Burnham’s encounter with political and economic reality will be brutal when it comes
This is turning out to be a very strange summer indeed, and I’m not referring to the football. This week, a Prime Minister with no power will attend the NATO summit in Ankara and next week, a Chancellor with just days left in the job will tell a City crowd at the Mansion House banquet all about a dying government’s plans for financial services.
While these place-holding office-holders play the role, real power is building around Andy Burnham, a man pretending not to have made any decisions about who will be in his cabinet. In public, Burnham tells us that he’ll abandon “point scoring” and that he’ll “do politics differently.”
I’m old enough to remember David Cameron promising exactly the same thing. But guess what? Politics is a fight. It’s a constant battle – and so it should be. Arguing, probing, skirmishing and attacking is what forces politicians to defend their decisions and advocate for what they believe. Burnham might lay down his weapons but his opponents won’t.
The battle isn’t simply between different parties, either. Keeping a cabinet and several hundred MPs in harmony is often the biggest battle of all, but Burnham pledges an “inclusive” government, representing all wings of his party from the far-left to the neo-Blairite. Good luck with that!
His first big test? The Autumn Budget
The PM-in-waiting is currently luxuriating under very little scrutiny and with everyone around him eager for a role in his new administration. He’s been a professional politician his entire life and witnessed the Blair/Brown death struggle up close. He cannot possibly believe that he alone will tame the political instincts that have shaped Westminster for centuries and lead a government that runs on consensus and good will. He is, therefore, simply saying what he feels the public wishes to hear.
The laws of politics will reassert themselves the moment he encounters his first band of rebel MPs, holding out against a piece of welfare reform or standing opposed to some changes on immigration policy. The laws of economics are equally unforgiving. Confidence in key sectors has crumbled, growth is spluttering, the tax burden is too high, the bond market is nervous and he’s drawn up an expensive wish list of ambitious policies.
He will doubtless enjoy September days at Chequers and he’ll have a good party conference season, but then the nights will draw in and he will have to face his first major encounter with political and economic reality: the Autumn Budget.