Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[celedhring]

So, I didn't learn until today that Burnham is Catholic.

300 years ago that would've been enough for a couple beheadings and a protracted Civil War. You guys are losing your touch.

[Sheilbh]

So, I didn't learn until today that Burnham is Catholic.

300 years ago that would've been enough for a couple beheadings and a protracted Civil War. You guys are losing your touch.

A Northern Catholic descending on London - very Pilgrimage of Grace.

Of course, absurdly, technically our first Catholic PM was Boris Johnson... And I Tony Blair was definitely basically a recusant. He had to be told by the Pope to stop taking communion at Westminster Cathedral, had a long private meeting with the Pope in his resignation tour and basically immediately converted on leaving office.

[Razgovory]

So, I didn't learn until today that Burnham is Catholic.

300 years ago that would've been enough for a couple beheadings and a protracted Civil War. You guys are losing your touch.

A Northern Catholic descending on London - very Pilgrimage of Grace.

Of course, absurdly, technically our first Catholic PM was Boris Johnson... And I Tony Blair was definitely basically a recusant. He had to be told by the Pope to stop taking communion at Westminster Cathedral, had a long private meeting with the Pope in his resignation tour and basically immediately converted on leaving office.

How is it you keep getting Catholic prime ministers?  Catholics are like 10% of the country.

[Sheilbh]

How is it you keep getting Catholic prime ministers?  Catholics are like 10% of the country.

I wouldn't read too much into it But generally we're quite religiously plural. So the largest single group is Christianity at about 45% followed by no religion at 35-40%. But obviously that Christian group contains lots. The Catholics are about 7% of the country - but the Church of England is only 12% (and in terms of attendance Catholics definitely have the lead).

Burnham is very much a cultural Catholic - from the most traditionally Catholic part of England, with Irish ancestry (and the most Irish bit of England too). In part it maybe just reflects the fact that Labour (and befor them, the Liberals) were traditionally the party of all forms of non-conformism and their heartlands traditionally overlapped with non-conformist areas. I don't think there's much more to it than, say, Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan were PMs for 12 years of the 60s and 70s and both came from Baptist backgrounds (except that those "chapel" other protestant traditions have largely died outside migrant communities). Liverpool, Lancashire, Irish heritage bits of the North-East and (before the rise of the SNP) Glasgow provide a fairly solid stream of Labour MPs.

I think it's fair to say Johnson's Catholicism (baptised Catholic, confirmed Church of England, third marriage in a Catholic Cathedral) is fairly lightly worn Blair is the outlier in both being deeply religious and a convert.

Although religion doesn't play a big part of our politics (though historically it's absolutely central including in how it's structured). As Tony Blair's spin doctor used to say in interview that threatened to touch on question of faith: "we don't do God". So I think Burnham is culturally Catholic - from a particular tradition - in much the same way as I think Cameron was culturally Church of England and not really a person "of faith" like Blair or Sunak (of recent PMs).

[Sheilbh]

Key thing there though, is go back 50+ years and if you were growing up in a working class family then no matter how talented you were university was likely closed off to you.
These days, despite some challenge and backsliding, we live in a far more meritocratic society.
Odds are if you've got a head on your shoulders then you wouldn't have stayed working on the shop floor and would have gone to uni but instead.

Maybe times will change again. The uni system is screwed up and lots of chatter if you want a decent job in the age of AI to become a plumber.

But when comparing the current crop of adults to those of a century ago we cant forget this.
Talented young people for the past few decades have been herded a certain way.

Yeah - obviously there's been profound changes in the last century. But I think it is worth pointing out the giants of the Labour movement that Starmer is standing on when he's telling his cabinet they're the "most working class ever" because it's nonsense

I'd add two other things. One is that I think there's a bit of an ellision of proletarian and working class when I think they're slightly different. I think Britain in the twentieth century until the 70s was probably the most proletarian society that has ever existed (basically no peasants, tiny fraction of workers in agriculture and huge industrial workforce) whcih those early Labour leaders reflect. It is no longer a society with a significant proletariat, but there is still a working class but the nature of their work has changed.

