Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[crazy canuck]

Thanks for that explanation. 

I understand the bit about factional infighting - but those policy initiatives seem all over the place, and especially if one describes themselves as a fiscal conservative (the 1990's called Starmer to say they want their catch phrase back). Which I suppose is the point you are making.

[mongers]

Hopefully the Lib Dems and the Greens will run low key campaigns in the upcoming by-election, thus encouraging the highest amount of tactical voting against the Reform candidate.

Otherwise those parties risk ushering in a reform 'government' after the general election, because my view is that Andy Burnham is the only possible political leader who can stop Farages's Maga-lite UK bandwagon. 


edit:
And just how stupid us smug Brits on this forum would look, having so long disparaging Americans for allowing trump to get elected?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - I mean I think they are broadly on/from the left of the party.

But I think your point is right. And I think this is the issue and why Starmer could never fix it because it's who he is. There isn't an analysis of where we are, how we got here and where we're going. Because of that there is no strategy. Which means there is no way of communicating those policies or explaining how they cohere. The are just a soft left wishlist and Starmer seems to think he should get rewarded for basically ticking his way through the list - which is not the job of a political leader. As I say I think there could have been something a little like Harold Wilson if Starmer had any political skills and ran the cabinet as a broad church. You could easily have John McDonnell going out and defending that policy mix.

I'd add there was a recent piece in the New Statesman or Spectator calling "Anglo-Gaullism" - which I'll just park as a theme The author was Ben Judah, a special advisor to David Lammy when he was Foreign Secretary. Judah is French and British, very close to Macron's circle and a foreign policy wonk. There's issues with the piece but at the start he basically says that he did not think there were "British" problems in foreign policy but "Tory" problems and then spent twelve months in office discovering that was wrong. But I think that is damning and a reflection of why Labour is in such trouble. I geniunely think that they spent 14 years in opposition and did no deeper thinking than that the Tories were bad and "populist" and Labour would be good and "serious". It was so, so shallow - and why they rallied so much behind a guy who gave off "serious" vibes. I like Andy Burnham a lot, but one of the reasons I think he's interesting is that I think he has done thinking that goes beyond that that is particularly shaped because he's spent the last 10 years in Manchester (and pitches his ideas as Manchesterism). But he's not been so focused on the Westminster Labour/Tory frame but understanding the last 14 years but running a city-region.

I think the fiscal conservative thing is necessary - we need to get our current budget under control even if I think (ideally nationalised) capital investment is also necessary. I think there's an America-brained side here which you see with some of Burnham's backers saying the "bond markets will have to fall into line". That might work if you have the world's reserve currency - it doesn't when you don't, you've got a floating currency and your trade balance is basically massive amounts of imports of goods and massive exports of services. Like every other country in the world except for the US, we have real fiscal constraints. In large part that was what Truss demonstrated (there were other wider considerations) and I think this is the core challenge of British politics right now. We currently have a deficit, we're in the 90-100% of debt to GDP and we're spending more on servicing our debt than we spend on defence or about as much as we spend on education (we are particularly exposed on this for strucural reasons that mean our debt is very exposed to inflation and rate rises - this was great in the 2010s but is expensive now). Taxes are already at a post-war record high and a huge amount of the spending pressure is from triple locked pensions and increases in welfare (particularly disability). It's a challenge and again why I think the tilt left/right dichotomy doesn't work.

[garbon]

I have a question about Burnham. Where has this consensus come from that he is the savior of the nation? I do generally only see positive things about him but I also saw he is a two-time leadership contest failure.

[Josquius]

I have a question about Burnham. Where has this consensus come from that he is the savior of the nation? I do generally only see positive things about him but I also saw he is a two-time leadership contest failure.

Manchester has been doing well, growth out pacing London. I believe he has played good politics there too getting himself very well known with regular local media appearances et al.
The idea is if he could do this for the country it'd be a win.
Also he has in recent years clearly been to the left of where Labour are at the moment and that's what they need.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Manchester has been doing great for about 30 years now; the growth rate has been double that of the UK for much of that time (note that back in the 1990s it was pretty desolate). Burnham is getting some of the credit for that; but it should be stressed that he is building on and continuing success, rather than the creator of that success. At the same time he hasn't screwed up that success in the past 10 years, unlike our national politicians for the past 11 years or so.

The real stars of this transformation were Sir Richard Leese, who led the council from 1996-2021; and Sir Howard Bernstein who was the council's chief executive 1998-2017. Leese was Labour btw, but highly pragmatic....I'd say the success is an illustration of how important strong and consistent leadership can be.

[Josquius]

Post of a FT correspondent:

If Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield by election because he did lots of bus stuff - and I think aside from Covid that's genuinely a source of a lot of his popularity - I will be expecting my peerage in the post 🚌

I do think there's truth in him taking credit for Manchester overall but the Bee network has been solidly under his tenure and that was a good thing (tm).