A Welsh Underground Network Analysis
Labour MPs have chosen their candidate to replace Keir Starmer. Senior Labour figures like Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper and Darren Jones have confirmed they will not be running in the upcoming leadership elections, and Andy Burnham’s coronation date is set. Less than three months ago he was a regional Mayor, now he has become an MP and soon he will become Prime Minister totally unopposed. This sudden rise to prominence, the media buzz surrounding him and the fact that very ambitious politicians have stepped aside for him has left many people asking the question: who exactly is Andy Burnham?
Burnham was first elected as the MP for Leigh, a seat that had voted Labour for every election since the 1920s, in 2001. Before then he had taken various research, writing and advisory roles for trade bodies & press outlets, the Transport & General Workers Union (a predecessor of Unite) and several Labour MPs. His maiden speech to the House of Commons covered the history of industrialisation and deindustrialisation in Leigh, and boasted of the economic regeneration that the Blair government’s investment was bringing to his constituency. A few years later he voted for the invasion of Iraq, which he went on to describe as “traumatising on every level” and his “worst experience” in Parliament. During the Blair government he was appointed to various roles to do with health and culture, and he backed Gordon Brown’s move to become PM, calling himself a “Blairite for Brown”. It was after this that he became Secretary of State for Health in 2009 and from that position he proposed a plan for a free-at-point-of-access National Care Service, which was adopted by Parliament in mid 2010 but unceremoniously dropped by the new coalition government later that same year and repealed in 2011.
Burnham competed in the 2010 labour leadership contest, presenting himself as a “unity candidate” that could merge Old Labour “collectivist” and “redistributive” values with New Labour “pro business” and “pro wealth-creation” ideals under the harmonious banner of “aspirational socialism”. The contradictory nature of this ideological platform can be seen in the way he criticised the growing wealth gap between rich and poor while advocating for the abolition of inheritance tax, a measure that places limits on the transfer of large sums of generational wealth. What Burnham offered was clearly not particularly appealing to the Labour Party of the time, as he barely made it through the first round with 8.7% of the vote and was eliminated in the second round with 10.4%.
Over the coalition period Burnham served in the Shadow Cabinet, first as Shadow Secretary for Education and then as Shadow Secretary for Health. Ed Miliband’s resignation following Labour’s 2015 election loss triggered another leadership contest, and this time Burnham was initially considered the front-runner. The appearance of popular left-wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn scuppered this however, and despite desperate attempts to present Burnham as the “credible” and “electable” alternative path to a “radical leftwing vision”, Corbyn won the majority of votes in the first round. In that leadership election Burnham again offered a mixed (some might say confused) approach, promising broadly left-wing economic policies with a scattering of right-wing ones in-amongst them to “win back business support”. Of particular note are his rejection of a mansion tax as the “politics of envy” (again demonstrating his position that people should be encouraged to, as the Blair slogan goes, “admire, aspire, acquire” wealth) and his desire for a “firmer line on immigration” (within a party that at the time was already selling mugs that said “controls on immigration”!). Following this loss he remained in the Shadow Cabinet until 2016, when he stood down to prepare for a bid to become the first elected Mayor of Greater Manchester. Burnham achieved this goal in May 2017, winning the Mayoral race with an impressive 63% of the vote.