Given the way that Angela Rayner, and arguably on the Tory side Nadine Dorries who also never went to uni and was nurse before she opened her business, have been covered and discussed in different bits of the press (as a total aside - I've heard that both were, despite their very different politics, hugely popular with their civil servants/departments). I absolutely think there would still be a lot of shock and horror at wild men and women who came from the professions of over half the country in retail, hospitality, care, call centres, transport etc. And I think the absence of those voices is a bit problem in our society - just as the absence of the voice of the more proletarian working class at the turn of the twentieth century was (arguably more so because they're in industries and sectors more difficult to unionise so the unions don't even play that role).

The other point is just around meritocracy which I think is worth handling with care. There's a really interesting study of social mobility in the 50s and 60s which was profound - and the traditional story was often around grammar schools pumping out an incredibly talented pipeline who were able to go to the top. The study basically notes that actually it was not solely but in large part because of the effects of the Second World War - a combination of an expanded state and media, plus the second generation in a row of the traditional elites getting mangled in war, which meant there was space at the top for the talented to break into. I don't think that exists any more. In part because we're in an era of certain forms of social mobility in certain areas/sectors (and particularly for people from London) but also in a lot of other areas like media and politics I think there's actually been a re-ossification. See what I was saying earlier about the family trees within the Labour Party - or the presence of relatively low or unpaid entry roles in a very expensive system, or the general nepotism in those sectors.

The other point is that "meritocracy" comes from a slightly dystopian satire (from that 1950s moment) and part of what it warns about is that meritocracy is pretty heartless, like any other "rational" or "objective" measure. And I think you see this in the discourse of a society. If you truly live in a meritocracy - then people's social position is the position the deserve to be in. They had the chance to rise and didn't. I don't think we are in that frictionless meritocratic world but even if we were I think that thinking has to be rejected and talent and ability is equally distributed including in the 50% who don't go to university.

I also slightly question what that route is selecting for in any event. I don't agree with much that he says nowadays but Blair has a fantastic line that as he got older and more experienced in office he learned to value intelligence less and judgement more. I don't think this is the smartest cabinet ever either - but I've no doubt it's one filled with people (and supported by people) who are fiercely smart and intelligent. I'm not sure they've all been blessed with judgement. I think that goes across many recent governments and actually the infrastructure of the British state, such as the civil service. So even if we did have that frictionless meritocratic society with university as a gateway I'm not sure it would necessarily be providing us with a governing class that have the skills that are important in politics like judgement, communication, empathy, intuition etc.

[Sheilbh]

Sometimes terms make sense. I can't image that turnstile of leaders in the UK helps with voter fatigue and turn out.

For voters, we've only had 3 general elections (rest of those PMs were chosen by party) in past 10 years when if stuck only to terms, should have 2 in a 10 year span?

It still beginning to look a lot Belgium a few years ago.

Never thought to see Belgium leading the way in anything much... 

Just wanted to come back on this as interesting column by Daniel Finkelstein on it last week.

As I say the average term of a British PM is 3-4 years - so on average they don't serve a full-term and we've recently had a period of extraordinary stability between 1979-2007. That is, broadly speaking, the pattern of British politics. I think we often think in terms of thirty year cycles (which I think mainly comes from American politics and a bit of "history started in 1945" presentism) - and there is something there.

But in the history of our system the way it tends to go is periods of stability followed by fairly short dense periods of instability/political chaos - so post-Cameron, Burnham will be our sixth PM in 10 years (including Cameron, our 7th in 16 years). So Pitt the Younger serves for 17 years and we then cycle through 6 ministries in the next 11 years. Lord Liverpool is PM for 15 years ending that cycle, when leaves office there are seven different ministries inn the following eight years. There's a period of stability which ends in mid-19th century when, over 16 years, there are eight different ministries (between five men on rotation). Then in the inter-war years we have five Prime Ministers in 24 months between 1922 and 1924.

