Kemi Badenoch, headlines my newspaper, ‘prepares Tories for early general election’ with her big reshuffle this week. I do not myself think an early election is the probability. It would be hugely risky. Labour would certainly lose scores of seats to Reform; and the requirement for Andy Burnham to produce an actual manifesto rather than – as at present – a distracting sprinkle of happy thoughts would make his government an easy target for a dangerous Conservative ‘They’re coming for your money’ campaign.
Reform are still strong. Better, perhaps, to wait until (as I expect) Nigel Farage loses his mojo, the Greens fail to recover theirs, and Britain begins a slow return to something like the two-party system that first-past-the-post tends to encourage. Badenoch’s steady advance lends weight to that view, even if the Conservative party still trails its leader in the polls.
Our new Prime Minister has come a long way by taking skilful punts on risky opportunities
But that could be wrong. There’s one powerful argument for going to the country immediately after a triumphalist Labour conference this autumn. It is this: that it’s all downhill from there. The question is, does Burnham know it?
I cannot answer that with any certainty. There’s no doubt he continues to display an air of sunny confidence, but how deep-rooted is the optimism? Does he know we’re economically adrift? That increasing GDP ‘in every postcode’ is an almost impossible ask? That the cost of funding the removal of the two-child benefit cap must rise inexorably? Does he realise that painful tax rises will be needed if, as he has hinted, household energy costs are to be kept down, social care for the elderly is to be made free at the point of use for everyone, special educational needs are to remain funded at the present (accelerating) level, the NHS’s sub-18-week waiting target is to be achieved, defence spending is to be jacked up, the £39 billion for Labour’s social, affordable and council house provision is to be found, and overseas aid is to be increased from the present 0.3 per cent of national income to 0.7 per cent?
Has he anticipated the battles he will have with the parliamentary Labour party over the reforms to disability benefits that two expected reviews, those of Sir Stephen Timms and Alan Milburn, will provoke? Does he understand that his massive agenda for devolving power to regional mayors can only create a barrage of funding demands from newly empowered regional warlords?
I could go on, but you get the drift. The temptation to cut and run soon, in hopes of winning at least another five years in Downing Street to tackle these monsters, rather than struggle into next year, a year when we shall start talking about ‘the coming general election’, must be strong.
I have outlined the dilemma. What will he choose? The answer, I believe, must lie in something more than the weighing of risk against advantage. It must finally depend not on a totting up process, but on something more ephemeral but no less important: Andy Burnham’s temperament. Does he suffer from imposter syndrome? Or is he a truly, deeply confident man?
If the Prime Minister is anything like as confident as the image he is at present projecting, then – whether or not you and I believe he has any right to be so confident – he will not call an early election. Perhaps his socialist ideology gives him a certitude we lack that the state really is the answer to most of Britain’s chronic problems. Perhaps he imagines a more dirigiste government really can revitalise the economy. In which case, onward, Andy! Stick to your guns! Things can only get better! They may laugh now, but in the end the world will see that you were right!
There is, however, a different possibility. He has been lucky in his life, and perhaps he knows it. Yes, he has worked hard but, starting from a working-class background, the Cambridge opportunity was a definitive stroke of good fortune; in politics a cheery positivity and smashing eyelashes speeded his rise. His subsequent capture of the Manchester mayoralty proved a heaven-sent chance to sit out nine years of grinding opposition, duck the horrors of Corbynism and raise his profile. He did not, and knows he did not, create Manchester’s renaissance – others did that – but he rode the wave and became a poster boy for the Northern Power-house. And Andy Burnham did not precipitate Sir Keir Starmer’s fall: Starmer’s fall precipitated Andy Burnham. He grabbed his chance with skill and élan, but it was a gamble – and he gambled.
An inner-Andy, a buried and perhaps unconscious Andy, might conclude that his godmother has been Lady Luck, while his own talents, though not inconsiderable, are essentially performative. So, in the words of BB King: ‘Better not look down/ If you wanna keep on flying/ Put the hammer down/ Keep it full speed ahead…’ This Andy is acutely if dimly aware of a scary fragility in his position. I will not quite call it imposter syndrome (though, speaking of his arrival at Cambridge, he did) but it does not preclude a recognition that if he were a motor car, his best rating would not be for the horsepower under the bonnet but for the capacity to travel a long way on just a sniff of petrol.
That Andy would seize the chance to renew and secure his tenure quickly, before the vultures begin to circle. I would recognise that Andy at once, being myself someone who has advanced as much by projecting confidence as by any unusual talent.
‘Wizard of Oz’ would be too harsh. But a more cautious warning on the Burnham tin would be ‘Hi taste – Lo calories’. Our new Prime Minister has come a long way by taking skilful punts on risky opportunities. Though it may not be the likelihood, Mrs Badenoch is wise not to rule out his repeating the trick.
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