Alex Massie in the Times this morning – Andy Burnham needs to end his people-pleasing puffery:
Andy Burnham is a people-pleaser. Like every self-respecting 6 Music dad he wonders why we can’t all just get along. Disagreement appears to pain him because surely we should all be chums? I’m doing my best, he says, so questioning my decisions — and the basis upon which they are made — is unfair and hurtful. Look into these soulful eyes and tell me that they do not shed tears for you….
In this light, Burnham’s performance at prime minister’s questions last week seemed disagreeably revealing. “This is an area for problem solving rather than point scoring,” he told Kemi Badenoch, suggesting that the opposition should really think about helping the government out. Whenever a politician trots out this sort of line, you may be sure that they are arguing from a position of significant weakness.
But it is not rude for the opposition to point out that the burden of delivery actually lies with the prime minister. He wanted the ball and now he has it. That means taking difficult decisions. It means saying “no” to people — most especially to people with whom Burnham sympathises.
Does this prime minister have the minerals for that? I don’t know and I doubt that he does either. Instead, I suspect that he believes circles may be made into squares and that all really can have prizes. In June, campaigning in Makerfield, he said that he believed the Waspi women deserved “recompense” before being reminded that, oops, accepting these baseless claims could cost billions.
Hence too his suggestion that “we do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security”. Except, what if it does? What if it actually is a choice between the state pension triple lock and money for the armed forces?
Burnham says that those on the Labour benches would “not be forced to choose between the two”. But this isn’t much more than wishful thinking. All government is about choices. If the money for defence doesn’t come from welfare it will have to come from somewhere else. So, where?
Perplexingly, it turns out Burnham agrees with Badenoch that the welfare bill has to fall. “That is the right way to fund defence,” he told her, apparently unaware that this means privileging defence over welfare. Which is the opposite of what he’d said two minutes before.
Cuddly politics abounds, however. Defending sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Andy Burnham said, “we will always stand with the underdog”. In the narrow context of people being, as he put it, “bullied out of their homes” this might be one thing but it’s a ludicrous basis for foreign policy more broadly.
More wishful thinking followed as Burnham reiterated the need for a two-state solution. Yes, fine, but how is it to happen? The Israeli public cannot trust any such project and there is little indication that the Palestinians are interested in it either.
They are not alone in that. The people on the streets of London chanting “From the river to the sea” — the people Labour is concerned about losing to the Greens — are not interested in a two-state solution. If they were, that would not be their slogan and nor would they be all-in on globalising the intifada. In the present circumstances, mouthing the same old two-state-solution platitudes is a way of confirming you have nothing useful to say.
Given the decisions he has made so far – notably on the West Bank settlers, where Miliband clearly has Burnham’s support – it’s all about pleasing the right people. Unfortunately these people, as Burnham will soon discover, will not reciprocate that niceness. They’re not cuddly. That’s not how politics works.
Not being Keir Starmer was a good start for Andy Burnham but it’s not the kind of quality that has a long half-life. The prime minister wants us all to know he’s a nice lad, trying his best. The latter is a minimum entry requirement but niceness and pleasing people won’t cut it. “Hope in every heart” is a lovely notion but also one busy wrestling a very small straw man. Everyone agrees nice things are nice. But it’s not enough, is it?
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