2 September 2026

Andy Burnham will struggle to maintain his popularity

It would be an affront to the physics of contemporary politics if he did

Politics never stopped, of course, even though Westminster did. But now we are plunged back into the roiling soap opera of parliamentary life. Keir Starmer is standing down from the Commons, quite rightly. A half life on the back benches would have been miserable: all anyone would have wanted from him was bitter criticism of his successor.

Here’s a prediction, based on absolutely no inside intel at all. I think that later this year either he or Rachel Reeves may make an intervention: “See? It wasn’t us who got it wrong; this is a much wider crisis of social democracy.” It would be only human.

It may come around the time of the Budget, or with a fresh surge in migrant boat crossings, or a complete breakdown of order in Cleveland, or warnings from the Labour back benches against welfare reforms. But it is an affront to the physics of contemporary politics for Andy Burnham to maintain his current popularity when the hard calls come knocking. We must hope he runs towards tough decisions, having made eloquent and properly political arguments. Thought for the autumn: you can’t be popular without making enemies.

Break for the Borders

I’ve spent the last of the summer in the north – Dumfries and Berwickshire rather than Manchester – hunting that elusive colour that sits somewhere between blue and yellow. The Scottish border country was moist, lush, drippingly temperate – all qualities we fear might be vanishing forever further south. I felt gentle rain on my bald patch. That was lovely. Rolling agricultural country and confident old market towns in biscuit-coloured stone makes this half-forgotten land like a better Cotswolds – less smug, with far fewer people, blessedly unlikely to attract holidaying US vice-presidents.

Cooler heads may prevail

Politically, it inspired this reflection. Climate change puts a premium on coolth, abundant water, clean energy and rich soil. I was talking with a friend who’d holidayed in Cork, where apparently even basic town houses are being bought, sight unseen, by Spanish, Italian and French people who have had enough of the oppressive summer heat. Or try to book a holiday in Sweden next year, and see how hard that’s becoming.

In this ominously fast-changing world, Scotland is blessed with obvious natural advantages. If she leaves the UK, it will not be after a referendum under the conditions of the 2020s, when Scotland struggles with the same authority-sapping problems as England – low productivity, worklessness, a struggling state – but many years later, at a time of prosperity and confidence.

Lives unmoored in an era of plenty

In the museum of a small Borders fishing village, I stared at the photographs of Victorian herring fishers and the women who gutted and packed the fish for export as the fleet worked its way down the coast. It really wasn’t long ago that, to survive, most of us worked ferociously physically hard, in the fields or ships or factories. The work could be literally killing, but it gave purpose and identity. “Who am I?” probably felt a rather less urgent question than “What will I eat?”.

So today’s mental health crisis can be seen as a completely unsurprising consequence of the vast economic upending we have lived through in a century and a half. Take away purpose, take away function, take away necessity, and millions of ordinary, decent folk find themselves entirely adrift.

Irish eyes – and noses and ears

This may be part of the answer to a lesser conundrum: why is it that Irish fiction feels so much richer and stronger than contemporary English or Scottish storytelling? I’ve recently been reading John McGahern, Claire Keegan and Niall Williams, and they are all closer to the rural, physical, sensuous world being left behind – in their case the Irish hinterland – than are contemporary novelists elsewhere, however talented. It’s the difference between knowing the smells of the earth and the rhythms of the year, and merely knowing about them.

The luck of the leftish

Here’s a final summer thought, perhaps too simplistic and bland for many readers. What is it that tilts the individual mind left rather than towards the right? I don’t think it’s ideology: we reach for the ideology that fits us. It may be personal teaching, or community influence, or hero worship. But isn’t the fundamental thing just an appreciation of luck?

To realise how much mere luck shapes a successful and happy life, or destroys another, means that, though we all need hard work, grit and so forth, luck spreads over everything. If we believe that, it’s impossible not to want to help the unlucky; and to try to redistribute what has been so unfairly scattered in the first place.

[Further reading: Burnham’s back, and he’s going to try to be nice]