A thorough look at Burnham’s nine year tenure as Greater Manchester’s Mayor would be impossible in a short article like this one, but a broad overview of his major policies is necessary. Of particular note is the establishment of a Manchester-wide coordinated bus service in the form of the Bee Network, which now also encompasses trams, commuter rail and bike hire. Passenger numbers on Manchester’s buses are now reportedly increasing at a rate of 14% per year. Pay disputes in which Bee Network staff balloted for and took strike action ended with pay deals won in February and June of this year. Homelessness was also a focus of Burnham’s administration, and though he insisted progress had been made Manchester has fallen short of both his target to end rough sleeping by 2020 and the government’s regional housebuilding target. Burnham’s reliance on charitable giving to bridge the gap in public homelessness services has been criticised by actionists from ACORN the union, who set up a stall outside his Charity Gala to demand that he use his powers to hold developers to account. Perhaps the shabbiest episode of Burnham’s time leading Greater Manchester is the Renaker Scandal where hundreds of millions of pounds in loans, over half the designated fund, have been given to a single developer for building what many feel are primarily high-end and luxury flats. While a court recently dismissed the claim that these loans were unlawful, it “also found there were ‘well founded criticisms’” concerning a lack of “due diligence” shown by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in how they handled the loan approval process. Regardless of the legal questions raised, what is certain is that a wealthy few are set to make huge profits from developments financed with loans of public money. What’s worse, all this is often done with no requirement to build any affordable housing whatsoever. Burnham has opposed giving developers affordable housing targets on the basis that it holds back development.
One of Burnham’s newest policies as Mayor is the introduction of the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate as a new system of higher education and training. The aim of this scheme, summarised by one education analyst, is to “[focus] on [meeting] the skills needs of the… Manchester economy”. Increased investment and attention for technical education is of course desirable, but some aspects of the scheme may raise some eyebrows on the left: in his statements to a Parliament committee Burnham said that it would allow “schools and business[es] to move closer together”, specifically calling out arms manufacturer Raytheon as an example of a company it would benefit. Intended to supplement this educational scheme of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority is the “AI super curriculum” it has launched with the IN4 Group. Another recent development is the Good Growth Fund, a 10 year investment plan intended to “unlock” private capital by helping pay for the upfront cost of new building projects. Critics have pointed out that this scheme may contribute to the concentration of wealth in Manchester’s city centre, that only 2.5% of the initial construction will be social homes, and that it has the potential to accelerate gentrification.
Britain’s right wing press have rushed to brand Burnham as a radical socialist, writing a deluge of articles with titles like “how to protect your money from Andy Burnham”. On the face of it, he is slightly to the left of Starmer, favouring greater public investment in infrastructure and services: better buses, more social housing and a larger social care system. He has gone beyond Starmer’s government in calling for greater public control over utilities, but stopped short of Starmer’s initial leadership pledges for “common ownership”. What exactly “public control” means is nebulous, but if his bus system in Greater Manchester is anything to go by it means private companies operating franchise routes set by local government. The supposed advantage of such an arrangement is that it brings in the “innovation” and “efficiency” considered inherent to private ownership while using regulation to control ticket prices and maintain coverage of less profitable routes. What genuine incentive for improving services exists for a revolving cast of companies bidding for control of natural monopolies is somewhat unclear. The cost for this imagined benefit, of course, is that the burden of paying for corporate salaries and dividends is added to either the ticket price or the government’s bill for investment. Though he has strong words to say about mismanagement of water companies, Burnham himself has said that he only opposes “excessive profiteering”, not necessarily profiteering itself. This kind of public-private partnership sees its fullest expression in the piecemeal privatisation that both the Tories and Labour have carried out in the NHS, since its logical conclusion is that almost every aspect of a public service should be carried out by private contractors. So a Burnham-led Labour party may indeed herald greater investment and regulation, but anyone expecting a sweeping program of nationalisation is going to be disappointed. When a modern Social Democrat expands services, we can expect that they will create new ways for private companies to profit off of that expansion.
Some commenters consider Burnham to be somewhat of a political lightweight, with one speaking of his “tendency to say what people want to hear, duck difficult decisions and change his mind under pressure”, but one issue where Burnham has vocally distinguished himself from much of his party is devolution. Burnham’s speech on Monday talked of a new “No.10 North” office and a plan to “rebalance power” towards a regionalist framework. The media have framed his apparent intention to devolve “control over social housing, welfare and post-16 education” around the goal of “economic growth” in those regions Burnham feels are being left behind. Other areas Burnham wants to see further devolution in are “land value capture, retained business rates and… regional investment strategies”. Not too dissimilar from Starmer and Reeves’ vision, Burnham’s “Manchesterism” programme is one of investment driven primarily by the “proceeds” of private sector investment and growth. Burnham’s own campaign manager admitted that “growth… [in] the city centre” is “why they’ve been able to invest”. The argument being made is that devolving powers enables targeted local investment which encourages economic growth, but one could just as easily make the opposite point that a city like Manchester which attracts private investment grows in prominence and wealth, and thus gains leverage it can use to demand greater devolved powers.
