Did Andy Burnham just deliver one of the great political speeches?

The News Agents

The episode analyzes Andy Burnham's recent Labour Party conference speech, which is characterized by its emotional depth and intellectual ambiti

Key takeaways

• Andy Burnham's speech was noted for its raw emotion, stemming from the recent loss of his father.
• The speech is framed as an intellectual case for social democracy and a challenge to the Thatcherite settlement.

Main topics

• Andy Burnham's conference speech
• Labour Party leadership styles

Notable quotes

It was making a political and intellectual case for the state, for social democracy, but more than anything else, it was making an emotional case for the Labour Party.

Conclusion

While Burnham's speech is hailed as a masterclass in political communi

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This is a global production. The Speaker 5 (0:05) United Kingdom my dad represented is the one I believe in. A union of nations that gave trade unions and the co-operative movement to the world. The National Health Service. A country that stood up to fascism. A country of solidarity, not separation. That's the Britain that my dad represented. Speaker 6 (0:31) Andy Burnham has just concluded his first speech at a Labour Party conference as Labour leader and Prime Minister. It was one of the most remarkable conference speeches certainly that I've ever heard. It was making a political and intellectual case for the state, for social democracy, but more than anything else, it was making an emotional case for the Labour Speaker 7 (0:54) Party. It was confident, it was commanding. and it has set out a battleground ahead over the national care system, over electoral reform. And he says people may not agree with him. We'll soon find out. Welcome to the Newsagents. Speaker 5 (1:18) The News Agents. Speaker 7 (1:19) It's John. It's Lewis. And I'm honestly trying to think of the speeches in my political lifetime that can we compare that speech by Andy Burnham to. And I suppose Thatcher after the Brighton bomb, Neil Kinnock taking on Militant in the 1980s, Tony Blair on the need to reform Clause 4 in the 1990s in Blackpool. And honestly, I think that speech is up there with it for the confidence that he showed, for the willingness to make an argument, for the way he reached out to the public. And I suspect what marks this out from those other speeches. is the raw emotion of having lost his father earlier on this month and that still being ever-present and causing him to well up. And certainly the delegates I spoke to afterwards and MPs were, I think, blown away by it. Speaker 3 (2:20) He had me moved to tears. But everything he said, I think he'll do everything in his power. to do. Speaker 7 (2:31) You sound quite emotional. Speaker 3 (2:33) I am. It was magnificent. One of the best speeches I've ever heard from a Prime Minister. Told Speaker 1 (2:40) by Andy at the end that he'd given us honesty, ideas and a clear direction for the country that we love and that really was his speech. Very, very open about the challenges that we're facing but also about how he's giving people breathing space, you know, we've got that cut in VAT obviously happening on Thursday, but so much more, long-term plans too, so very, very pleased, I have to say. I Speaker 7 (3:01) mean, so different from last year. Speaker 1 (3:05) Well, we really saw there, I think, the real Andy, we saw his commitment, we saw his absolute dedication to our country, and that was the point where you could see we really felt... the responsibility on his shoulders. He really wants to change our country for the better. So I was delighted to hear what he had to say today. And I really hope the country will be as well. Very different approach. What people have been calling out for that honesty, ideas, clear direction for our country. Speaker 7 (3:33) Beautiful speech. Yeah? Yeah. Just tell me more. Why did you like it so much? I mean, everything that you said, apart from the triple lock. Everything else, Speaker 6 (3:42) I think it's okay. So you didn't like the triple lock thing? Speaker 4 (3:45) Removing it. Speaker 6 (3:46) But I think that will be something else will come out in future. Speaker 4 (3:50) Hopeful, very motivational, particularly as a young person myself. I think for a very long time we haven't seen a lot of a dialogue about young people's opinions and the services that we need. Mental health, safety, security, homes, all things that we heard in the speech. And so, yeah, I'm hopeful. I mean, could Keir Starmer have delivered that speech? I mean... My vision personally is on the future ahead and not the past. I'm hopeful, I'm bright and I think there are good things to come and that's what my focus is on as a young player. You don't want to engage in that question do you? It's not about not engaging, it's just that I think now more than ever the country needs to band together to pull in the forward direction and if we do that, I think the future is looking very bright. Speaker 2 (4:33) I think it was a great speech. I think Andy's tackled some of the big issues that people have been avoiding for a very long time, whether it's EU, whether it's pensions, whether it's big energy grid. I mean, it's one of my big things. Our energy grid has been failing, so we kind of put renewables on there. It was a powerful speech. How do you think it will play in the country? I think it will play really well. I think my constituents in Brent, especially the pensioners, one of the biggest fears is that they spent their whole life working hard, saving a little bit of money and buying their home only to have, you know, if they're lucky enough to buy their home, only to have that taken away from them if they have to go into care. Now, to say that that's not going to happen will have a huge effect. on my constituents in Brent and many pensioners around the country and especially in London. It Speaker 6 (5:29) doesn't do to be too dewy-eyed about this stuff and of course, inevitably, these speeches have an element of poetry to them and as the old political cliche goes, the prose comes next. Speaker 7 (5:42) Nonetheless, I think what we can certainly say is Speaker 6 (5:45) the Labour Party have a political star of a leader for the first time, I think, arguably since Tony Blair. And what I mean by that, I don't mean that in a glib or a crass way. I mean by that someone who is a true political teacher. It's something that Tony Benn used to talk about, the importance of having a political teacher. Someone who is able, through their communication skill, without you really realising it, to be able to paint a picture of their own politics and slowly, subtly convince you of that vision. And whatever the particulars of what Burnham announced today, I think it is clear that, well, John, I think you and I could take our microphones out into this conference hall now, and I think we would be very hard-pushed to find anyone who is sat there thinking, or would be willing to tell us, I really wonder, I really wish I'd seen what Keir would have done this year. And I don't, again, mean that in a crass way. What I mean by it is that I think that we can talk about all of the particulars and the details, but what is, I think, the biggest difference? between, say, Keir Starmer's speeches as Labour Party leader and Burnham's speech just now. Andy Burnham, it's clear, is a prime minister and a political leader who is not afraid of having an argument. In fact, he sees clearly, as central to his politics, the need for Labour to fight the battle of ideas. And frankly, Keir Starmer, we talked about it a lot on the show. I went on about it all the time in particular. I know boring people to death. Keir Starmer was not only uninterested, he was actively hostile to the idea of the battle of ideas. He thought that politics was about showing, not telling. But the truth is, you have to do both. And as Nigel Lawson once said, you know, Margaret Thatcher's, one of Margaret Thatcher's chancellors, generally speaking, the party which wins the battle of ideas tends to win general elections. And Andy Burnham is not resigning from... or retreating from ideas or political conflict, he's running straight to them. Speaker 7 (7:48) And there was a political analysis there as well about the failure of the past decades and what has gone wrong in that time. And that, you know, the great slogan of Brexit was we were taking back control, but actually successive politicians have given away control and people don't have any say, kind of, it feels in their own lives. And so you get to that as the kind of diagnosis. And then the prescription, which on some of the specifics, he said... look, I know that people are going to disagree with me, but I'm going to fight for this because I think it's right. And I think that willingness to kind of go beyond what your focus groups have told you, but to do what you think is a fundamental... to reshaping British society, whether it be the National Care Service and the system that we've got at the moment, this very broken system, or whether it is electoral reform. He may lose those arguments. It may be that the politicians, the opponents, will deploy all the familiar arguments that have stopped this dead in its tracks before. But what you saw from Andy Burnham was the confidence and the willingness to expend political capital to try to make this happen. And it was a big argument that seemed to land