In each case there is a change in social, economic and media conditions that cause a political rupture or realignment. The existing party coalitions fall apart and new ones emerge or become possible. The turmoil/instability ends when someone (or some group) emerges on the scene with the creativity, organising ability and political invention/nous to create a new political settlement or alignment. Whether that's the creation of the Conservative Party, the Peelite split from it establishing the Liberal Party, the emergence of Labour or whatever else.

I think we're in that period and I think it's interesting because I think there's a misdiagnosis of it being caused by Brexit, when my read would be that the same economic, social and media shifts that lead to Brexit are also leading to this instability. FWIW I think historically the 1980s was a period when this could have happened but for Margaret Thatcher who reinvents the Conservatives and does the re-alignment from within (I think you'd have seen a breakdown of that party system had it been, say, a divided Heathite Tory Party v very split and drifting left Labour Party. And it is a common question of whether we're in the 20s or the 80s in relation to new parties emerging (Labour and the strange death of Liberal England), or the established ones re-asserting themselves (the rise and fall of the SDP).

I think Boris Johnson was the closest we've had to a leader who could end it in that I think he saw the potential realignment on the right and was able to deliver it politically in the 2019 election. But didn't have the genius necessary to manage those inherent tensions and, I think, because of his character flaws was always doomed to fail in government in a fairly squalid way as he did. I think the question is whether Burnham is the person with those skills to build a new message, a new coalition and take advantage of the kaleidoscope being shaken. I'm not confident - but I think he's underestimated and I think in my view, of the leaders we've had (May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer), him and Johnson are the only ones with the imagination to do it - and I think Burnham doesn't have Johnson's character flaws and has a better more interesting record in government.

[Tamas]

It's hard to argue against Brexit being a big part of it when it has triggered and maintained the PM-swapping momentum right until the pandemic at least.

Sure you can say "it would have happened anyways" but there is no evidence to that.

[Sheilbh]

It's hard to argue against Brexit being a big part of it when it has triggered and maintained the PM-swapping momentum right until the pandemic at least.

Sure you can say "it would have happened anyways" but there is no evidence to that.

I'm not arguing it's not part of it - I think it (temporarily) absolutely ruptures the party system. I'm arguing it's not the cause, but rather that the churn in PMs and Brexit have the same cause. They are both different presentations of the same changes in the underlying economic and social conditions - those previous ones were the emergence of a modern total war state from the 18th century, transition from an agricultural economy, peak of industrial capitalism and the combination of the emergence of a labour movement with consumer manufacturing/products (and, I'd argue, in the 1980s deindustrialisation). I think the key factors in this moment - particularly for Europe - are the China Shock 2.0, the impact of global financial crisis which is stronger in Europe than anywhere else and energy (in different constellations for different European countries). China Shock is less of an issue here than elsewhere but basically our business model broke in 2005-7 and we've still not worked out an alternative.

On "it would have happened anyway" - by 2016 we'd already had the IndyRef at 45/55 and the 2015 election where the SNP won almost every single seat in Scotland (the first red wall to fall was Clydeside), plus the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in the first round and indeed UKIP winning 13% of the vote. I think there were plenty of signs that the traditional party system was fracturing and that new media was changing politics (particularly with Scotland and Corbyn).

But also I think the fact that you see similar political ruptures/turmoil of new parties emerging, traditional parties of government collapsing, political entrepreneurs from Macron to Meloni taking advantage in other advanced democracies. I don't see any reason to think Britain would have been immune to that - because as I say I think there are similar causes around economic, social and media conditions. But it will display differently depending on the national/local context.

[Josquius]

So...Burnham's speech...Sounds good.
He included the bit I wrote at 26 minutes.

The other point is just around meritocracy which I think is worth handling with care. There's a really interesting study of social mobility in the 50s and 60s which was profound - and the traditional story was often around grammar schools pumping out an incredibly talented pipeline who were able to go to the top. The study basically notes that actually it was not solely but in large part because of the effects of the Second World War - a combination of an expanded state and media, plus the second generation in a row of the traditional elites getting mangled in war, which meant there was space at the top for the talented to break into. I don't think that exists any more. In part because we're in an era of certain forms of social mobility in certain areas/sectors (and particularly for people from London) but also in a lot of other areas like media and politics I think there's actually been a re-ossification. See what I was saying earlier about the family trees within the Labour Party - or the presence of relatively low or unpaid entry roles in a very expensive system, or the general nepotism in those sectors.