In the past Burnham has expressed a rather different motivation for supporting devolution: a political one. Burnham sees his regional identity as foundational to his political identity, telling the Guardian in 2015 that he’d “never been part of the Westminster in-crowd”. A fellow Labour MP remarked at the time, however, that “all this Westminster bubble stuff is rather ironic because Andy is very much a creature of Westminster”. In a 2017 article for the New Statesman, Burnham explicitly said that his approach to Northern devolution was intended to “give birth to a new, distinctive political identity” and reinvent the Labour Party. Pointing to the example of Welsh Labour, he said that an “enthusiastic embrace” of devolution was “essential” for the process of reinvigorating support for Labour in its “heartlands”. Burnham has previously said that the House of Lords should be turned into a “Senate of Regions and Nations”, and that funding should be redistributed amongst the English regions in the same manner that the Barnett Formula distributes funding amongst the various nations of the UK. What constituency exists that might support such a sweeping federalisation in England remains to be seen, as does whether Labour will follow through on the idea, but Burnham appears to believe that English devolution can win Labour a whole raft of new voters. Given Welsh Labour’s recent Senedd performance, there is ample reason to doubt this.
It is notable that while he once wanted to reform the Barnett Formula, a representative of his campaign told BBC Wales that this no longer included changes for Wales and Scotland. The functional implication of such an amended plan (if it is ever implemented) would be to diminish or outright remove the special status of the devolved nations by elevating English regions to a similar level of power and autonomy. Burnham’s Monday speech hinted at a marginalisation of the devolved parliament, justified by the idea that “the people of Dundee and Bangor feel just as distant from Holyrood and the Senedd as they do from Westminster”. If this is the case, it is news to the 45% of voters in Bangor Conwy Môn who backed Plaid Cymru. Discontent with the Senedd surely exists, but equating it with popular hate for Westminster is missing the specific nature of discontent with the Senedd and the reasons it exists. In particular the National Question, historically of central importance to devolution, is conspicuously absent from this vision. As much as he claims to be inspired by Welsh devolution, Burnham clearly does not understand it very well (a problem he shares with the rest of his party). Viewed from Welsh eyes his plan cannot help but resemble an attempt (conscious or otherwise) to reduce our nation back to the status of a region of England. Loud demands for autonomy in Wales are being met with silence, while a rain of almost unasked-for powers looks set to fall on English heads. This discovery is yet more proof that the British State comes with an English-by-default mindset whether it is federal or unitary. Regardless of Burnham’s platitudes about Bangor, he seems set to be an adversary of Wales.
On social issues, Burnham’s opinions are much more muddled and murky. Though he once had a long and mostly unblemished record on LGBT+ rights he has now stained this with a capitulation to anti-trans campaigners. At first he stated that he opposed the EHRC’s anti-trans guidance, but following backlash he told the press that the guidance should be implemented “in the fairest and most compassionate way possible”. How the segregation of a vulnerable minority out of public life can be achieved by fair and compassionate methods is unclear. For those in doubt that his position on trans people has changed, Burnham said so himself earlier this year. His statement that people should “stop arguing with each other” and “move forward” is a callous both-sidesing of the “debate” which reads more as a demand for trans people to shut up and give up than a plea for unity and kindness. Similar cruel disregard can apparently be found in his position on immigration, since he is reported as supporting Labour’s attempts to limit migration by ending the right to permanent refugee status, removing support for asylum seekers and suspending family reunion visas. The Home Office is now planning to effectively intern many asylum seekers by placing them on military bases where heavy security discourages them from leaving. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood seems to believe that harsh measures are necessary to appease public “resentment” and to prevent it “turn[ing] into something worse. That Burnham is willing to publicly back this effort to make Britain a less attractive place to live for foreigners, done in order to pander to bigots, says a great deal about his character. Far from being a reluctant supporter, he has even stated that he “agree[s] with what Farage is saying” and that “we need to make greater use of detention [centres]”.
