If you’ve ever watched a politician promise you a three-course meal only to hand you a single stale budget-brand biscuit, you will recognise that exact sinking feeling I get whenever Andy Burnham opens his mouth.
Andy Burnham: not sensible
For years now, he’s been held up as Labour’s great sensible left hope – the man who stood up for the north, who’d take on the Westminster machine, who might just drag the party back to its working-class roots without scaring off anyone who owns more than one house.
It’s a great story. It’s also about as believable as a government minister telling you that food banks are actually a nice treat for people who like trying new things.
And when you look at Burnham’s record, and the dead end the national Labour Party has walked into, two uncomfortable truths stare right back.
First, we should expect almost nothing from him, and the only shift that could save the party is one the establishment would rather eat a copy of The Manifesto for Public Ownership than actually allow.
Let’s start with the man himself. Burnham was a loyal sidekick to a regime that privatised everything that wasn’t nailed down, invaded a country on a hunch, and treated the super-rich like favourite nephews while telling the rest of us to tighten our belts.
As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he has delivered top-tier rhetoric. He raged against Tory neglect, called for proper devolution, and even once wore a high-vis jacket, which apparently counts as solidarity in some political circles.
But actions, as they say, speak louder than carefully rehearsed soundbites delivered in a train station.
Words. Words are all he has.
Burnham has spoken out against austerity — these are words. Yet Burnham has presided over vicious cuts to local libraries, youth clubs and care services — these are actions that he justifies as if it is the only ‘realistic option’, rather than doing what any self-respecting mayor would do and tell Westminster where to shove it’s worthless pity crumbs.
When bus workers went on strike for pay that doesn’t force them to choose between heating and eating, he spent more time warning about ‘disruption to commuters’ and urging ‘affordable, sustainable’ deals than standing with them – as if getting people to their underpaid jobs on time is the only thing that matters.
On social care, housing, the cost of living? Lots of “I feel your pain” faces, but zero policies that would make a single millionaire wince.
This isn’t a personal dig – I’m sure he’s very nice to his neighbours, doesn’t have a bonfire when next door have got their smalls drying on the washing line, and he probably remembers to take his recycling out. It’s just that Burnham’s leftism only ever stretches as far as the establishment will let it.
And that brings us to the bigger mess. The Labour Party itself.
For decades it’s drifted right, ditching redistribution, public ownership and solidarity to chase the votes of people who’ll never vote for them anyway, and the approval of CEOs who think a living wage is what they pay their gardener.
Drifters
Under Keir Starmer, that drift has become a panicked sprint down the wrong path. They’ve disowned pledges to nationalise energy, water and rail – apparently it’s a bit too radical to want our own utilities to work for us instead of shareholders in Bermuda.
They’ve backed away from taxing the rich, gone harder on refugees and benefits than some Tories, and spent more time purging socialists from the party than they’ve spent talking about how to fix the NHS.
They will tell you this is “electability”. But this is a myth built on fear and focus groups run by people who’ve never had to decide between filling the fridge or filling the car.
The last time Labour won big in 1997, they were helped along by a booming economy and a Tory government that had spent years tripping over its own feet. Since then, the world has shifted.
When Jeremy Corbyn stood on a left platform in 2017, Labour gained more votes than any opposition since 1945 – more than enough to win if the system wasn’t rigged against them.
Labour won’t win by being Tory-lite with slightly better manners and it certainly It won’t win by offering minor tweaks to a system that’s rigged against most of us.
The only way back is a proper, unapologetic lurch to the left. Bring key industries home, tax wealth not work, scrap the anti-union laws, build social housing faster than landlords can buy it up, and do the Green New Deal properly – the kind that creates jobs and cuts bills, not just gives tax breaks to big oil corporations.
But here’s the catch.
Spoiler alert: Burnham won’t save you
The establishment will never let that happen. The right-wing press would launch a smear campaign so ferocious even the Daily Mail’s headline writers would get cramps.
Big business would threaten to run away to Luxembourg — ignoring the fact most of them never actually do — they just like shouting about it, and Labour’s multi-millionaire donors who bankroll the party would take their chequebooks elsewhere faster than you can scream “corporate tax avoidance”.
We’ve seen it all before. Any leader who tries to put people before profit gets crushed, smeared and frozen out – and Burnham knows this better than anyone. He knows the rules of the game, and he’s chosen to play it safe rather than rewrite the rulebook.
That doesn’t mean we give up, of course. It means we have to stop waiting for politicians to save us. It means we build our own power – in unions, community groups, and even in grassroots football clubs like the Canary-sponsored Great Western FC, where they don’t have to worry about what the shareholders think before they pass the ball.
But right now, there’s no sign Labour is ready to change. No sign Burnham is ready to upset the people who will pay for his Number 10 soirée’s. And until there is, my expectations will stay firmly on the floor – right next to my winter fuel bill and the last time I could get a GP appointment without having to feel like a Squid Game contestant.
Hope is lovely, but I’m done falling for the same old tricks, and I’m most definitely done holding my breath for politicians who’d rather look good than do good.
Featured image via the Canary
