Many Labour Party members and voters have welcomed Andy Burnham’s speech to Labour Party conference, both its style and substance, because it suggests a marked departure from the disastrous leadership of Keir Starmer. But in the longer term, the judgement of observers will be determined by more concrete considerations than appeared to be on offer in Liverpool: wages, in relation to inflation; the quality of public services; and living standards in general.
Burnham came across as a far better public speaker than his predecessor, and he has an easy rapport with workers and Labour members in a way that was utterly foreign to Starmer. But above all, his speech – and recent interviews – have been littered with radical-sounding measures and phraseology that has endeared him to Party members. At the conference he was cheered as he gave a commitment to “greater public control” of utilities like energy, water and housing.
Conference delegates welcomed his announcement that he would overturn the “Thatcher-era ban on the government having public control of water companies”. But we might ask, what does “public control” mean? He has already made it clear that there will be no early nationalisation of Thames Water. Greater “public control” might simply mean beefing up Ofwat, the water ‘regulator’, or something similar. As welcome as that might be, Party members – and the public – want utilities to be publicly-owned again.
Holding water companies ‘to account’
Much the same is true of empowering metro mayors to “hold the water companies to account” – it is an empty policy without concrete measures to back it up. As long as the water companies are owned and managed for profit, they will be starved of necessary investment, and the public will be ripped off while waterways are polluted. This dilemma was never referenced at all.
The conference enjoyed digs from Andy Burnham, and other cabinet members, who spoke against private landlords for “taking advantage” of the housing shortage and “exploiting” their tenants. Angela Rayner even referred to some estate agents as “cowboys, crooks and con artists”.
Again, these were very welcome words. But these “solutions” to the critical housing shortage in the UK are little more than tinkering with the current arrangements – local authorities to take over empty properties sooner, more powers to take over substandard housing and limiting the right to buy new council homes (where are they?) for 35 years. Yet nowhere did he refer to the fundamental cause of the housing shortage – having development land and the building companies in private hands, manufacturing a shortage to keep up prices.
There was widespread support for the Burnham’s idea for a national care service by 2030. Far too many elderly people, and their families, are being ripped off by privately-owned care homes. These are institutions that in the past would have been owned and run by local authorities in conjunction with the NHS and many of today’s are sub-standard.
Unfortunately, this important reform of Burnham’s seems to deal only with medical and personal care for the elderly, and it leaves out accommodation costs which are themselves substantial. Socialists should argue clearly that care homes should once again be owned and managed by local authorities and the NHS.
Removing the triple lock to pay for elderly care
But what is also unfortunate is the suggestion that the reform of care homes will be paid for in part by removing the ‘triple-lock’ that has kept state pensions in line with inflation and with the rise in average earnings, leading to a modest real-terms increase over time. There is a perception, shared even by some in the labour movement, that pensioners are ‘well-off’ and can afford to lose the triple lock. But that is a false idea, because state pensions in the UK are among the lowest in Europe and without such guarantees for their income, even more elderly people will fall into poverty.
In many respects a more important speech than Andy Burnham’s came twenty-four hours earlier – the address to conference by the Chancellor, John Healey. He, too, made a few radical-sounding comments, but the gist of his remarks could easily have been made by his predecessor, Rachel Reeves. Healey, as the Financial Times put it, “delivered a stern lecture to the Labour Party on the need for fiscal discipline in next month’s Budget.”
Healey made it clear that the government was following the Reeves formula of fiscal discipline. Referring to the Blair governments, he said, “The money New Labour had in the ’90s is simply not there now,” repeating that the government’s policies would be “built on a rock of fiscal discipline”.
In the same way as Reeves and Starmer did before him, he even tried to turn the coming cuts – because that is what we will face in his budget in October – into some sort of moral crusade. Britain’s debt levels, he warned, were “an affront to our values”. The government, he argued, had a “moral duty” to help young people to get them off benefits and into work.
Always, without exception, when there are cuts being planned to welfare benefits – either from the Tories or Labour’s right wing – they are dressed up in the language of ‘helping’ the beneficiaries into work. However, we all know the reality is that benefits to the long-term unemployed, sick and the disabled are cut to simply force them into any kind of employment, however badly paid.
Increased defence spending is not ‘progressive’
“It’s not progressive” Healey argued, “to allow a bigger and bigger benefits bill and a system which offers comfort and doesn’t offer a future.” That is an undisguised ‘justification’ for cuts in welfare benefits. We might just as well be told how “progressive” it is – as the government plans – to switch vital money from the welfare system and the NHS to make significant increases in defence spending.
We need to be clear why the leaders of the Labour Party, who are mostly unchanged from the Starmer era, and Labour MPs, hundreds of whom were hand-picked by right-wing factionalists like Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson, seem to have suddenly been won to these newer policies and a change in tone. It is not change of heart – it is a result of opposition and protests, and the massive unpopularity of Starmer’s policies, expressed through the ballot box and opinion polls. Labour recently lost the Gorton and Denton by election and almost 1,500 councillors in May. Without such catastrophic electoral losses, Starmer could still be in office today.
