and the rest was going to achieve this we weren’t told. All you sceptical internet users were in for a ticking off too; Andy told us to stop ‘doom-scrolling on posts running Britain down’.
Well, you’d better stop reading now, folks: this article does not comply with the ‘Andy’s Granny S***’ vision of Britain. Partly because it’s such obviously patronising tweeslop and partly because it’s even more obviously not true.
It wasn’t all schmalz; there were arcane tidbits for the elect too. Nobody in this country who has even rudimentary personal hygiene will determine their vote at the next election based on a promise of electoral reform. And yet Burnham threw it out as a headline announcement for the nerds and anoraks, precisely because it has progressive vibes, it involves absolutely no concrete action in the immediate future and, critically, it’s free. The BBC duly took the bait and implied it was a seismic change in Labour policy. I’d bet them £180.00 annually (paid as £15 per month via Direct Debit after an initial higher payment period) that Labour try to ignore or gerrymander the subject if, God forbid, they end up in power next time around.
There was, however, one biggie from Burnham’s speech. Perhaps the funniest thing about Andy’s Granny S*** however, is that it doesn’t even appeal to grannies. Indeed, the main rabbit out of the hat in his speech was specifically not granny-friendly at all. It was less Paul McCartney’s Wings and more Slipknot. Burnham’s announcement of the scrapping of the triple lock would, he claimed, raise money to ‘build up our national care service’. Plugging the massive gap in public finances seems a more likely destination for the money.
This may be a necessary start to dealing with the horror of the welfare bill. But it’s only a start, the equivalent of stopping dousing a burning house with paraffin: the fire is still very much burning and will need even more rigorous measures to put it out. Therein lies the challenge for Burnham. Pensioners tend not to vote for his party and so can be confronted without losing the happy-go-lucky, cheeky-chappy veneer. Whether he’s prepared to do the same to the welfare queens, migrant communities and the worried well is a whole other question. For the moment though, his party is happy and Andy’s Granny S*** reigns supreme.
Comments