The other point is that "meritocracy" comes from a slightly dystopian satire (from that 1950s moment) and part of what it warns about is that meritocracy is pretty heartless, like any other "rational" or "objective" measure. And I think you see this in the discourse of a society. If you truly live in a meritocracy - then people's social position is the position the deserve to be in. They had the chance to rise and didn't. I don't think we are in that frictionless meritocratic world but even if we were I think that thinking has to be rejected and talent and ability is equally distributed including in the 50% who don't go to university.

Oh yeah the way the Britain did it and half arsed it was terrible.
What we were aiming for on paper was something like in the rest of Northern Europe where you have viable decent paths for the more and least academic kids. What we did was filter out those who passed the 11+, gave them everything, and threw the others on the scrap heap before they'd even hit puberty.

As in most things it should be a balance. You should get  what you objectively deserve and work for...
But not a single chance when you're a kid then your fate is forever sealed off challenge.
And life for those who don't take the "top" academic path should absolutely still be good, especially for those who put in the effort despite not being academic.

Big problem of course is the same one Imperial China had of the tests on paper being fair and meritocratic but in practice very much skewed in favour of those from families with the resources to intensely prepare for them and against those from more modest backgrounds.

But yeah. We've definitely gone backwards in meritocracy. I think those born around 1970 or so probably enjoyed the peak of it?

[garbon]

I think the jury is still out. Things like we should help high streets, we should build social housing, we should support pubs aren't new ideas. The difficulty is actually getting those done.

[Sheilbh]

There's lots I like in it and with Burnham in general (so always handle my opinion with care ) but particularly around devolution which I think is key. It does cut across the traditional left/Labour preference since the war though and objectives on "equality". I think Burnham's aware of that and willing to make that case though and has literal experience of the other challenges (the cons to those pros) from being Manchester Mayor.

I always think it's worth caveating the social housing point - because we have one of the highest levels of social housing stock in the developed world and are one of the top spenders on social housing already. The social housing stock we're between Denmark and France, in terms of spending we're in a similar place and very close to France.

I think the bigger problem is council v non-profit and whether social housing should be state owned. I think the focus on "council housing" can lead to a bit of jiggery-pokery, so Sadiq Khan boasts of new council homes in London increasing - which is true but it's not new buildings, it's normally councils buying private rental properties at market rates (which I'm really unsure on from a pure value for money perspective). It's a bit like our social housing spend being inflated because a lot of it is housing benefit which can go to private landlords and refers to market rates. But the big picture is the overall cost of building is very high and we don't build enough.

It's a real area of failure for this government that one of their big promises in the election was 1.5 million new homes in this parliament. That would have required doubling the number of housing starts which is difficult but do-able, instead housing starts have fallen by a third and they're on track to deliver 400-500,000 new homes over the course of this Parliament. Regulatory and tax changes by recent governments is part of that (eg double staircase requirement, just as everywhere else is getting rid of it; the new buildings regulator that is taking up to two years to process basic applications and so far seems to be pretty unpredictable etc). But also I think it's one of those areas where in principle Labour went really big on "build baby build" and "backing the builders not the blockers" - in reality, for the UK, that means reducing, clarifying, simplifying the regulatory burden and taking on vested interests like residents' associations - which I don't think Labour have really thought through or built the argument for it, so they struggle.

Also there are positive legislative changes that they are proposing - though I don't think they're big enough - but we're two years into this parliament and they're not on the statute book yet. It's been a very slow process of doing a review, doing lots of consultations etc (a lot of which, intellectually, at least should have been done in opposition).

[mongers]

Am in favour of giving him a couple of months to sort the labour party out, outline his strategy and get his feet (settled) under the (cabinet) table. 

[garbon]

Am in favour of giving him a couple of months to sort the labour party out, outline his strategy and get his feet (settled) under the (cabinet) table. 

