Here be monsters
Andy Burnham appears to understand that optimism is a welcome tonic in British politics. His speech in Manchester was pitched deliberately against fatalism: a ten-year mission, a rewired state, power pushed out of Whitehall and “good” growth brought to every part of the country (as if we have been suffering from a surfeit of growth of any kind). There was ambition.
Kemi Badenoch has increasingly adopted a similar register. Tough decisions, yes, but in pursuit of a brighter future. Both appear to recognise that voters do not merely want an inventory of national failure. They want to hear that improvement is possible and that political leaders have some appetite for attempting it.
The diagnosis is not new. Plenty have observed that the winning political philosophy right now is “deliveryism”. Get it done and you will be thanked for it. It will be interesting to see how Reform adapts when Farage regains his footing, having stumbled in his response to the ongoing donations scandal. None-of-the-above politics polls inversely to the public’s perception that things are actually happening.
But the machinery of the state and the weakness of political execution have treacled the wheels of successive attempts by recent prime ministers to turn ambition into action. Talk big, try small, fail, repeat.
Houdini?
Burnham’s speech contained some interesting themes, particularly around devolution, infrastructure, housebuilding and technical education. The substance is yet to come, so we are left to wallow in the unseriousness of Number 10 North.
Any optimism that such a move may prise the dead hand of the Treasury off the economy is tempered by the prevailing wind within the Parliamentary Labour Party: who can we tax more to pay benefits to others? That will remain an obstacle until Burnham can face down his peers and materially reduce government spending.
His reluctance to impose the whip looks less like strategic restraint than a decision not to fight and risk losing. A party needs discipline or it moves as a frightened herd. Burnham is taking mass selfies with the same MPs who will turn skittish as soon as the weather changes, without yet demonstrating that he can command them when it does.
Burnham has retracted his comments about the bond markets, but his closeness to figures such as Miliband suggests they will aggressively seek a new way to borrow without breaking the UK’s fiscal-rule straitjacket.
Borrowing to build productive assets is not the same as borrowing indefinitely to meet ordinary spending. Done well, investment in housing, transport, energy and regional infrastructure could expand the economy and improve the public finances over time. One of the greatest failings of the Cameron-era administration was not continuing to invest in capital programmes which might by now have left the country visibly transformed.
The question is what projects will qualify and what test they must pass. Markets will want measurable returns to the national economy; the public will want improvements they can see and use. A version of levelling up which induces regional local-government pension fund clusters to invest in specific infrastructure might offer a middle way. Less HS2 and more Hereford bypass.
But theory aside, the greatest test of Burnham’s economic argument will be whether the British state has the planning, procurement and delivery capacity needed to convert that investment into productive assets.
Vibe, checked
Burnham’s rise coincided with the era of the vibe politician. Much like Sir Sadiq Khan, people eventually ask what you have actually achieved.
The press treats London as national news and allocates it even a modicum of scrutiny. In the north, Burnham has been able to serve as a central casting king over the water for Labour MPs and members of varying party factions without having to define himself.
Bus franchising was a genuine achievement: real, visible, politically difficult and capable of changing daily life for Mancunians. That makes his decision to give up the tactical power through which he delivered it in pursuit of strategic influence at the centre all the more ironic. Mayoral office may allow a politician to build a formidable identity around a limited number of conspicuous interventions. But a prime minister cannot ensure the buses run on time.
Burnham is about to inherit scrutiny on an entirely different scale. This bizarre interregnum, in which he can prepare a platform for government unopposed, may deliver a more thought-through agenda, but not a tested one.
He therefore needs to beware the twin monsters of insubstance and hubris.
The first is the risk that he is unprepared for tough trade-offs: on benefit spending, on immigration and, more seriously, if he pursues devolution, on how central government should act as lender of last resort for local political experiments.
The second is the belief that personal authority and early wins can permanently overcome the accumulated cynicism of voters and markets alike.
The WASPI warning
His recent hokey-cokey over WASPI should serve as a warning.
My prediction is that the incoming administration will find a way through the fiscal rules and invest in infrastructure. In a dream world, it will genuinely set a path towards rebalancing the economy in favour of the north without reliance on subsidy and fiscal transfers.
The danger is that early success breeds overconfidence. A casual commitment made in sympathetic surroundings, then doubled down on by a Number 10 which believes it has cracked the formula, could trigger a crisis of confidence in the Government’s ability to maintain the distinction between productive investment and ordinary spending. The absence of a clear line on WASPI tests whether Burnham has the steel and vision to prevent every politically attractive cause from demanding its own exemption.
Burnham’s words will soon move markets. Every promise will be priced, every ambiguity tested and every inconsistency exploited. Beware that steering too wide of the whirlpool does not deliver you to the jaws of defeat.
