Two weeks into his new job, how’s Andy Burnham doing? In my opinion, quite well. Of course, we have to compare him with his predecessors, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. Frankly, anyone could do better. But there is a marked difference.
When Starmer and Reeves arrived in Downing Street, they had neither a clue what they were there for, nor any sense of optimism. With no plan whatsoever, all they could do was bang on about how miserable everything was. And with no ideas, they came up with incoherent policies. The result? Inflation doubled, growth halved, business investment shrank, and everyone felt miserable. It was no surprise their backbenchers got rid of them so quickly. Even their pitiful attempts at gaslighting (Reeves: “I have brought down inflation”, when it had gone from 2.0% to 2.8%) failed to provide a sense of any legacy aside from utter failure.
But Burnham seems to have arrived with a sense of direction. His policies are so far, in the main, small, and we in the opposition are not happy that they appear unfunded. But they come with a sense of hope and with an apparent plan.
Burnham’s policy on giving children a chance with technical education – “hard hats, not graduation caps” – is a pragmatic approach to skilling up kids for local needs. Of course, this is not new, and anyone of a generation here in Wyre Forest will remember that this was done with the carpet industry in Kidderminster’s carpet heyday. More recently, I helped introduce an open-business week where school children could visit local businesses, before they started on GCSE course, to understand what it was they were working towards, and what they might want to do in life. Local schools engage with local businesses on an ad-hoc basis.
Its early days yet. The new prime minister has to bring along his 400+ colleagues and backbenchers. That’s no easy feat, especially as he has spent the last 9 years as a politician elected to a single post. This is very different from a prime minister, who is selected, and maintained, on the confidence of his or her parliamentary colleagues.
Of course, I would far prefer a Conservative government. But equally so, I don’t want to Burnham to fail at the expense of our economic and wider security.
In 5 weeks’ time, we will be back in Parliament. Then the proper scrutiny begins.
