Written by Ty Watson
“Break the mould.” “An outsider from the Westminster club.” “Taking back control.”
Hear only these lines and you would be forgiven for thinking a very different party leader was speaking. Were it not, that is, for the overtones of hope rather than hate.
These words, taken from the Labour party conference in Liverpool at the end of September, are instances of the populist-tinged rhetoric that has secured Andy Burnham’s high approval ratings over the past couple of months. In the wake of the conference, Labour gained a five-point lead over Reform UK according to YouGov.
To be clear, this is a good thing. Anyone more central than far-right should agree, given how long and how far Reform led the polls. But their slump is largely a consequence of their own recklessness, rather than just an upshot of Burnham’s charisma. In August, Nigel Farage, who denies wrongdoing over a £5m gift under investigation by the standards watchdog, resigned his seat and fought a by-election in which his main rival was Count Binface. In September, Reform’s leader in Wales, Dan Thomas, quit after being arrested on suspicion of assault. He says he has done nothing wrong and has not been charged. According to YouGov, even before that, 71% of Britons saw Reform as sleazy.
The other side has also put in the work. If it might have been untrendy to be a Labour supporter on campus, one might expect attitudes to shift as the Greens fracture internally and haemorrhage their more centrist voters (presumably back to Labour) over their recent “Zionism is racism” policy. The motion passed 1,022 votes to 813 at a conference in Brighton, where four out of the five Green MPs opposed it. The European Green Party “unequivocally” distanced itself, and Phil Davies, the Greens’ deputy leader in Wales, resigned. Zack Polanski skipped the vote to campaign in Holborn and St Pancras, where he lost to Labour by more than 3,000 votes.
It is a shambles. YouGov’s data shows that for the first time in nearly a year, 18–24-year-olds would rather vote for Labour than the Greens. Labour’s 27% may be further consolidated still.
With voters split within and between Reform and the Greens, Burnham must speak to both sides. Many of his more dubious positions should be interpreted as overtures to the right for this purpose. Over the summer he hinted at new North Sea drilling, and he has not ruled out approving the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields. In September, when the Oxfordshire village of Piddington voted, symbolically, to leave the UK over plans to house asylum seekers nearby, Burnham sympathised: “The only thing to do is to get the numbers down, the number of crossings down”.
Neither stance is particularly appealing to young leftwing voters, but arguably they are necessary to garner support from all corners of a divided electorate. The bind of populism is thus illustrated: before taking any sort of stand, the prime minister must first convince an ideologically split population that he is on their side, compromise on all fronts (or at least appear to), and issue non-committal statements. That he can do this at all shows an astuteness his predecessor sorely lacked.
Burnham has soundbites for the left too. At the Prime Minister’s Questions in September, he told Kemi Badenoch that national security “can’t come at the expense of social security”. Even so, the line shows how much gentler Burnham’s spin on populism is than Farage’s. He focuses more on presenting himself as one of the working class (down to ‘Number 10 North’) than pitting one group against another. Farage tries the same trick, but when the (albeit Cambridge-educated) grandson of a Tate & Lyle lorry driver tells that story, there is real truth in it.
So much for play-acting; if Burnham is manipulating voters, it is through his sentimentality. His longing for the postwar settlement and promised “re-industrialisation of our regions” plays on voters’ nostalgia and ignores what the country is good at (services contribute around eight times as much as manufacturing to GDP). Still, sentimentality is a far cry from Farage’s politics of grievance. The nearest Burnham comes to naming an enemy is “vested interests”, the beneficiaries of privatisation and deregulation. But even this antagonism is soft: in July he signalled he would not raise taxes on wealth straight away, and he has promised to stick to Labour’s fiscal rules.
Depressing as it is that Burnham borrows populist tactics, it is also necessary for the country to feel whole again. Drawing people together through what they have in common, even with big slogans and empty words, is more constructive than pulling them apart.
Behind the rhetoric in Liverpool there was substance too: a national commission on electoral reform, a plan to change the triple lock from 2030 to help fund a National Care Service, and an admission that “Brexit has done more harm than good”. Options for a closer relationship with the EU are promised for later this year.
The test is whether he can deliver meaningful policies while maintaining his appeal. How far can his charisma carry him?
