It would be a fair summary of the comments of various writers in today's Sunday Times to say that they are at present far from convinced that Andy Burnham understands how to fix Britain’s problems.
Robert Colville puts it particularly strongly. Here are the first four paragraphs of his opinion piece:
Labour politicians like to call themselves “progressive”. But it is now clear that Andy Burnham’s political project is fundamentally regressive. It is to somehow turn back the clock, to restore a Britain of coalfields and shipyards and trade unions and nationalised industry, and a Labour Party that speaks to and for them.
How do we know this? Because he told us so.
Politicians and commentators had spent weeks wondering what Burnhamism and Manchesterism meant. But in his speech accepting the Labour leadership — held, symbolically, at the London headquarters of the Trades Union Congress — he spelt it out, again and again. It is an answer to a call from “forgotten places everywhere” for “the return of the Labour they once knew”. It is about reversing the reforms of the 1980s, when “political power was used viciously” against working-class communities, when “economic power [was] cruelly stripped with the deindustrialisation of the 1980s”.
It is a repudiation not only of Margaret Thatcher but of Tony Blair, who forced his party to accept the Thatcher settlement rather than endlessly relitigating it. It is, in other words, the most self-consciously left-wing platform adopted by any prime minister for half a century. And it is, of course, a fantasy.
And here are the final two paragraphs of Colville's article:
Finally, Burnham’s speech was a fantasy about Britain. What he gave us was a country in which all the industries, and all the places, were those of yesterday. Where all the solutions were about returning to how things used to be. Yet the Labour leaders who truly strike a chord with the nation are those who promise to build something new: Clement Attlee, Tony Blair, even Harold Wilson.
Burnham has promised voters “the return of the Labour they once knew”. But the voters who knew that Labour also know why it failed. As for the rest of us? We’re about to learn.
Ever since the prospect of a Burnham-led government sailed into view, I have opined that nothing we know of him suggests that he has the courage to "talk left, but act right" – while suggesting that nonetheless it remains just possible that he might surprise us.
Well, most of his talking so far, as Colville indicates, has indeed been left.
Now for the acting. I wait to be surprised...
