Destroy their predictions of calm, faultless politics. Frustrate their dreams of clear storytelling. Be forgiven (as you will be) for colleagues cast aside on the treacherous, slippery road of the past two years. But do not, for God’s sake, now take away their hope.
For today – and perhaps for weeks ahead – the Labour family is high on hope. It’s drunk the Kool-Aid and sniffed the teen spirit, and is now intoxicated by the possibility of strong, progressive rule. It has been so long since Labour MPs experienced even a flicker of hope, they’ve forgotten what it feels like. Now Andy Burnham has given it back to them, and it is not surprising that some are mildly off their heads.
But Keir Starmer, please, understand and respect this. Do not take that hope from them by putting clever obstacles in Burnham’s way, letting your people brief against him, and putting Britain through a multi-sided leadership contest this summer. Read the runes, understand the momentum, arrange an orderly transition, and Starmer will be remembered as a decent man faced with impossible circumstances and miserably abused; fight now, and he will lose, and won’t be forgiven. I don’t say this because I am deluded or drunk on hope myself. I can see very hard choices and unpopular decisions ahead. But for Labour, this is genuinely an existential moment.
Before Makerfield, it seemed that Britain was heading towards a bitterly racialised politics of a kind we’ve never seen before – I’m thinking less, as it happens, of Nigel Farage, and more about Restore and some genuine neo-Nazis who back it. Nothing was working. Outsiders were to blame. Let’s find something to smash.
Makerfield was a last chance. Now that Burnham has won so convincingly, it may be hard to remember what a brave, even reckless call fighting this by-election so recently seemed. But fortune favours the brave. This is a moment big enough to change the national mood. Everyone, Prime Minister included, must go with it.
The other person with a really hard choice this weekend is Wes Streeting, who is convinced he has the numbers for a challenge of his own and who is developing a formidable policy platform. His recent speech on growth – heavily influenced by the left’s best thinker on how to grow companies, Will Hutton – was the most coherent economic assessment from any senior Labour figure for a long time.
But, after this result, does Wes really think he can beat Andy? It’s that momentum thing again. The pair are not so far apart as perhaps they seem. Burnham’s “business-friendly aspirational socialism” as it evolves, is only a finger-touch away from Streeting’s “progressive capitalism”. Both believe in more public control. But both understand that growth, and the tax revenue it brings, comes from the specific skill-set, ambition, and risk-taking of business creators, not from professional politicians.
Both, I think, know that the bond markets could be convinced by a stable-looking government with a clear plan for growth, strong enough to fend off demands for more spending on all sides.
Curiously, I think the biggest problem between them may be geographical. Burnham really means it when he says he wants to divert more power and wealth north – and quite right, too. That means London homeowners and many London big earners, one way or another, paying more tax. It will produce terrible headlines and electoral trouble for London Labour MPs. But it needs to be done. Change must mean change.
As I’ve argued many times before, the best outcome for Labour would be an agreement between Burnham and Streeting, so that they become neighbours in Downing Street. Harriet Harman has suggested a private knocking-heads meeting between them, Keir Starmer and, chairing it, the deputy leader Lucy Powell.
But does this not rob us of a proper contest, a battle of ideas, and the testing of individual mettle? It does. But let’s think about that. The airy, broadsheet assumption of a contest of propositions between philosopher-politicians in a calm cloudscape high above the fray, is – literally – for the birds.
What we would get instead is a sweaty auction of promises in front of rival party interest groups, observed and invigilated by a right-wing media attack-system drooling at the chance to destroy every candidate’s credibility. Caught between the desire to win over a few more backbench votes, or a trade union leader’s approval; and this deal-making peppered with real-time hostile analysis, there would be no Labour winners.
The Tories in the 1970s had their battle of ideas largely in private and by exchanging pamphlets, over many years; comparisons between the present and Margaret Thatcher are well out of date.
However, comparisons between Labour’s potential change of leadership with the Tories under Boris Johnson and Lizz Truss will crop up in every pub and coffee bar from Aberdeen to Makerfield to Islington. Are they right? No. Even in democracies, coronations are sometimes necessary. If you have momentum, cling on to it for dear life.
Tory and Reform commentators can see, often more clearly than left-wing ones, what may be ahead. Some, if you’ll forgive the phrase, are doing their nuts in about the likelihood of losing an early election.
Burnham needs to concentrate on the incredibly delicate task of forging a cabinet that crosses party divisions and isn’t simply about giving his mates plum jobs. He needs to focus on a few top policy priorities where he can bring change quickly – I’ve suggested street crime, defence and voting reform. He needs, then, to run government completely differently, at warp speed, and keep open the option for a further national election.
I know, I know: there are so many dangers ahead, it is exhausting just to list them. They include people determined to push their own careers ahead of party unity; back benches who haven’t yet understood the mood of the electorate; and, let’s be honest, Andy Burnham in some way falling short. How many fingers do you have to count these obstacles? Mostly in politics, if something can go wrong, it will.
But this is an extraordinarily rare chance for a party in power, very unpopular nationally, to change its story. It would not have come about without people like Streeting and John Healey being prepared to do the difficult and unpopular thing. It wouldn’t have come about without Josh Simons standing down. It wouldn’t have come about without Burnham having the spherical equipment to take his chance. It wouldn’t have come about without the voters of Makerfield.
So Labour better not blow it. And that goes for the prime minister too.
[Further reading: Why Keir Starmer deserves your sympathy]
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Subscribe here to commentWell done, Andrew. That’s exactly what I was thinking. But it could all go wrong just as easily as go well.