Burnham goes big: What difference does it make?

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

The episode analyzes Andy Burnham's first Labour conference speech as Prime Minister, focusing on its departure from traditional political c

Key takeaways

• Burnham used an emotional and authentic tone, specifically referencing his father to connect with voters.
• The speech signaled a move toward removing barriers to public ownership of water and energy utilities.

Main topics

• Andy Burnham's conference speech
• Devolution and Mayoral accountability

Notable quotes

I'm not going to be high bound by all the constraints that sometimes politicians are of checking every detail of a press release.

Conclusion

The episode highlights the high-stakes nature of Burnham's 'big' polic

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:08) I did warn you this speech would be different, didn't I? Well, that's what Andy Burnham claimed as he wrapped up his first Labour conference speech as party leader and prime minister. So just how different was it? I'm Hannah White, and this is Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government, recording this in the lobby of our hotel in Liverpool, just an hour after Andy Burnham left the stage in the ACC. Alex Thomas, our executive director for Impact, is here, and I'm delighted that we are joined by one guest, and about, I hope, be joined. by a second, both of whom have hot-footed it across here from the conference centre to join us. So we have with us already Claire Ainslie, who's a newish IFG senior fellow and was formerly executive director of policy to Keir Starmer. Hi, Claire. Hello. Thank you for having me. And we are hoping that any moment we will be joined by Sophie Stowers, who is research manager for More in Common. I'll let you know when she gets here. Claire, let's kick off with you and your immediate reaction to the speech. You've been involved in a few leaders' speeches in your times. We will get into the content, obviously. But what did you make of the performance from Andy Burnham there on the stage? We had no lectern, no tie and a few tears. Speaker 1 (1:19) Yeah, we did. It was definitely the speech of someone who feels like a natural leader. So it obviously was scripted in the sense that he was reading. But it definitely felt like he had thrown caution to the wind and said, I'm going to deliver the speech that I want to deliver. I'm not going to be high bound by all the constraints that sometimes politicians are of checking every detail of a press release. So it definitely felt, to use that terrible word, authentic. It definitely felt like him. And it was emotional. You could see he was struggling to continue when he talks about his dad. And anyone who's lost a parent, as I have, two weeks or three weeks on, you do not feel fit for work. But he, I think, did that completely naturally. And I think very organically. And there was nothing manipulative. But listening to it, I felt like I was willing him on to continue. And then he said some really important things. And I think at the end, when he really just didn't use the phrase. let's unite, he said, you don't have to agree with all of this, but if you agree with enough of it and you want change, then I ask you to come with me on this. So I think he did something quite different and unique, and we will see how that goes down in the public. Alex, as Claire says, Speaker 4 (2:34) Burnham was keen to say this was a different sort of conference speech. Do you agree with him? Speaker 3 (2:39) Yeah, it was different in many respects. I mean, there was obviously the sort of superficial stuff about the lectern and no notes, but it was also, it was quite, policy heavy. He had a prescription for where he wanted to take the country and began to set out how he wanted to do it. It felt in a way that, and not just because perhaps of Keir Starmer's personality or whatever, but recent political leaders of all colours have been quite constrained in their speech and almost been forced to talk quite small, whereas this was a sort of bigger, more expansive speech, not without risk, and we'll come on to lots of the substance there. Not without challenges around matching the reality to the expectations that he's fuelled even more than he already had. But it was, you know, it was a good speech. And it was also felt very personal, not just personal to him for the reasons that Claire was saying around his father and the emotional side of it, but he centred himself fully in the speech. That's him. You know, there were lots of I's. There were lots of this is what I'm all about. There were a few shout outs to... cabinet colleagues and others, maybe that was partly allocating sort of accountability and partly kind of bringing the team in. But there was a lot of, I will not stand for this. I will not do this. This is what I want to do for the country. So alongside that kind of come join the party, he was firmly kind of centering himself in that story. Speaker 4 (3:57) Yeah, I mean, I do agree that the sort of scale of the sorts of policy ideas he was trying to talk about. did seem to have a better fit with the scale of the problems he was describing. So we have seen other... party leaders giving their speeches at a conference in recent years describing, you know, a broken society and lots of problems. But then the scale of the answers that they've sort of tried to offer in their speeches has tended to be quite small. And Alex, one of the things that you've sort of often said, I think, in recent years in relation to