Burnham also has a history of support for Israel. When he ran for leader in 2015 he said it would be his first overseas visit as Prime Minister. In the same year he told the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that boycotts of Israeli products were the “wrong response” to illegal Israeli settlements and settler violence, and called the BDS movement “spiteful”. Because Burnham was one of the first Labour figures to call for a ceasefire in Gaza some have expressed hope that he will realign Labour’s foreign policy away from Israel, but his statements during the by-election were non-committal. Notably he has refused to say that Israeli actions in Gaza constitute a genocide, saying “I can’t judge things of that enormity”. A Prime Ministerial hopeful who regards questions of international law and foreign policy as beyond his capacity to understand is a dismal prospect. If Burnham is in need of outside expertise to help him come to a conclusion he could read the UN commission report on Israel’s genocide or the Association of Genocide Scholars statement that Israel’s actions “meet the legal definition of genocide”. It would be immensely surprising if a former member of Labour Friends of Israel who has visited the West Bank genuinely did lack an opinion on Israel’s actions. Perhaps a simpler explanation is that Burnham’s statement was merely a cowardly and clumsy attempt to evade the issue altogether. Whether his vacillation stems from callousness, laziness, insincerity or duplicity it makes little difference, if Burnham is unable to admit the nature of this catastrophe or its origin in the Israeli occupation then there is no real reason to believe he will change course to meaningfully and substantively oppose it.
Perhaps it is uncharitable to judge Burnham by his past words and actions, since after all for much of his career he has been tethered to the line of the famously disciplined and unified Parliamentary Labour Party. As Labour leader and Prime Minister he will have a unique opportunity to pursue his own policy agenda and reshape the Labour party to his own liking. If anything can be used to divine his ambitions in that regard it must be his choice of chief of staff, the person who will facilitate all those dreams and desires. Burnham is reportedly planning to appoint James Purnell. For those not familiar with his work, Purnell is the former chief executive of Flint Global, a lobbying and advisory firm whose client list includes oil companies, weapons manufacturers and tech giants. Like Burnham, Purnell is a former cabinet minister (this time for the Blair government, not the Brown government). Also like Burnham, Purnell was once a prominent member of Labour Friends of Israel (in Purnell’s case the former chair!). Whilst Burnham has said he wants to nationalise Thames Water, a utility firm with an infamously bad record, that same company has been a client of Purnell’s Flint Global. Burnham has tried to cultivate a cuddly left-wing reputation but Zack Polanski has described Purnell as a “tireless campaigner for welfare cuts”. Appointing Purnell would be a very clear signal that Burnham is looking to implement a Blairite or Starmerite agenda, synonymous with the corporatist economic policy his party has pursued for 40 years now. In his recent speech he all but confirmed this, telling the public he wanted to make “fair and lasting” welfare cuts and create a “streamlined state” with a “laser-like focus on growth and regeneration”.
So if we look under the bonnet we see that however it is dressed up, Burnham’s Manchesterism idea, his “business-friendly” and “aspirational” caricature of socialism, is actually very similar to the Labour status quo. It resembles very strongly the Welsh Labour social partnership approach to politics, where the role of the government is to mediate between and provide opportunities for key “stakeholders”, or in class terms to use the state as an intermediary between capital and labour. Burnham seeks to “[rise] above the traditional divide between left and right” by implementing dynamic “reform of the state” in order to “reform the economy” rather than taking a “pro or anti capitalism” stance. By seeking to overcome antagonisms in the community by gathering different class representatives into dialogue within the state apparatus, Burnham is joining the ranks of other “third way” and “third-positionist” politicians whose ideas have been described by allies as “neither left nor right”, like Tony Blair, David Cameron and Oswald Mosley.
