Thanks everyone. Great questions, most of which I can’t really answer without a crystal ball. Will Andy Burnham be all we hope? No. Will he be good enough? There is every sign that he will be!
Will this government change stance on the Middle East?
21stCenturyPeasant asks: I accept that foreign policy is a complex area for a government, but it does impact how we can understand ourselves in the world and the pride we can take in our country. I have been deeply ashamed of so much in recent years, from support for the Saudi bombing of Yemen, close involvement with Israel while it trashes Palestinian lives and the supply of weapons to UAE, which end up in Sudan. Can we expect Ed Miliband and Burnham to raise the moral standing of the UK? It is something that would give me a little hope?
Polly says:
Remember back in the day when Robin Cook becoming foreign secretary in 1997 declared his policy would always have “an ethical dimension” with human rights at its heart, to support other nations’ demands for democracy and impose tighter rules on exporting weapons to oppressive governments. It was brave, and it stood as a reminder of the country’s values.
It meant Britain leading on an international treaty on banning anti-personnel landmines. It caused Britain to intervene in Kosovo to prevent an ethnic cleansing massacre - and the adding of human rights to the training of foreign soldiers. But Hawk jets were sold to Indonesia’s oppressive military regime, used over East Timor. Arms deals with Pakistan went ahead, with trade and defence departments determined Britain would still be an arms maker and seller. That’s a cautionary tale about a country with little power or money struggling to be ethical. Blair used the “ethical policy” to justify the illegal Iraq invasion, as removing a dictator and bringing in democracy. Ethics is in the eye of the beholder.
Starmer held out against the US and Israel over Iran. Burnham and Miliband sound as if they will be braver and more outspoken about Gaza and West Bank atrocities. But when faced with a brutish US president who imposes 100% tariffs on a whim, it must be right for a prime minister to try to appease him to some extent to protect the livelihoods of his own people. Taking public humiliation for the team is part of the job sometimes, when dealing with foreign dictators. The Queen drove Romania’s dictator Ceaușescu down the Mall in an open carriage waving and smiling all the way. There is better and worse, but don’t expect purity.
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Is there a case for favouring the release of women prisoners?
sunshinelondon84 asks: Thinking about the early release scheme for prisoners - would it be workable to direct this at the majority of the female prisoner population? Experts have argued for a long time about the impact of custodial sentences on women and their families. Any length of prison sentence can cost a woman her job, home and even her children. Community-based alternatives to custody would deliver better outcomes and help free up places in prisons.
Polly says:
Only 4% of prisoners are women, so it would only make available some 3,500 extra prison places. But yes, most of them shouldn’t be there. They are more likely to hurt themselves than anyone else; one in three in prison self-harm. Only 21% have committed violence, the rest are mainly there for theft and handling stolen goods. Their profile is one of miserable lives, 70% suffering domestic abuse, 82% with mental health problems.
Of course much of this is true of many of the men who shouldn’t be there, in this incarceration capital of Western Europe. Yet still the clamour is for more and longer sentences whenever some particularly dreadful case hits the front page.
Public ignorance deliberately stoked up is to blame: 75% of voters think prison sentences have been getting shorter, when in fact they were lengthened by 37% between 2009 and 2019. These are not truths politicians dare tell. It’s time they did. The right time is now when we are having to let them out early: we should explain that crime in England and Wales is on a long term decline: say it over and over again.Yes, and people on community sentences are less likely to re-offend.
How will the Tories react to Burnham?
Leibowitz asks: 3 polls in a row now with a Labour lead. And a slight rally for the Tories too.
So question: what does Burnham as PM mean for Badenoch in the longer term in terms of her longevity as Tory leader and the future direction? Would a sustained Burnham bounce mean a need to move back from her current MAGA-lite approach in order to win back centre right voters?
Polly says:
Burnham’s bounce is expected - and deserved. How long for? There’s no knowing. But Farage seems to be sinking ( Go, Binface! Go!) but his history of rebounding should make us wary.
What’s interesting is a very small rise in support for Kemi Badenoch, suggesting they are not dead yet. But she is making serious blunders. Here we are amid heatwaves and forest fires, climate crisis right here and now, yet she chooses this moment to decree a bar on any candidate who supports net zero. Voters support net zero overwhelmingly, as does even a majority of her own voters. Only Reform voters are opposed. But her stance is far more likely to send away her own backers than to entice Faragists.
She lacks any sense of where her party should be on the political spectrum. As Labour inches a bit leftwards, a bigger gap opens up on the centre right. She should be alarmed that the left of centre bloc is outvoting the right bloc: only traditional conservatism can beckon back those lost to lib dems to tilt the balance in the right’s favour. .Yet she appears to have no instinct for her party that once included One Nation Tories, almost all gone now. She has no notion that Brexit has done her party immense harm, as the majority come to see it as a disaster. It seems likely that the Tories can’t win again until they confront what they did to the country, and those responsible are no longer in the driving seat.
