Andy Burnham has a socialist manifesto for the future. What about for now?

The Andrew Neil Report

Andrew Neil and Fraser Nelson analyze Andy Burnham's recent speech at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. They examine his radical pro

Key takeaways

• Andy Burnham proposes a 'National Care Service' (NCS) that would be free at the point of use.
• The speech outlines a massive council house building programme where homes are owned and built by councils.
• Burnham intends to establish a national commission to investigate proportional representation for electoral reform.
• The hosts critique Burnham's 'myth-making' regarding the economic prosperity of the 1980s and 90s.
• Potential reversal of Brexit is discussed as a serious option for the next Labour manifesto.

Main topics

• Labour Party Conference
• Andy Burnham's socialist manifesto
• Reversing Thatcherism

Notable quotes

Solidarity, not separation.

Conclusion

The episode provides a critical look at the tension between radical po

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hi, friends and fellow students. Americans living abroad can legally vote in the U.S. election. Register or get tailored support at VoteFromAbroad.org. Look, state deadlines are super close, so don't waste another second. Go to VoteFromAbroad.org now and click Request My Ballot and ask to receive it by email. All you got to do is fill it out and send it back in. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. VoteFromAbroad.org. Speaker 5 (0:28) What he hates actually worked. What he loves has already tarnished what works, has already done its bit to undermine the strength and prosperity of this country, has already pitched us back into decline again. There's such a feeling again in Britain of decline. Yet he wants to do more of the same, big time, on a scale not matched since the early 1970s. Speaker 5 (1:02) Big on aspiration, short on substance, long on emotion, but hugely significant nonetheless. That's the best way to sum up Andy Burnham's first speech to a Labour Party conference as leader of his party and prime minister. Because what he proposed was nothing short of a political revolution. He proposed to part company. Indeed, to reverse the Thatcher Settlement. The Thatcher Settlement, which in its different ways has dominated British politics for almost 50 years, even if it has been increasingly eroded in the past 15 years. In place of markets, privatisation, competition, Mr. Burnham wants more state ownership, more state control. When ownership can't be afforded, he still wants to control things. Bigger government, much bigger government and higher taxes. Of course, he didn't say higher taxes. Well, he wouldn't, would he? But if you're going to have a bigger government and more state control and ownership, then there will have to be higher taxes. One follows the other. Now, it's not quite the radical break that Mr. Burnham thinks because... The country actually has been moving somewhat in this direction for some time, even under the previous Conservative government. Boris Johnson was a big government Conservative. Taxes have been rising already under the previous Conservative government. This Labour government has continued to do that. Government, as a share of GDP, has been growing. But that kind of Thatcher consensus, in which it was laid down in the 1980s, continued by John Major in the 1990s, and then when Mr Blair and Mr Brown took over, they did very little to unravel it. They spent a lot more on schools and hospitals. They did minimum wage, lots of labour things, successful labour things. But the basic wealth-creating machine that Thatcher, and to a lesser extent, Major had left behind, with the unions knowing their place, competition important, markets important, private enterprise leading the way. That survived through the last Labour government. As I say, it began to erode, ironically, under the last Conservative government. But now Mr Burnham makes it explicit he wants to end it altogether. He wants to take the country to a new settlement to replace the Thatcher one. And that would involve permanently higher taxes to pay for an ever-expanding social safety net, starting with social care, one of his passions, which would be redesigned to be free at the point of use, just like the NHS, the National Care Service, an NCS. He envisages... which will of course involve a lot more public spending and an ever more active state in so many fields, owning and controlling all manner of things. So it is a radical prospectus. Of course, it has echoes of the past. Critics will say it's back to the 1970s, but it is certainly an attempt to break with the way things have been. Speaker 5 (4:37) It is, I would say, probably a more explicitly socialist vision than any Labour leader has proposed since the 1970s, bar the disastrous Corbyn interregnum, which, of course, never made it to power. The Labour conference in Liverpool, well, they lapped it up. It's where their hearts lie. It's what they want. For some of them, it's what they've always wanted. They had to... bite their bottom lips during the new Labour years. They were successful when they got more public spending, but it wasn't really what they wanted or what they had come in to politics to do. Now, how it will all be delivered, well, that's for another day in the conference. Just enjoy. A return to the true religion. And there's even a 10-year-old plan on its way. Like all good socialist roadmaps, you need one to take you to the new Jerusalem. And we're going to get that, Mr Burnham said, before the year is out. Now, you cannot fault the Prime Minister for ambition or for the radical way in which he wants to change the governing of Britain. We'd heard many of the lines before, growth in every postcode and all the rest of it. But when you aggregate them together to what he wants to do to the country, well, it is quite the socialist manifesto. A massive new council house building programme. Not just affordable homes, that's not enough. Not housing societies building affordable homes. No, homes owned by the council and built by the council. A new council house building programme, none of which, these new homes, will ever be for sale, unlike previous