‘Progressives like me need Andy to succeed’

I will always be grateful to Keir Starmer for putting our party and our country back on the progressive track. During Labour’s Corbyn years, I was one of the modernisers who hoped our party would shun nostalgia and fight to take power. I supported Liz Kendall and then Jess Phillips to lead our party. This time, I am nominating Andy Burnham.

The purpose for all progressives is changing who has power by upending traditional hierarchies. I was in Parliament for seven years with Andy during the Tory austerity years. The one glimmer of progressive hope was devolution. City regions with elected mayors gave us an opportunity to make the economy work for the parts of the country that were left out. For this to work you need to build coalitions across business, civil society and government to shape markets not just oppose them. It’s what Andy has done in Greater Manchester. It’s what the modernisers believe: translating our values for the world as we find it.

READ MORE: What would Andy Burnham do if he becomes Prime Minister?

Devolution has been a success. Liverpool has taken its employment rate from 61pc to 71pc over the past 10 years. That’s stellar progress which can be replicated if we get investment right. Andy’s leadership in Manchester shows this can be done. Crowding in the private sector, and helping the market put money in people’s pockets. This is needed now in regions all over the country. We are right to want to make sure that no one is locked out of work because of ill health, but a solution will only be found if jobs are created in places where demand for workers has been too low for too long. Power and opportunity is held too tightly, and the whole country pays the bill.

But we cannot stop with markets. As employment minister, I saw how job centres had been unable to help people because even if there was a job, a person’s health or circumstances held them back. The Live Well movement in Greater Manchester addresses this by challenging the state to work alongside voluntary and community organisations to help the whole person not just to force them through an inhuman process. Like Sure Start in the past and our Best Start family hubs today, this is how you reshape the state to get opportunity where it is needed most and power exercised by people with skin in the game.

The alternative is powerlessness in the face of the state, and I know what that looks like.

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I was in the crowd in 2009 when Andy addressed the 20th Hillsborough memorial service. It is hard to explain how painful it was to be a Labour Councillor in that moment knowing that there had been no justice and no proper change in society as a response. It was an open wound. When I was elected to Parliament a year later, I knew we had to do something and make sure that we could fulfil the promises Andy and Gordon Brown had made in 2009. Keir’s leadership on this has been an inspiration, and we have to finish the job to fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and state.

That antidote to powerlessness is what is needed now.

A Reform government won’t continue our work to tackle child poverty. A Reform government will be terrible for investors looking for a Britain still able to build a bridge back to Europe. A Reform government will only concentrate power and trample on everyone else.

To win all kinds of progressive voters we need to make progressive arguments and do more progressive things. Andy has shown how we can beat Reform by fighting for togetherness and an inclusive plan that lifts us all. We really need him, and his plan, to succeed.

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