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How far will Burnham be able to keep his promises?
SonOfTheDesert asks: Given that nothing in this world ever turns out quite as intended, and that good intentions in politics are always hit by unforeseen misfortune, which of the commitments that Burnham has made so far do you think is most likely to fall by the wayside between now and 2029?
Polly says:
I think I will answer your question the other way round, if you don’t mind. Which of his good intentions will he keep? There may be a lot of wishful thinking involved in my answer, because I am making the most of this no doubt brief time of hope and optimism.
By the time of the next election he will have devolved power and created more mayors to cover every area to make sure it reaches everywhere. Unfortunately this does not much engage the public, who are pretty clueless on who does what anyway. It won’t always have good results, as Reform run many councils: governments lose local power the longer they are in office. But there may be a magic in his Manchesterism that ignites a new enthusiasm for the local: people might actually bother voting for their councils when they see it makes a real difference who wins.
The school curriculum will at last begin to cater for the half who don’t go to university. Drive out the last remnants of Gove drudgery, the meaningless grammar for nine year olds, bring back arts, sports, design and technology, drama and critical thinking. Listen to what children say inspires them. FE colleges can expect a well-deserved upgrade in status. Might their teachers soon stop being paid so much less than school teachers?
He will keep within the mistaken manifesto commitments, but find escape clauses. He can borrow far more to spend on capital projects that bring jobs and investment. He can raise new taxes, such as defence bonds to pay what we must facing new threats. He can equalise capital gains and income tax. He can block off tax havens.
Above all, make or break for many of his supporters, he will start on electoral reform: proportional representation will be in the next manifesto, come hell or high water.
How far can Burnham hope to control the narrative?
SimonJE asks: I’ve been impressed by the change in quality of the communications so far. I have two questions:
1. What can he do to reduce the briefings/leaks that plagued Starmer’s government, or do you think he already has a semblance of control over them?
2. Do you think there is a risk to his more relaxed approach to interviews in that his tendency for off the cuff or casual remarks could come back to haunt him, and if so what can he do about it?
Polly says:
It’s not the communications that changed, it’s the great communicator. It’s not the words, it’s the sentiment and determination behind them. Keir Starmer’s dull delivery didn’t matter: the lack of underlying passion and purpose did.
Briefing? It will go on, forever. Because you never know who that mystery “senior source” is, it can never be challenged or chased down. The PM can storm about it, but the 24-hour hungry media will flam up what the door man said, for lack of anything else. Or plain make it up sometimes ( Never the Guardian, only the hostile media).
Who told the FT that Shabana Mahmoud would be Chancellor? Now that rightly revered reliable newspaper really would only take it from a reliable source before they put it on their front page. There are suspicions it was a deliberate Burnham camp plant to mislead, but who knows? No governments are free of leaks, and sometimes they do it themselves.
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Can Burnham maintain his momentum?
senoj1 asks: Do you think Burnham has enough momentum, resilience, and mental capacity to ‘change the rules of the game’, or will the relentless intensity and pressure of being PM dealing with ‘events’ overwhelm him.
Is constitutional change going to be relegated again - the right calling it ‘introspective navel gazing’ - and therefore zero votes or public approval. When I actually think constitutional change is the most important thing - and the cheapest too. Change the rules - make it more collaborative, all parties have to compromise and adapt their policies.
Does he need help on this from journalists, commentators, independent guests on QT and the like?
He’s started out trying to devolve power and rebalance the UK (No. 10 North) and the pilloring on costs, waste and ‘he’s just looking after himself going to Manchester. Why is it not in Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Leicester, Sunderland etc etc’...is just ridiculous.
Polly says:
These are the great questions of the moment. I know now the hard way that you can never tell until too late how a PM will turn out: how resilient, how brave, how determined? I thought Gordon Brown would arrive with a fine blue print for doing things differently, for radical change, after he had champed at the bit – and bit Blair – for so long. His first weeks were fine, dealing well with a foot and mouth crisis. But he turned out to lack the backbone to force through things he had hinted at. He really did “save the world” with Alistair Darling in the bank crisis, but by then it was too late to save his reputation. I thought Keir Starmer was a good fit for Labour after the chaos years post-Brexit. He turned out to lack the capacity to explain any direction and purpose. The degree of his unpopularity remains a mystery to me: I hope this isn’t now the fate of every PM in a politician-hating era.
Burnham has started out with the boldest of statements: an end to neo-liberalism, he says, an end to the long 40-year Thatcher hegemony. Really? Quite possibly that era is over, her privatisations now generally seen as a disaster ad he is the one to reverse her depredations.
As for Manchesterism, I think he means it to apply to everywhere but London….which may be a problem when Labour has so many London seats.