I think one shame is that he is just getting the role essentially sight unseen.

[Tamas]

Only having read the very basic highlights, feels like a very standard PM (hopeful) speech from tbe last 10 or more years.

[Sheilbh]

I think the Number 10 of the North stuff is significant, partly because of what he wants it to do - the scope in this Patrick Maguire article below (noting that I think Patrick Maguire is fairly sympathetic to Burnham - from Southport with a name like Maguire, there's a reason he could write that article about the cultural Catholicism of the North-West ). I also think this captures a bit of the contempt which I think is basically snobbery from the Westminster class about Burnham:

Andy Burnham speech was a genuine challenge to Treasury control
The putative prime minister's No 10 North could be the most serious check on the finance ministry's centralised power in half a century


Much of Andy Burnham's agenda has similarities with government policy Temilade Adelaja/Reuters
Patrick Maguire
Patrick Maguire, Chief Political Commentator
Monday June 29 2026, 8.09pm, The Times

Andy Burnham's first big speech as prime minister presumptive was deceptively substantial. Westminster's affronted consensus formed quickly and was, as ever, unflattering. Burnham's critics complain he offered a whole lot of rhetoric, veered rashly into the realm of self-parody — I don't half miss Manchester, me! — and didn't do detail.

We should deal with that first, ever so briefly. Cabinet ministers listening to Burnham address his salivating party from the People's History Museum — the Manchester institution granted custody of one of his jackets in 2022 — were flattered and heartened by what he said. Much of his stated agenda is not a million miles away from what this government is already doing.

But that's the point. You wouldn't know it, because voters — and indeed most of the Labour Party — stopped listening to Sir Keir Starmer a long while ago. In time we can assess the extent to which their judgment is fair, but right now that is the long and short of the reality the party inhabits.

And so the merciless truth is this. Even if that speech on Britain's "broken" political economy had said nothing at all, it would still be a net positive for Labour because it was competently delivered by someone other than Starmer.

Yet it said much more than nothing. Running through it was one bold statement of intent that many heard as self-parodying gimmickry. As soon as Burnham arrives in Downing Street, some of its operations will move to Manchester. He has christened this new satellite campus No 10 North.

To weary ears in Westminster the name alone evokes the image of a roomful of hotdesks in Ancoats with Boddingtons on draught and no obvious purpose beyond the convenient pretext for the prime minister to take an early dart home up the West Coast Mainline on a Thursday. Here, not for the first time, the Burnham brand overpowers all else. No 10 North was, in fact, the most important and consequential thing in the speech.

About halfway in, Burnham paused to acknowledge the intensity of speculation on his choice of chancellor and warned us travelling hacks that he will keep his counsel for the time being. Listen back, properly, and his self-denying ordinance was less significant than it seemed. If it all goes to plan, who exactly runs the Treasury will matter less than we expect because the macroeconomic policy that matters to Burnham will be run out of No 10 North.

Consider its mandate. No 10 North will be responsible for three things. One: the reform and public control of "essential utilities" — water, energy, transport — and the ten-year plan to reduce costs for households and businesses. Two: reindustrialisation via "clusters" of public-private investment in defence, farming, steel and much else and a government procurement policy that prioritises domestic firms. And three: state-led regeneration initiatives and regional growth.

This is not the design for a brass plate on a suite of rented rooms in Manchester city centre but for the most serious check on the centralised power of the Treasury in half a century. Almost unnoticed, Burnham said he would manage his key economic priorities not only from his own office, but outside Whitehall itself. Not since Harold Wilson's abortive attempt to plan for growth over the long term from the short-lived Department of Economic Affairs has a Labour leader stated so unambiguously that the Treasury itself is the problem. When Burnham spoke of rejecting "the old trickle-down model", he was talking about that department's orthodoxy.

