Can Burnham change Britain’s story?

At the end of this month it will be a year since I launched this Substack and I want to thank all of you who have read and subscribed to it. I have been overwhelmed by the response and grateful too to all those who have given me feedback and commented on posts.

I set out to write as a practitioner, not just a commentator. Having been a strategist in Number 10, I always have the question, front of mind: what would I be doing in this situation? Having been a teacher and a headteacher, I always picture the young people I supported and think about how to give them the best start in life. In both cases the consistent theme of my career is how to make change - from an approach, a system, a narrative - that isn’t working, to one that is.

That is why the Substack is called, Changing the Story. Andy Burnham’s first urgent task is to change the story about this Labour government. From one of disappointment, dire poll ratings, and pessimism, to one of hope, and renewed possibility. He then needs to change the story about Britain.

He’s made a good start.

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Many prime ministers reach the top without ever having a view on a whole range of topics. But the great advantage for Andy Burnham is that the job of Mayor forces you to cover all issues (or almost all) because your patch is a microcosm of the wider country. (The downside of course is that what worked or was true in Manchester might not work for the nation.)

He has only been Prime Minister for just over a month and the biggest difference he has made is not the one most commented on - his skilful communication - but his ability to ignite real debate around big arguments.

Five stand out.

1. Britain is too centralised and needs massive devolution because power should be in the hands of people and places.

2. Life’s essentials need to be under public control because that’s the way of ensuring prices are kept low.

3. Forty years of neo-liberalism have caused Britain’s problems because too little attention was paid to the casualties of globalisation.

4. Parity between academic and technical education is essential because every young person needs a high-quality pathway to a well-paid job.

5. Britain’s success depends on growth in every postcode because only inclusive growth will solve Britain’s deep inequalities.

Let’s be clear, if he wins these arguments he really will have changed the direction of British politics. These are big arguments, and in some cases will require the defeat of huge vested interests and entrenched ways of working.

Burnham is schooled in the Blair/Brown era where winning big arguments was the point of politics. Blair and Brown saw it as both an intellectual exercise and a campaigning one. Blair always wanted to return to first principles to ensure any argument was grounded in logic and was robust enough under fire. Brown wanted to continually refine the dividing lines with opponents so he was on firm ground and able to paint them into an unpopular corner.

But we know too that the Left historically has a problem winning arguments. It too often lacks confidence and staying power. Or the opposite, its judgemental moralising puts people off. Too often it would rather fight another faction on its own side, than its real opponents, the Right. Too often it starts an argument and then loses interest, allowing opponents to fight back and win. Digital ID being the perfect example: launched, not defended, opponents mobilise, proposal is watered down, new prime minister kills it off.

To win an argument you need to be up for the fight and be relentless at marshalling your troops to win it. You need to set up a war room - a place where you gather the best comms, policy, writing, marketing, campaigns, and stakeholder experts and plot your strategy, hour by hour, day by day, week by week. For the Left, the task is always harder than it should be, as it is up against a right-wing press, skewed social media eg X, and a range of interests, including parts of business, who are hostile. A single prime ministerial speech, intervention or headline should always be the start not the end of a process.

Burnham needs to see the goal of the next year as winning the arguments he’s set in train. If he does so he will be in a very strong place.

In a year’s time, which arguments will Burnham be on the verge of winning? Which will he still be in the trenches fighting for? And which will have been abandoned or defeated through lack of sustained fight? We should remember that arguments can be lost at both a conceptual level (it doesn’t stack up) and an implementation level (it falls apart on contact with the real world).

Here is my assessment of the state of play today on his five big arguments.

There is a huge appetite for a fightback against an overcentralised, out of touch and ineffective state. The reason Reform have been doing so well is a belief that the mainstream parties can’t get anything done. So any argument that is about disrupting the status quo will have traction. The key is not to overstate it, not to imply devolution will solve everything. Winning the argument also depends on having a clearly articulated plan for the reform of Whitehall that gives people confidence it can be more responsive and deliver on the big national bets - like building new homes.

Again there is an open door here. Do people want help with the cost of living? Do they want cheaper households bills? Is public control of the buses in Manchester a successful example? Yes to all of this. But does this feel like an ideological battle or a practical one? What are the fiscal constraints? And how much better off will people really be? The argument will be won if people feel a tangible difference. More than that, cost of living must be linked to a bigger argument, the argument that matters most, about how people can once more feel they are on the upward escalator, with the tools to improve their own lives.

Burnham’s argument is that globalisation has too many losers. That it did not support the places left behind by deindustrialisation. That wealth creation and good jobs are more important than benefit hand-outs to compensate for poor jobs or no jobs. That the state needs to be more active in supporting people through change and working with the private sector to reshape the economy. What he needs to be careful about, is being too sweeping in these assertions. Was Gordon Brown really a neo-liberal? Was the minimum wage, the halving of child poverty or full employment part of a neo-liberal consensus? And is the aim to return to pre-Thatcher days or to carve out a modern form of re-industrialisation where Britain is at the cutting edge of new industries? The calibration of this argument is crucial to winning it.

This is an argument where the government is on strong ground. As the pollster Luke Tryl reminded me the other day, apprenticeships are incredibly popular and always have been. People want more and better technical education. Gove dismissing it as ‘bring back stupid’ is a big error. The public does not think technical education is lowering standards. The Neet crisis provides a new imperative to finding different high-quality routes into work for young people. There will still be some who fight back with arguments that need dealing with - the danger of funnelling working-class kids into vocational pathways, whatever their abilities, or the logistical difficulties of schools offering technical education. Overall this is an argument that needs a lot of work but really ought to be won.

This is the argument that will take the most winning for a number of reasons. Growth is hard. None of the six prime ministers since Brexit have achieved growth at the levels of the previous Labour government. The Treasury has little clue how to get growth, let alone inclusive growth. There is a danger that the current Cabinet is more comfortable pointing out the failings of business than championing the kind of support for businesses that will give them the confidence to invest, grow and create new jobs. Devising a credible growth plan and a convincing argument around it, that combines active national government with real local initiative, is essential if this argument is to be won.

None of these arguments must be left to chance or wishful thinking. Winning them is painstaking and relentless work. Our current mad media environment privileges the short term and the superficial. It is so easy to be distracted, but for Burnham the prize is big - nothing less than changing Britain’s story.