James Kirkup

Andy Burnham is not short of advice about cabinet appointments. But here’s a bit more counsel for him. He should keep Pat McFadden as work and pensions secretary.  McFadden is an essential minister. Not just because he has a record of being sensible and level-headed, being able to go on the radio and TV and handle all the bombs and brickbats that are thrown at him. The reason that McFadden should remain in charge of welfare policy is that he has been willing to do the most important thing in current politics: he has told the truth to the Labour party. ‘I don’t believe government fulfils its responsibilities simply by writing a cheque. I think we owe people more than that,’ McFadden has said this week about welfare policy.

Now that the end has come for Keir Starmer, history can get to work, analysing and anatomising his failures. The central question for posterity: how did a politician win a huge majority yet end up powerless less than two years later? A lot of the political obituaries will rightly talk about a lack of politics. Starmer just wasn’t interested enough in party politics or, especially, party politicians. His Labour colleagues were not just strangers but strange to him. The tearooms were foreign territory, so their residents were never inclined to do his bidding. How did a politician win a huge majority yet end up powerless less than two years later? There will also be a widespread view that he lacked ideas.

For his Labour critics, Andy Burnham is just Keir Starmer in a black T-shirt. They mutter that the new MP for Makerfield lacks substance and would be quickly found out as PM. Burnham can enjoy the glow of victory. But the closer he gets to the tough choices of real power, the more the shine will start to fade That critique overlooks at least one major difference between Burnham and Starmer, which is about policy. Starmer’s problems arise in part from his failure to develop a proper policy agenda before taking office. His 2024 manifesto was very deliberately sparse, to avoid giving opponents targets to aim at during the campaign. Despite the hopes of many colleagues, there was no secret plan locked away in Sue Gray’s safe. The result was a government drifting from day one.

Politicians are keen to fix what is seen as a mounting political problem with student loans. An increasing number of graduates are pointing out that the Plan 2 loan scheme in particular imposes some painful and unreasonable marginal burdens on their earnings. After all, paying another nine percentage points of student loan charges on top of your marginal tax rate is a miserable experience. So too is the absurd interest rate charged on those loans, which is based on the RPI measure of inflation that, in almost every other regard, the government has conceded is unrealistic and unviable. So we have a large number of graduates unhappy about their financial situation.

Peter Mandelson may just have achieved the impossible. He has made me feel sorry for Gordon Brown. When I was a lobby correspondent in the 2000s, I spent a great deal of time covering Brown, first as chancellor, then as prime minister. I did not emerge from the experience with a particularly warm impression of the man. He was thin-skinned, prickly, self-righteous and often very, very angry. He is not, as his public image sometimes suggests, a cuddly saint. Many colleagues would take a similar view.

For decades, British politics has lived in the shadow of a major failure of social and economic policy: the imbalance between graduates and those who don’t go to university.  Many politicians have understood the need to do better for the 'other 50%' who don’t go to higher education. But few have delivered real change.  From Boris Johnson’s 'levelling up' to Keir Starmer’s newfound focus on 'higher-level skills,' the goal has remained constant: to provide a better deal for those who don’t go to 'uni'.  Yet despite the speeches and the promises, the divide remains a major fault line of our politics. It explains Brexit (grads were Remain, non-grads Leave) and the crumbling of the Red Wall – Labour is increasingly the party of metropolitan graduates.

Sir Menzies Campbell’s death means the loss of one of the most inconspicuously interesting people I’ve known in politics, not to mention one of the nicest. Ming, who led the Lib Dems from 2006 to 2007, had naturally faded from the limelight in recent years, but there was a time when he was everywhere. He was a regular on Question Time and anywhere else that big subjects – especially foreign affairs – were discussed. The headlines on his death, at the age of 84, will naturally refer to him as 'former Lib Dem leader' but really that role was only a small part of his story, and one of the least interesting. Not that it was always easy to get to that wider story.

Nigel Farage’s latest immigration plan contains a proposal that deserves to be taken seriously. Reform UK’s 'Operation Restoring Justice' promises mass deportations, detention camps, and the withdrawal from international treaties. Those elements will raise both legal and moral challenges. But another part of the package is something that deserves attention and credit: a scheme to pay £2,500 to people who agree to leave Britain voluntarily. To some, the idea will look like bribery. Why should taxpayers reward people who have broken the rules? That is the instinctive reaction of many voters and the line taken by some politicians. Yet in policy terms, the idea is a good one. Removing people against their will is enormously expensive and politically fraught.

When William Beveridge designed the welfare state in the 1940s, the state pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Life expectancy for a man was around 66, and around 71 for a woman. The pension was not designed to fund decades of leisure: it was a modest provision for the last couple of years of life, one that not everyone would receive. Today, life expectancy for a man aged 66 (the current state pension age) is around 85, and a woman aged 66 can expect to live until she is 88. The average person now spends close to a fifth of their life in retirement. What was once a short post-script has become a major chapter – and an increasingly expensive one.  This is the backdrop for the latest statutory review of the state pension age (SPA), led this year by Dr Suzy Morrissey.

Farming is hard, and sheep farming especially so. Sheep are endearing but awkward creatures, generally looking for the most inconvenient way to die. The weather is usually miserable. Lambing is an annual torment. The government is always dreaming up new ways to make things harder. In a real sense, I’m writing this because sheep farming is so hard. That’s what persuaded me to leave the bleak, beautiful hills of Northumberland and make my living from writing and talking in bland, warm rooms in London. But my heart is still there, in the hills. My family too, and their sheep. So I continue to take an interest in the life of rural Northumberland, including in various attempts by well-meaning campaigners to reimagine the place as a stage for their environmental dreams.