Andy Burnham positions himself as the reformed Blairite – but will that work in Makerfield?
TAndy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester and Makerfield by-election candidate, has just revealed the qualities that many consider make him Labor leader and future prime minister.
His response to Sir Tony Blair’s brutal criticism of the Labor Party – in the form of a 5,600-word essay – perfectly encapsulates a politician who is simultaneously the heir of Blairism and its greatest critic.
He celebrated the achievements of the Blair government but attacked its basic economic policy of continuing the legacy of Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberalism.
You could read the answer as Blairism with a healthy dose of post-devolution localism – moving power from Westminster to the regions, something Blair initiated.
But there is an irreconcilable disagreement: Sir Tony wants to leave things to the whims of the market.
Mr Burnham, Blair’s former Treasury Undersecretary, has questioned bond markets before. His response to the former Prime Minister is as follows: TimesIn his book, he tells a story about the loss of private investment due to a major regeneration scheme in Stockport when he was mayor of Manchester.
He writes: “My team faced me with the dilemma: would we abandon the plan, or would we be prepared to risk putting in patient public capital? In other words, would we let the market determine the future of Stockport, or would we set the ambition ourselves?
He said he had read Blair’s article three times and agreed with several elements of it, including the call for a renewed focus on domestic issues and the “vital need for higher economic growth as an enabler of greater social justice”.
But he adds: “As I read on, I kept waiting for the main doorstep speech at Makerfield to emerge. And it never did. The decline in living standards for millions of people and the fact that life has become harder in most years since the financial crisis of 2008 is, in my opinion, a glaring omission in his analysis.”
This is not surprising, given that Mr Burnham is trying to win over a community at Makerfield left behind by 40 years of neoliberalism and London-centric politics. He needs to acknowledge the problems that led to Brexit and the growing support for Nigel Farage and Reform, which Sir Tony finds difficult to understand.
But the bigger picture is that while Mr Burnham’s positioning may seem characteristically contradictory, it is in line with the state of politics and the state of modern Labor since the financial crisis of 2008, shortly after Blair left Downing Street.
After all, one of the most puzzling aspects of Labor since its defeat in 2010 is its curious and somewhat painful relationship with Sir Tony, its most successful leader and prime minister yet.
Despite winning three elections, rewriting the political narrative in Britain and almost consigning the Conservative Party to history as the natural party of government, Labor MPs struggle to celebrate his achievements or find common cause with him – even if they genuinely agree with his ever-thoughtful analysis.
In fact, being identified as the Blairite candidate in any Labor leadership contest is often the kiss of death. Just ask David Miliband, who lost out to his brother Ed in 2010, Liz Kendall, who came last in 2015, and Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary whom Sir Tony backed last year.
So it’s no surprise that Wes Streeting, who tagged the Blairite leadership candidate, was willing to completely disavow Tony Blair in his response to the article.
Mr Streeting went so far as to attack the Iraq War, perhaps noting that his chief rival and current champion of the left, Mr Burnham, had voted to enter that war, which he later described as his “worst experience” in parliament.
By his own admission, the response should have been more nuanced, according to Mr Burnham, a former Blair minister. He cannot completely discredit a project in which he played an important role. After all, Burnham was the one who introduced the private sector to the NHS as health secretary; This is a policy now adopted by Blair.
But to win and become Labor leader, Blair needs a winning formula but also needs to prove to a skeptical Labor Party that his Blair days are behind him.
His attempt to do so resulted in an intelligent and considered response to the man who he knew in his heart was still right about so many things.
