When nothing works there’s lots to fix

I was on Sky News over the weekend with someone arguing from the Tory point of view talking about Burnham’s first few weeks in the job. At one point they said something like ‘bus fares aren’t going to cut it’ when talking about the cost of living.

This felt like an attack line that was both out of touch and weak.

It’s out of touch because it doesn’t take account of the importance of bus routes to the lives of so many people. Being a Londoner, I am used to good bus services. But I remember my shock when I went to university in a small city and was stuck with one unreliable service an hour to get to campus. These many years later, I remember how much that impacted on how I ordered my day, my learning, the job I got to support myself and my social life. You have to be very out of touch with what bus services are like – and how essential they are to so many – to speak so dismissively of changes to these services.

But equally, it’s a weak attack because it pretends that the kinds of cost-of-living measures that have been announced since Andy Burnham took over is all Labour are doing to change our economy and our society. And it has been very clear from his first words as PM that this is not the case.

Friends of LabourList will have got my email on Friday which talked of the clear danger to Tory prospects of Kemi Badenoch falling for her good press. But the lack of political strategy, imagination and understanding of the task ahead for the Tories is not confined to the leader – however much she epitomises it.

READ MORE: Labour values – what we all have in common

One of the key political differences between Burnham and Starmer’s approach is the highlighting of changes to everyday life and using them to tell a constant story of Labour’s longer term approach to government.

Starmer’s instinct to ‘have a politics that treads lightly on our lives’ was not a bad one. Starmer’s leadership was, in part, shaped by his time in opposition. He came in during the Covid crisis when we all felt the government in our lives more than we ever would wish to in normal circumstances. I spent many years after that time fighting on GB News and other platforms the weird right wing fantasy that Labour people loved lockdown and this instinct to control and be controlled was inherent to left wing politics rather than a rare response to extraordinary times (implemented by the Tories let’s not forget even if Labour supported many of the measures at a time when unity was vital).

But there is – or at least should be – a great deal of difference between a politics that treads lightly on our lives and a politics that doesn’t see them and the daily frustrations we all feel. Right wingers – be they in the Tories or Reform UK – do not believe it is the job of government to stand up for the little guy. Labour people do believe in interventions large and small to make ordinary people’s lives better.

Burnham’s announcement today that he is going to tackle some of the small ripoffs that frustrate our everyday lives is not just good retail politics – though it is certainly that. It also demonstrates two things that will be essential to his success.

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Firstly, that he gets it. This is something I have heard about Burnham more than anything else when I talk to people who aren’t political obsessives like me. This weekend, for example, my sister told me that my niece – who while bright and opinionated is not particularly party politics – is following the PM on TikTok and shares his content widely. At the same time a friend of mine (who is a Labour councillor) told me that her Mum – who would not have voted for Labour under Starmer had used precisely that phrase when talking about how Burnham had responded when visiting a care home – “he gets it”.

The former Tory advisor I was up against just didn’t seem to ‘get it’. The importance of dealing with the everyday seemed lost on them. They only wanted to hear big ideas not the small policies that can flow from them.

But the second part does speak to their attempted attack, and that is that these measures have to be a signpost of the direction of travel – not the destination. Small and immediate interventions such as the cap on bus fares and tackling the rip off subscriptions tell a story of intervention. But they are the opening scene – not the finale. Burnham has made it clear he has a much bigger vision and the ambition to achieve it. A vision of a devolved Britain where we share power more widely. A vision of a National Care Service where we have a shared sense of responsibility, respect and reassurance about the care we might need. A vision for an economy that enables more ordinary people to succeed and smooths out the obstacles to doing so.

We live in a cynical age. This suits those who would have us all believe that the state is a burden not a springboard to our lives. It is Labour’s unceasing task to rebut that politics of pessimism. This is why these small changes matter. But it is also why these have to be just the start.

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