Starmer led Labour to the brink of disaster, as the Green party and other independents took votes from it. A collapse in Labour Party membership was matched by a corresponding growth in members for the Green Party. The dramatic rise of Reform UK under the current electoral system was partially caused by the loss of votes by Labour to other “progressive” parties such as the Greens in England, Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland.
Because of this, even the worst of the Parliamentary Labour Party, facing an early end to their parliamentary careers, felt that they had no choice but to appear to enthusiastically support Burnham’s more radical “vibes”. It was a right-wing MP, one formerly associated with the ‘Labour Together’ faction, who stood down in Makerfield for Burnham to return to Westminster. That explains why, without exception, the speeches of all the Labour ministers at conference were tilted to the left and they were obliged to tweak the aspirations of delegates and potential Labour voters.
Perception that Burnham is different
It is because of the perception that Burnham is different to Starmer that Labour has risen in the polls, and some former members have returned to the Party. But make no mistake, the right will be biding their time, hoping to act as the political spokesperson of capitalism in the party, in exactly the same way they have done in the past. They will chip away in the detail of any reform proposals to weaken them.
However, people’s hopes and expectations having been so dramatically raised, workers will expect to see concrete results in terms of their daily lives, and if such results do not materialise, then Labour’s popularity will slide once more. They would lose support once more to both the left and the right and open the door to a government of the snake-oil salesmen of Reform UK, either alone or in coalition with the Tories.
The accession of Andy Burnham to Labour leadership does mark a milestone in the life of the Labour Party. If Burnham can say that we have suffered “forty years of failed neoliberalism”, that is a direct (although unspoken) rebuke to Labour’s right wing, who have followed a neo-liberal philosophy since another Healey – Dennis – was Labour Chancellor in the 1970s.
Left Horizons always argued that the grip of the right wing on the labour movement was tenuous – it is limited to MPs, many local councillors, Labour bureaucrats and some trade union senior officials. For the left, therefore, what must be noted from Burnham’s and other ministerial speeches is that the right-wing ideas have been utterly discredited. Of course, they still have important points of support, but the broader Labour and trade union membership have never fully bought into their agenda and their sentiments and aspirations are again beginning to find expression.
It was interesting that even John McTernan, Tony Blair’s former political secretary, also expressed a need for the Burnham government to adopt some radical policies. “Stop delaying” he urged the government in a Financial Times opinion piece, “and take Thames Water into public control — the select committee’s inquiry and report offer a way to do it. Similarly, get council houses built by adopting the successful approach of the pandemic Vaccine Taskforce — speed and expertise focused on investment and development. Nationalise a housebuilder if you need to”. If an arch right-winger like McTernan can write this, it shows which way the wind is blowing.
Likely developments within Labour in coming years
What this Labour conference has done, therefore, is to point to likely developments in the Party in the coming months and years. There are, on the one hand, growing expectations and demands for radical policies, and for concrete measures in the interests of working-class people. So much so, that every Labour spokesperson and even the most shameless right-wingers are obliged to articulate them. But on the other hand, there is the pressure of the capitalist class on the government – through the financial markets, the media and their lobbyists inside and outside of the party – for cuts and economies.
Both opposing class pressures will increasingly be reflected in the debates in the labour movement in the coming years. Socialist ideas have been stifled by the Starmerite bureaucracy in the past few years, but it will be much harder to strangle debate in the future, if and when working class aspirations clash with the realities of government policy and if the Labour electoral collapse resumes. Labour can no longer simply rely complacently on the votes of workers looking for a radical alternative.
The looming crisis in interest rates that is now affecting all the capitalist economies might be a prelude to an economic shock on the scale of the financial crisis of 2008 and that could be the pretext for swingeing cuts in public spending in yet another bout of austerity. That will also usher in some fierce debates and discussions within the labour movement.
Not all the left walked away from the Labour Party
Despite the strangulation of free debate and discussion, there are still socialists inside the Labour Party; true, very many of them left in disgust, but by no means all. Those members will argue for real socialist policies – not half measures and pious ‘hopes’ – as an answer to the crisis of British capitalism. Whole new layers of workers, attracted by Burnham’s promises may also want to get more actively involved to ensure that such promises are kept.
The interests of the working class and the capitalist class are directly antagonistic, and when the policies of the latter are forced on a Labour government, it inevitably means cuts and austerity in one guise or another. That is turn leads to resistance from workers pushed to the limit.
Socialists in the labour movement have long fought for real socialist policies – public ownership of utilities, large-scale industry, transport and finance houses – and for the organisation of a plan of production in the interests of all. If the Labour conference shows anything, it is that these ideas will get a wider echo in the coming years, more so than at any time in the Starmer years.
[Feature photograph is still of BBC coverage of Burnham outside Number 10 Downing Street]
