‘Too much timidity and factionalism’: Burnham issues a radical rallying cry

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has set out a wide-ranging critique of the government and an alternative left policy programme in an impassioned speech to a progressive conference, suggesting Labour must move beyond “factionalism” and “too much timidity in our offer”.

Burnham used his address to the soft left pressure group Compass’ gathering at London’s Ministry of Sound nightclub on Saturday for a significant intervention ahead of next month’s Spending Review.

The former New Labour minister and leadership contender praised some of the government’s progress in multiple areas such as rail renationalisation.

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But he warned of a “reluctance to show courage or conviction”, and told the hundreds of assembled activists that Labour should:

• Work on a “substantially new offer for the public”, with a “new story that redefines who we are, who we stand for, and what we are going to achieve” and spending review announcements that “speaks to the ambition of all of those people, all of those places that have felt modern politics has ignored them”.
• Be the “unifying, popular left” in opposition to a “divisive populist right”, fighting the right “not by aping their rhetoric” but painting them as a “coalition of the arch-Thatcherites and the ‘Maggie-didn’t-go-far-enough’ brigade”.
• Launch the “biggest and quickest” council and social housebuilding programme Britain has ever seen,  calling it the “singlest smartest investment” Labour could make to tap working-class “ambition” and save billions on benefits and public services.
• Set a new overriding national target on housing, which is to “hit a new tipping point in this Parliament, when we are building more council and social homes than we are losing”.

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• Move away from the “factionalism that has bedevilled us on all sides of the party and across the left”, with a “change in our language to make it more relational” and connect better with people.
• Reset the “balance” between taxing labour and wealth, as we have “overtaxed labour and undertaxed wealth”, prompting rapturous applause from activists.
• Introduce proportional representation, to bring a “new politics”.
• Bring in “free transport for teenagers in England”
• Talk about technical education and “working-class ambition” in the same way it talks about university education, with “two equal paths, one academic one technical”.
• Not look to “get fairness” by cutting benefits or pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, with a need to “think again” on disability benefits and not make cuts.

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