So as much of his vision of power sounded diffuse — devolution, a relaxed and charitable government whips' office — that which matters will be concentrated in Burnham's hands. The imprimatur of prime ministerial authority is designed to make all the difference. He will not be the first prime minister to attempt to take back control over growth, industrial policy and regional stimulus from the Treasury. Wilson was one. More recently, Tory governments tried with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Michael Gove's Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

All ultimately failed. James Callaghan, Wilson's first chancellor, set the budgets, not George Brown, the economic affairs secretary. BEIS and DLUHC similarly lacked the power to cash the cheques of their rhetoric and the political interests of the prime ministers in question waned. More than anything else, though, all were plainly the junior partner to the Treasury. As Edmund Dell, once one of its ministers, wrote in his 1996 history of the chancellorship: "If neither department was superior to the other, how would decisions be made in those cases where the two departments had different priorities?"

Time and again the answer to that question has been that the Treasury gets what it wants, or what it thinks it can afford. Not anymore. Just look at what Louise Haigh, who will soon be running Burnham's government, wrote in Renewal, the parish newsletter of the thoughtful left, last month. "There is a reason why no other country in the world has such an imperial finance department as we do. On the other hand, despite ever more presidential politics, we have an underpowered Downing Street, in which the prime minister needs the agreement of the chancellor to push ahead with the priorities on which they were elected."

And there it is. How does a prime minister avoid yet another failed attempt to check and balance the Treasury? By taking control of things himself. No 10 North is not a satellite office but a counterweight. Slipped almost imperceptibly into Burnham's promises of a more permissive whipping regime was this softly spoken but nonetheless pointed warning: "The political direction I set will not be up for negotiation."

That is as much a message to the next chancellor and Treasury officials as it is to the Socialist Campaign Group or Al Carns or whoever else. Devolution has its limits. The levers of economic power that will make or break our next government's priorities will indeed be leaving London. But it's Burnham who'll be pulling them.

One other point that I think matters abou this plan is simple geography. Government loves putting bodies outside of London, or moving them out of London, or setting up regional offices - often motivated by lower rental costs and as regeneration projects. But that means they tend to distribute them everywhere and almost never in other cities that are doing relatively well. So you get the Office of National Statistics in Newport, Information Commissioner's Office in Wilmslow, Treasury 2 in Darlington, big FCDO hub in East Kilbride (legacy DfID which was entirely moved out of London). There may be good reasons for that but one problem with it is that while it's aimed at moving thrings from London it just re-centres London because there's no agglomeration and it's distributing offices not even to second or third cities. It's to places that will never challenge or push. So I really like putting something big and important in Manchester (which is the second city) as I think you'll have agglomeration, add some other departmental offices there and you also start to have a counterweight to London.

One story on Starmer - he apparently wants to become NATO Secretary-General when the job's up in 2028. I'm not sure that's plausible when your defence minister resigned because you weren't willing to spend enough on defence, when your government doesn't have a route to hitting NATO targets (that you agreed to) and when you've consistently disappointed allies by the enormous gap between commitments and pledges and actual material spending. But I think it emphasises the point that I think Starmer genuinely thinks he shouldn't be removed from office because he's good at it

Semi-relatedly apparently the meeting with him and Burnham was "frosty" a lot is centring on the Defence Industrial Plan which Starmer and Reeves have now agreed with the MoD. There was a fight over whether this was a new commitment (in which case the civil service wouldn't let Starmer do it) or existing commitment (in which case it can go ahead). It is still half what the MoD say they need. No new destroyers or frigates (but a new type of ship apparently - which is exciting and a HMS Treasury design definitely won't go wrong), cuts to the refurbishment of MoD homes (in surveys of the forces the single biggest reason people leave the forces) and to cadet programs (cutting off the pipeline) - but some projects and spending increases in other areas. Apparently why Starmer's so insistent on this is because he thinks it's his legacy and wants it before the NATO summit with other world leaders which he really wants to attend for legacy reasons. Again I'm not so sure on the "decent guy" point. I also wouldn't be surprised if this is announced and then Burnham wants to review it again - which is why Starmer shouldn't be doing it, even if it is soothing to his ego.

(Also - as with the very public discussion over who will be Chancellor - a good example of why we don't have "transition" periods and why they're a little problematic in our system.)