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Is electoral reform before the next election possible?
Magnesium asks: As Burnham appears to be an advocate for electoral reform, I am wondering if he will be able to bring this about before the next general election. Do you think this is possible?
Polly says:
Burnham has always been a strong supporter of proportional representation: he delighted a rally for it at the last Labour conference with a rousing speech. He has always said it needs to be in the next manifesto. That requires him to set up a national commission to lay out the facts, to persuade voters, already a majority in favour but hardly a high priority. You can rely on the Tories and possibly now Reform, to put up the same dishonest arguments against as they did in the AV and Brexit referendums. Will he invest the political capital in this when so much else is higher up the list of public concerns? One advantage is that it costs nothing, and Lords reform might be a saving.
This would be by far the most lasting legacy, if he can pull it off. If it’s in the manifesto, the right will make it the key electoral issue, a fight to the death for them, never again in power alone. That’s risky. But it must be done. No more empty, loveless landslides on 34% of the vote….
Can Burnham really transform social care?
Hammerhead72 asks: Polly, do you believe there is a genuine and sincere cross party consensus to fix adult social care? Can you see a policy or approach that could actually be agreed upon by all parties? Would it be political suicide for whoever brings forward a serious and workable solution without cross party support?
Polly says:
All my journalistic life I have been writing will-they-won’t-they articles on reforming social care, with dozens of reports, reviews, commissions ending up in the long grass. I am pretty certain Burnham means it to happen this time. As health secretary he had a joint committee with all parties ahead of the election in 2010, but at the last minute Cameron pulled out the Tory members, u-turned and dubbed Burnham’s idea for a universal insurance system paid on retirement a “death tax” – pure cynicism and opportunism. Then in 2017 Labour under Jeremy Corbyn did exactly the same to a similar plan Theresa May put in her manifesto, forcing her to retreat from Labour dubbing it a “dementia tax”. True May’s plan was less good, but Labour didn’t devise one in its place for its manifesto: Corbyn did well in that election.
So it has been regarded as an electoral live rail, not to be touched since then, with promises made by every new PM rapidly dropped. Burnham has never let go of his plan, as he has seen what a disaster the present scheme is, taking up 78% of local authority budgets to provide often bad social care. Louise Casey’s review can be guaranteed to come up with something on the lines of his plan: everyone with assets pays in a lump sum on retirement (or a lien on their property), a sum far below what they might have to pay if they needed care for any length of time. No-one risks losing everything, everyone pays something, an NHS mutuality principle.
Now comes the great question. Can Burnham persuade people this is in everyone’s interest? One in seven families pays £100,000 or more, one in three spend a great deal. This is an insurance against that happening to anyone. Can he sell it on the basis of the grotesque unfairness of the present random system where fate decides who pays ruinous sums? It’s a lottery and too many persuade themselves it will never happen to their family – but it does. This is the real trial of his strength, and his power. He may get Lib Dem and Green backing if he consults with them, but will get nothing but dishonest threats from Farage and Tories. This is his personal trial, something he has always believed in.
Can’t we give Burnham a chance?
Hojipo asks: Can we just agree that Burnham’s not perfect but a damn sight better than anything else we’ve had in the last God knows how many years?
Polly says:
Oh, thanks for something positive! Life on the left is mostly a littany of woe. Over two thirds of my lifetime has been lived under Tory governments, election night after night ending in yet more gloom. Why do they keep doing it, British people! What’s the matter with you all? Then you pick yourself up and try to work out what went wrong, and how to do better next time. So when we get days of hope, make the most of it. Rejoice! No, I’m sure Andy Burnham is not the messiah. I am sure he will disappoint and probably enrage a great many people on his own side because basically, only a party of one, ourselves, is ever going to be totally satisfactory.
Right here, right now, Burnham looks pretty good. Long may it last. But you only have to look at the barrage of bile from the rightwing media to see what he’s up against.
I tell people of the left to always read the Daily Mail once a week, even you have to pick it out of a bin. To those for whom the Guardian or the BBC is the most right wing media they ever see, just keep looking at the real enemy, the billionaire owners who command the airwaves from Musk to Murdoch, to know you have to get behind whoever is best placed to ward them off and keep them out of power.
Will Burnham tackle donations and influence in politics?
Theoldsceptic asks: Can Burnham do more to prevent people like Reform donor Harborne from trying to buy the next election?
Polly says:
I admit I am stumped on this one. It would be so easy for an incoming Labour leader to proclaim their honesty but cleaning up the filth by taking money out of politics. Farage’s monstrous £5m bonanza contaminates all parliament. A convicted fraudster and a crypto-gambler among Farage’s donors just adds to public scepticism about of Westminster as the big stink. Burnham could set a cap on all but modest political contributions.