such leaders is, you know, they don't always seem to have a sort of theory of government, a theory of how to govern. Was that more present today? Maybe a little bit. I Speaker 3 (4:37) mean, the way I've been describing and talking to people testing it through the conference, is Burnham, in his first few weeks in the job, had created a sort of lens of how he wanted to govern. He was talking about devolution and decentralisation. He was projecting the beginnings of how he thinks government should work. I don't think that yet amounts to a theory of government. And I'm not sure, because this was quite policy-heavy, he talked a bit about Whitehall doing things differently and how it was ludicrous that the mayor of Liverpool should be fighting for a ferry across the Mersey. But he didn't actually enumerate how that's going to really happen. sure we saw that yet. Would a party conference speech ever be the place to do that? Probably not, as much as we'd love it at the Institute for Government. So I'm not sure that's a kind of gap, but I do think it will need to come. The other thing, but again, we get into the substance, is he was framing these as really big answers to the big problems and the big questions that face the country. There were a few bits on some of the policy detail that you could tell the ex-civil servant were really carefully worded and left quite a lot of space for wiggle room or interpretation that... got a standing ovation in the hall because he was bashing Margaret Thatcher, but actually probably won't mean so much when it hits kind of cold reality. So I think that's one to watch for as well. Speaker 4 (5:48) We'll dig into some of that. I'm pleased to say we have been joined by Sophie now. Welcome, Sophie. Thanks so much for joining us. At More in Common, you talk a lot to the public. Andy Brennan was obviously talking to the Labour faithful in the hall today. But how do you think his speech will have gone down with the public? Speaker 2 (6:04) Yeah, I mean it goes without saying that this was an important speech for him. I think more in common it was important in the sense that the public kind of in his first few weeks as Prime Minister have got a good vibe from him so to speak. They think they feel a bit more optimistic with him in charge. They think that he's passed sort of the gets it. tests you know he is a bit more in touch with the struggles that they're sort of suffering in their daily lives what it's like with the cost of living for example long NHS wait times things like that so he passed those sort of preliminary tests but this was really where he kind of had to put meat on the bone for them and back that up with substantive policy change I think that was the worry that we saw in focus groups a lot was in his initial weeks he was kind of saying exactly what they wanted to hear you know nice words but not much to back it up with And I think to an extent he delivered on that. I mean, I think the interesting thing when I was listening to it was that our folks groups are in an opinion poll and all the time that people, I think, have built up such a level of frustration that they really want this like radical long term structural change. Now they're kind of fed up with the gradual piecemeal. That's been a really big shift since 2024, actually, is that demand for radical change. And I think a lot of the policies he outlined, or at least the way he framed them, were very structural, were about unpicking this legacy that he sort of dates back to the 1980s onwards, kind of really unpicking those sort of longer term shifts in how policy has been made and why it's been made. I think that feeling will resonate. quite a lot but again it I think it does seem to feel a bit more like vibes based still more than anything that people could really substantively point to how it will affect their daily lives in the long term. Do Speaker 3 (7:39) you think, Claire and I were talking about this before we started recording, so I get this kind of the problems are big and we need big solutions to them and they've been building up over a long time. Equally let's go back to the 1970s. It's a brave political kind of position to take. How do you think the public might react to that? Speaker 2 (7:56) I think it's interesting in the sense that actually when you looked at when Keir Starmer would quite often try and pin the issues that his government were having to face back to the previous Conservative government, people got that, that was in part true. They understood that a Labour government would try to pin the blame for some of Speaker 3 (8:11) the Speaker 2 (8:11) things they were having to confront on the previous Conservative government. They were kind of used to that, but they didn't like it in the sense they felt it was passing the buck, so to speak. And I do think there will be an element of that here. you know, they maybe understand the narrative case he's making, but it's not enough to just shift the blame. Like you have to have your own ideas. It's not just about kind of a throwback to the past, but actually a different approach that works now. So I think there definitely will be some cynicism around that based on what I've seen and heard in the focus groups and in the polling that we've done. That definitely comes through strongly. But I think what's really interesting is that actually when you think about it, you've got a generation of Labour voters whose voter base tends to be relatively young. quite millennial actually compared to a lot of other political parties that's a group who have heard a lot