For all Burnham’s supposed rejection of neoliberalism, an outline of his core ideological positions is startlingly similar to that of Keir Starmer. Both want to expand public-private partnerships that funnel government money into the pockets of businessmen, and both have a record of betraying vulnerable groups when even lip service support for them becomes politically inconvenient. Their shared focus on growth as a path to regional renewal is an attempt to circumvent the British malaise by tinkering at the edges rather than taking on monied interests and using their wealth to invest in society. A growth agenda is a convenient dodge for Starmerism and Manchesterism because on a surface level it avoids the problem of class antagonism: rather than changing how the economic pie is distributed, Starmer and Burnham believe that it is enough to merely increase its size. This “rising tide lifts all boats” mentality is the makers mark of Thatcherism and neoliberalism on modern Labour’s ideology, which its owners clumsily try to conceal with the aesthetics of socialist history.
Labour under Keir Starmer, faced with corruption scandals, with growing opposition from the left and right, with a failure to deliver on its promise of change, has become extraordinarily unpopular with the public. Labour MPs have a substantial problem to overcome: how can they refresh their public image without abandoning their current policy agenda (which they still largely favour)? Burnham is their answer.
This is a man who appears on first examination to be a Labour outsider but is actually a long-term Labour insider. He was a minister in the previous Labour government, stood against more left-leaning candidates in two leadership elections and has conveniently spent the past decades with his hands clean of Parliament. Burnham is, in short, a continuity candidate who can toe the party line while appearing like a fresh face.
The so-called “socialism” that Burnham advocates for is class-collaborationist, a vision of the working class and the business-owning class cooperating for mutual economic benefit. In doing so it seeks to smooth over and reconcile fundamentally irreconcilable class differences. It solicits support from workers by offering cheaper services and infrastructure, and gains the backing of business owners by allowing them to profiteer off those services and infrastructure. The money for such bribes has to come from somewhere though, someone must foot the bill. As Marx points out in his work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, even someone posing as the “patriarchal benefactor of all classes” “…cannot give to one [class] without taking from another”. Under Starmer, the government has attempted to circumvent this by directing money away from the “undeserving” workers (like migrants and the disabled, those judged to be “cheating the system”) and towards more “productive”, conformist, “deserving” workers.
In the end the Labour Party, beholden as it is to the capitalist media, influenced as it is by bourgeois lobbyists, connected to the working class only by unions ranging from tame to sycophantic, will always mediate these tensions in favour of the ruling class. In the long term any social reform that is either not absolutely necessary for pacifying the working class or ultimately more beneficial to the ruling class will be eroded away or outright scrapped. Unless some total and unexpected transfiguration of the Labour Party occurs (as was attempted unsuccessfully by Jeremy Corbyn) or else a militant working-class movement appears that must be bought off, the best a Labour Prime Minister can offer the working class is minor temporary improvements. In fact the Social Democratic reforms offered by a man like Burnham, with his promotion of Israel and Raytheon, would mean gains for British workers at the direct expense of oppressed workers in Palestine and elsewhere. In the Welsh Underground Network we do not want to see Welsh hands stained with the blood of Palestinian children, or watch our communities be bribed into silence with the spoils of imperial plunder. Improvements to our conditions can and must come from the return of the value that has been forcibly extracted from our own labour, from the end of the exploitative capitalist class.
So a Burnham-led Labour Party may soften some of the government’s policies, but it cannot and will not solve the problems facing workers across Britain and around the world. What is happening with this change in leadership is less a change in direction and more a change of style. Keir Starmer, with his heavy-handed approach and reputation as a liar, has become a liability and needs to be replaced. Thus the “bad cop”, who has been allowed to go “too far”, is convinced to leave the room while the “good cop” enters to apologise for his partner’s behaviour and offer the prisoner a chance to cooperate. Workers should not accept the deal laid out in front of us, we should agitate and organise against it. We deserve better than Burnham and once our class is strong and conscious enough we’ll realise what he offers is nothing compared to what we can seize ourselves.