What did the crypto billionaire appear to get for his donation? A Reform Uk policy that promises a “cryptoassets and digital finance” bill to cut crypto capital gains tax to 10% and create a Treasury bitcoin reserve fund, allowing taxes be paid in crypto.
Starmer’s weak bill only capped foreign donations at £100,000. Darren Jones defended it unconvincingly, claiming, “We’re cracking down on those trying to buy- and sell- our democracy.” Hardly, when peerages are bought and sold: a £3m donation can more or less guarantee ermine. Transparency International found that 66% of private donations in 2023 came from just 19 individuals.
So why not? Why hasn’t Labour done it? It would need the state to fund political parties, which is a highly unpopular in polling. Untrusted politicians would have to persuade people that funding by millionaires is worse than subsidies by taxpayers. There’s a fair way to do it: let voters tick a box on their ballot papers allocating their share of funding to whichever party they choose: that helps new parties.
The other reason is the unions, key Labour funders. These reforms would have to include only allowing individual unjon members to allocate their contributions. It would mean less money – but it would stop union leaders using union funds as a threat The party’s biggest donor, Unite, has voted to cut its national funding by 40% to force Labour to pay up in the Birmingham bin strike. It does Labour’s reputation nothing but harm. But this would wrench at deep union roots, where their money buys seats on Labour’s National Executive Committee and votes at conference. Burnham has said nothing on this one.
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Burnham knows how to connect with the public
bobby31: Burnham, unlike Starmer, knows the importance of symbolism in politics. Hence his first decisions to send a signal to tackle the cost of living crisis. Compare his £2 bus fare with the WFA debacle of Starmer. Furthermore he seems to know that opinion is formed as much in pubs and clubs as on MSM or social media, hence his move on the reduction of rates for those establishments.
Polly says:
The wonderment of Burnham’s first week has the rainbow array of pleasing policies showered on us in such a short time, - and more to come all this week. He always had a natural political talent, an instinct for how people think and feel, but right now he has one great advantage. Look at the serial early blunders of Starmer and Reeves and do the opposite. He rightly calls this confetti only a down payment on what is to come. These are small sums – though parliamentarians on the Tory/Reform benches who sniff at £45 off an electricity have no idea what counting every penny at the checkout means. £1 off bus fares looks a lot more if you and teenage children have daily return fares. But above all, yes, it’s the symbolism that matters, a lifting of spirits in contrast to the gloom and doom warning of Starmer’s first days.
Polly is live
Polly Toynbee is online now answering your questions about Andy Burnham’s first week, electoral reform, symbolism in politics and more.
Welcome to the Conversation
Andy Burnham has been prime minister of the UK for a week, during which time he has announced a slew of policies as he makes his start on shaping Labour’s narrative for the next three years in government.
From re-introducing a £2 cap on bus fares in England (and providing funding for the devolved governments to follow suit), via a VAT cut to energy bills, to confirming a 20% cut in business rates for hard-pressed hospitality firms such as small live music venues and pubs, Burnham has attempted to demonstrate that he knows cost of living pressures need to be addressed.
He has also launched No 10 North to spearhead his plans to, as he put it in his article for the Guardian, “accelerate devolution” by “taking power down and placing it in the hands of people who can use it best”. And he has revived the national econonomic council, first set up in response to the 2008 global financial crash, arguing that economic growth requires the same level of urgency, focus and collective action.
Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland in his latest piece wrote that Burnham’s first week as PM, and his tenure as mayor of Greater Manchester, suggest he understands that politics is a retail business, and voters need to see something that is “immediate, tangible and uncomplicated. Everyone understands a lower energy bill or, indeed, a cheaper bus fare”.
The Guardian’s editorial broadly welcomed the announcements so far, noting that “they were cleverly indicative ones, nodding empathetically to people’s need to have the chance to enjoy themselves as well as pay the bills”.
But in his piece yesterday, former senior Labour adviser Tom Baldwin cautioned that, if Burnham was to succeed with his policy agenda, he would still need friends in the fourth estate, noting that “one of his closest advisers in No 10 acknowledges the current good vibes will inevitably fade, and indicates his team are preparing for tougher times ahead”.
Are any of these policy announcements changing your views of Labour? Which aspects have caught your eye? Is he moving in the right direction, in the right areas, and fast enough? Will the change of leader and (some of) the cabinet prove to be enough to fend off Reform UK, and to win back voters from the Greens and elsewhere?
What of the new(ish) cabinet; do Burnham’s appointments of John Healey as chancellor and Ed Miliband as foreign secretary inspire? And will ministers seen as most loyal to Burnham’s predecessor who are now sacked cause problems for him?
Here, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee answers your questions on the new prime minister’s first seven days in power, and what next lies in wait for him – and us. Post your questions below now.
In the meantime, you can catch up on the latest with the politics live blog.
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