Politics is like a rollercoaster. One moment you’re on the up, riding what seems to be the never-ending incline, before suddenly you come crashing down. For political nerds, it provides a regular source of stimulation. For the general public, or businesses looking for a stable investment environment, it is less than satisfying.
From global shocks such as Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine to what has seemed like a revolving door of Prime Ministers, the UK political rollercoaster has quite literally shaken the riders — the public — to a point of intolerance.
Starmer’s missed opportunities
As Keir Starmer’s time as Prime Minister draws to a close, we’re left thinking about what his legacy will be. I think the overall takeaway will be one of missed opportunity. Entering Downing Street in July 2024 was a moment when Keir Starmer could have set out a bold vision, backed by such a huge majority. Instead, detractors have closed in from all sides following a number of prominent U-turns.
The general consensus is that Starmer is a decent man, but that he lacked the vision and political nous to navigate the country through a difficult period and in the face of a growing threat from Reform UK. The Government has seemed to be bounced from one decision to another in a game of political pinball — or, to return to the earlier metaphor, like a rollercoaster. It soon became the case that any policy announced by Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves was tainted and doomed to fail because of the unpopularity of the Government.
Starmer quickly lost support from the public, but it was Labour MPs who convinced him to set a timetable for his departure. As Boris Johnson said in his resignation speech: “The herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves.”
The best Prime Ministers have many things: authority, charisma and, most importantly, a vision of their utopia. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, the two most electorally successful Prime Ministers in modern history, had clear visions for the country and you were either in the boat or out.
Burnham – rewiring Britain?
The Labour leadership election is not concluded yet, but all the signs point to an Andy Burnham coronation. So, who is he? Burnham has previously run twice for Labour leader and famously lost to Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 by a large margin. Not put off by this setback, he went on what might be the political version of a gap year and reinvented himself as Mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. He is now widely seen as a successful example of devolution done well.
As Mayor, he has, interestingly, shown how a collaborative approach to politics — bringing together a range of local authorities of varying political colours in the name of a shared objective — is a different and, from voters’ perspective, more attractive way to run the country. This has been evident from the way he has governed and is also set out in Head North, the book he co-wrote with Steve Rotheram of the Liverpool City Region.
As a result, his popularity has grown and grown over the last few years and, a little more than a decade after losing to Corbyn, he is setting out his stall for a third attempt to lead the Labour Party and become the new Prime Minister.
The reinvented Andy Burnham, who recently delivered a speech at the People’s History Museum, has developed a clear concept of who he is, what he can deliver, how to reach out to voters and, importantly, the radical change that Britain needs.
His key argument in that speech was that devolution has not gone far enough. To address this, Burnham has said he would create a “No 10 North”, described as the nerve centre of a rewired Britain.
The role of this new department would be to drive a wider transfer of power and funding to mayors and local authorities across the UK. Burnham has announced that it will be led by Caroline Simpson, chief executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and a close ally. She will also serve as deputy chief of staff in an Andy Burnham government. Clearly, key figures at the coalface of devolution will be at the centre of government.
There have even been suggestions that he would not permanently live in the flat above 10 Downing Street. Burnham’s view is that Whitehall and London have too much centralised power and that this needs to be devolved across the country.
He also has a very different idea about the role the state has to play in delivering change. Where Tony Blair essentially continued the Thatcherite approach of seeking non-state solutions to housing delivery through, for example, housing associations and ALMOs, Burnham’s speech was highly pro-council housing and saw him pledge to oversee the biggest council housebuilding programme since the Second World War.
What does this mean for the real estate sector? As the saying goes, “the devil will be in the detail”. A key test will be the extent to which Burnham, as Prime Minister, could achieve fiscal devolution. Setting up a No 10 office in Manchester is one thing; getting the Treasury to loosen the purse strings is quite another. Real devolution would allow areas to benefit from the tax raised through the jobs and growth they create, setting them up in competition with other regions.
Another key test will be what a Burnham government does when a devolved authority does not do what he wants. The subject came up when journalist Lewis Goodall, at LBC, asked the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Steve Reed, what would happen if a local authority says: “We don’t want houses here.”
Until Burnham layers some detail over the vision he set out at the People’s History Museum, we are left with the broad parameters that he has articulated so far: the many examples of his collaborative approach as Mayor and his “Place First” philosophy, where, under Burnham’s “non-negotiable” political direction, MPs are given more latitude to be “authentic representatives” for their communities under a reformed whipping system at Westminster.
There are many questions about how a Burnham premiership would change the country. What is clear, though, is that his decade away from Westminster has caused him to develop a clear and radical set of ideas about how the country and its wiring need to be changed. Delivering that change will not be easy and he faces a country that is impatient to see improvements — and which will want to see those improvements quickly.
Blog by Greg Ford
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