OPINION – ESTHER KRAKUE: He’s debasing himself and his party and it won’t even work!
Andy Burnham hasn’t even walked through the door of Number 10 and he’s already found time for the one subject over which Britain wields almost no influence. In a three-minute video released this week, the incoming Prime Minister apologised for Labour’s early handling of Gaza, admitting the party “didn’t get it right” under Keir Starmer and vowing to do better. There was a tick-box line about antisemitism somewhere in the middle, before he returned to burnishing his credentials on Palestine with talk of fresh sanctions and possible trade bans. His complaint, apparently, is that Labour should have demanded a ceasefire sooner.
Yes, because that’s how global politics works. The UK issues a demand and the political architecture of the Middle East bends to its will. If only Keir had asked earlier, the whole thing might have been sorted by October 8. Why he really said it isn’t much of a mystery. The voters Labour haemorrhaged to the Greens and Jeremy Corbyn’s scattered mess of ‘Your Party’ over Starmer’s stance are who Burnham wants back, and this was his opening bid for them. It won’t work.
Within hours the Greens were demanding he use the word genocide, and Your Party wanted a full arms embargo and a public inquiry. He’ll never go far enough for them, because someone will always shout louder. That’s what happens when you try to outflank jobless student activists. It’s a lose-lose game long-term.
I’ve no interest in sermonising about which side of this war Burnham ought to take. It’s a complicated and genuinely gut-wrenching conflict, and appalling numbers have died on both sides. But for the love of God, why this? Of all the fights he could have picked for his debut, and with all the problems facing the country, why is this the thing our leaders fixate on?
Economic growth – where any can be found – is limping along at 0.9% over the year. And output actually shrank in April. Public finances are in a sorrier state, with borrowing in the first two months of this financial year around £8billion above what the Office for Budget Responsibility had budgeted for. Debt now sits at 95% of GDP, and we’re spending roughly £110billion a year just servicing it – more than the entire defence budget.
You would think that’s the sort of thing that would keep a Prime Minister up at night, rather than the wording of a video about the Middle East.
Unemployment too looks no better, with recent figures hovering near a five-year high, and vacancies falling to their lowest level in the same period. This is undoubtedly the result of Rachel Reeves’s disastrous tax hikes. But rest assured, Team Burnham has that under control too. When he’s not waxing lyrical about Gaza, his team is bandying about names like Yvette Cooper and Ed Miliband to potentially be the next Chancellor.
Quelle horreur! Is Labour’s talent pool so shallow that they really have no choice but to consider two individuals with over three decades in politics under their belts have no achievements to speak of? What a sorry state of affairs.
Then there’s energy, where the daftness reaches a whole new level. The price cap jumped 13% at the start of July, pushing the typical annual bill to £1,862, and millions of households are heading into another winter already buried in energy debt.
Britain buys roughly 70% of its imported gas from Norway and has done for most of the last quarter-century, while sitting on the very same North Sea basin the Norwegians are busily exploiting. Two decades ago, our two countries produced roughly the same amount. Norway now pumps out more than three times as much, handed out 57 new offshore licences in January alone, and shows no sign of stopping. We keep a windfall tax on the books and a ban on new exploration and watch our own production wither.
And finally, there’s defence. Burnham takes over a budget stretched thin at a moment when no amount of moral positioning on other people’s wars will pay for the kit we actually need.
Say what you like about Starmer – and there’s a lot to say – but he at least had the mandate of the British public behind him. Burnham can’t claim anything of the sort. After over a decade away from Westminster, he clawed his way back in through a by-election engineered by kicking out some poor sod from his duly elected seat. And now he’s set to head up a hodgepodge of virtue signalling and tone-deaf policies.
I’ll be surprised if he lasts the year.