The Burnham bounce shouldn’t come as a surprise

Good morning.

Labour is enjoying a modest surge in the opinion polls which will give succour to activists and MPs. But they shouldn’t get carried away just yet. Some thoughts on that below.

Rhetoric vs reality

There are two reasons why the Burnham bounce shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Firstly, new prime ministers always enjoy a small uptick in popularity which fades after a few months as they start having to make difficult decisions. 

Secondly, the mounting questions about the finances of Nigel Farage and Reform UK appear to be damaging that party’s reputation. 

The passing of the baton from Sir Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham seems to have gone relatively smoothly as the latter offers a new start for a shaky Labour administration. 

And yet, there was something quite odd about the latest transfer of power in Downing Street and it took me ages to put my finger on it. And then I realised: it is the abject public indifference.

Opinion polls are (in aggregate) now putting Labour just a whisker behind Reform UK, which had been leading by 12 points last November.

Labour folk are starting to believe that Reform is beatable and they still stand a chance at the next general election. And that improved morale could create a virtuous cycle for the party, for a while.

Burnham has been talking a big game about bringing change, and claiming that his arrival as PM marks a historic turning point. He wants to represent the “change” that the people appear to be crying out for. 

His net approval rating seems to have jumped in the past few days, according to Public First.

But I’m not sure Labour’s improved polling tells the entire story about the wider public mood.

What I’m picking up from people outside Westminster is a sense of ennui and disinterest about the latest personnel change.

Partly the answer is that with seven prime ministers in a decade, people are struggling to get excited by yet another change. Many have turned away from news more generally. Some are uneasy about Burnham’s lack of democratic mandate.

But there is another factor. What if people just instinctively realise that the replacement of one Labour prime minister with another Labour prime minister may not move the dial that much? 

Burnham talks as if he represents a tsunami of change. He speaks in revolutionary terms about ending neoliberalism and creating a major historic pivot point. 

Yet it is still not clear what that will consist of, despite his talk of having a major transformative plan.  

People say they want change. But not everyone wants the same change.

Some want the impossible, such as better public services funded by lower taxes.

Many people are primarily worried about their day-to-day lives and the rising cost of living. But others are concerned about threats such as AI and climate change.

So the change offered by Burnham will please some voters, displease others and be ignored by many more.

Maybe the widespread public agnosticism about Westminster’s recent drama is that people think Burnham *probably* does not represent radical change from his predecessor. 

Keir Starmer was a “soft left” centrist socialist who wanted better rights for workers, more clean energy, greater devolution, a “pro-business” stance (in theory) and a broadly internationalist approach. So too does Andy Burnham.

There will be differences in style, delivery, emphasis and — here and there — on some policies.

Maybe social care will be the big policy area where Burnham will use his political capital to do something big and bold and new. And yes, while Starmer promised the biggest devolution programme for decades, Burnham will go further.

But if you want a truly clean break, is there much evidence that it’s happening yet? It’s not hard to spot the already yawning gap between rhetoric and policy.

In case you think I’m being unduly cynical, here are a few examples:

Rough sleeping

The promise: Burnham pledged in his first speech as PM that he would “finally end long-term rough sleeping across the UK” at the earliest opportunity. 

The small print: the new prime minister is allocating an extra £340mn to an existing fund for homelessness, taking the total to £3.9bn. This is significant but not necessarily transformational. 

Council housing

The promise: Burnham has explicitly promised the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period. He has implied that he would bend the existing £39bn 10-year social housing scheme entirely towards councils.

The first problem is that many councils haven’t built homes for decades, and most new social housing is now built by housing associations. The second is that council housing is more expensive to build. You get fewer homes for each £1 compared with other tenures such as “affordable rent”. So switching entirely to more council homes would either mean 1) fewer properties get built; or 2) you need to find billions of extra cash. 

The small print: Perhaps this is why Burnham has already, quietly, watered down his promise. At his acceptance speech a fortnight ago he promised more “council and social homes”.

Cost of living crisis

The promise: Burnham will remove VAT from domestic energy bills from October, saving £45 a year for each household. He is introducing a £2 cap on single bus tickets outside London. 

The small print: Starmer had already introduced a larger package of cost of living measures, cutting up to £150 from average household energy bills in the last Budget. He subsidised 1.5mn households reliant on domestic heating oil. Starmer froze rail fares for the current year and extended the freeze on vehicle fuel duty.

Were the public grateful? You already know the answer.

Now try this

I’m heading to Greece soon and my stack of holiday books includes yet another Graham Greene, this time The Human Factor. I’ll also be listening to podcasts including Adam Buxton, Louis Theroux and The Rest Is Entertainment.

Books I’ve read recently and would recommend for holidays include You Are Here by David Nicholls, Flesh by David Szalay and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.

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