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WHEN you say it’s going to happen now, when exactly do you mean?
That was the question posed by Morrissey in The Smiths’s 1984 single How Soon Is Now? Over 40 years later, Andy Burnham posits the answer: tomorrow.
The new Prime Minister is aptly described by Moz’s self-diagnosis of being “the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar”. Despite fighting one of the UK’s most closely-followed by-elections ever, Burnham has kept a conspicuously low profile since emerging as Keir Starmer’s inevitable successor.
Today’s events have brought us a little closer to understanding what a Burnham government will look like, but we are still stumbling, not striding out of the woods.
The big headline-grabber is the pledge to “end rough sleeping”, which the new PM knows from bitter experience in Manchester is easy to promise but hard to deliver .
Elsewhere, there were sketches of other big ideas like a new council house programme, support for young people and a gesture towards creating a “preventative state”, investing in people’s success rather than paying for failure.
This may all be more fleshed out in the heralded 10-year-plan that Burnham teased for later in the year in his Downing Street speech on Monday.
That Burnham has been plotting his ascent to power since last year but still needs more time to unveil his masterplan tells its own story.
But it was a short phrase in his no-notes, no-lectern speech outside No 10 that really gave the game away.
“I can do something to give people some breathing space now, some help with the cost of living,” he said. “And I will set out some of those measures starting tomorrow, including how we pay for them.”
Clearly, he is primarily responding to the demands of the 24-hour news cycle, which have never been greater; the beast must be fed continuously. Starmer’s inability to grasp this was one of his most obvious failings.
But this deferral means we are still largely in the dark about what Burnham will actually do. Will he cut bills, as has been suggested? Both Liz Truss and Starmer tried that in desperate bids to salvage their popularity ratings. The new Prime Minister can ask his predecessors if they found it a successful strategy.
Burnham’s task on his first day was to strike a fresh tone and, within the bounds of Westminster politics, he did that.
His more fundamental task is to change the direction of the UK Government and here, despite the major changes at the top of the tree with the departures of big beasts like Rachel Reeves and David Lammy , that we have the least clarity.
In virtually the same breath, Burnham promises the biggest change to British politics in the last 40 years while committing himself to the straitjacket of Reeves’s fiscal rules.
How can this be possible? Only Andy Burnham knows and for now, the rest of us must wait.
Polling, which shows voters have very low expectations of Burnham's premiership , gives Morrissey the last, depressing word: "I've already waited too long and all my hope is gone."