council houses, basically. Take that, Maggie, because don't forget, selling council houses was one of her most distinctive and most successful policies. Private rental properties deemed to be run by bad landlords, well, they'll be taken into the council stock. They'll be seized by local mayors, no less, part of Mr Burnham's devolution agenda. There'll be a repeal of the ban on the public ownership of water companies, which Margaret Thatcher introduced. This doesn't mean to say that water is going to be nationalised any time soon, but he's put this in place for the day when maybe he can afford to nationalise the water companies. At the moment, it's just too expensive. for him to do so. If Thames Water falls into administration, he might get his hands on it then. But in the meantime, until he can afford to do that or until the opportunity arises, there'll be more public control of water in all sorts of unspecified ways. Again, through local mayors, part of the devolution prospectus. There will be greater, if unspecified, state control of energy companies and services as well. So in all these things, energy, water, housing, a bigger role for the state, state ownership where he can manage it, where he can afford it, where he can't, a more intrusive, more activist, more controlling state. And of course, as I said, a new national care service built along the same lines as the NHS, free at the point of use. To get this, one of his passions. He's even prepared to break the pension triple lock, which suggests that he is so motivated by his agenda that he is prepared to do what many will see as unpopular things. But he thinks if he freezes the pension lock, or not freezes it, but if he links pensions simply to, say, prices, then he'll save money that he can put into social care. And he will save some. But there's no way he's going to raise enough to pay for social care, which could be at least £18 billion extra. That will require a big and permanent rise in tax. And although he didn't say it again, he seems up for that. So he had this very active, ambitious, left-leaning, socialist, domestic agenda. When it came to defence and foreign policy, he hadn't much to say at all. He said he supported Ukraine, he would stand up to threats from Russia and Iran, but that was it. He glossed over defence and foreign policy. He barely gave it the time of day. And we still don't know what he's planning to increase defence spending in a dangerous world. And so it's clear that his enthusiasm for state spending... doesn't yet filter in to the need for more defence spending. He was almost in tears when he spoke about his recently deceased dad. He had to stop at one stage. The audience saved him with a standing ovation. Audiences are always kind at party conferences to their leaders when they run into some trouble. But he then turned that into, and this was a surprise, I think it caught a lot of people by surprise, as he was... almost tearing up about the death of his father, he turned that into the most splendid defence of the Union, of the United Kingdom, of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It was the Union that had made his father proud, the Union his father had fought for, the Union he wanted to fight for. of all the great things it had done, the great things that it created, its great position in the globe. And he finished with solidarity, not separation. Seems to me that's not a bad phrase indeed. That was surprising and shows that Andy Burnham, when he really believes in something, has the ability to communicate it with fervour and with passion. And, of course... reversing Brexit is back on the agenda. He thinks overall it's been a bad thing. He's going to lay out what options now face Britain in its relationship with the European Union come the European summit, which is going to be sometime later this year. It's clear that rejoining is one of these options. It's clear that rejoining could well be in the next. A Labour manifesto. And if all that wasn't enough for the radical juices to be flowing at that conference hall in Liverpool, well, he pulled out of the hat. Electoral reform. He's going to set up a national commission into electoral reform to remove Britain from its long-standing first-past-the-post-service system to be more... proportional sort of system. Now, there are various proportional systems around. No doubt that's what the Commission will be looking at, also at the pros and cons of PR versus our existing system. But he wants that done and he plans to put electoral reform into the next Labour manifesto. So big issues have emerged at this Labour conference in Liverpool. Big issues have been covered in Mr Burnham's speech to that conference, which, although it continues for another day or so, effectively ended with the Burnham speech. But reform of social care and how to pay for it, the creation of a social care service like a national health service, the future of the pension triple lock, rejoining the European Union, electoral reform. These are all huge policies. They're all policies that Andy Burnham wants to bring in. But they're all policies not for this parliament. They're policies for the next parliament. They're all important. But he's not saying he's going to do any of them this side of the election. They're rising up the agenda in the Burnham era. But none of them would actually happen if and until and when he calls an election. And he wins that election and he has a mandate to do them. All for the next parliament. Only honest conversations in this parliament about them. But no action this side of an election. And you would think that surely that would bolster the case. Since he has this agenda, he seems to know the broad direction he wants to go in, even if there's a mass of detail still to be filled in. You think that would bolster the case for an early election? Why have a two, three year honest conversation? Tread water on these big policies. Just talk about them. Getting ready for the next manifesto. Why not firm them up now? Get this burning Burnham agenda solidified, ready for public inspection. Put it to the nation, win the mandate and get on with it. Yet he's ruled out an early election and this commission on electoral reform would