Andy Burnham is raising hopes and expectations. Socialists should welcome that, argues Mike Cowley.

The conservative right’s choreographed response to Andy Burnham’s ascent to the office of Prime Minister has been predictable in its performative hand-wringing. Burnham will drag us back to the 1970s warned the Daily Mail, pitchforks at the ready, cautioning against a period when relatively strong union bargaining power maintained narrower income and wealth inequalities.

Less expected has been a concerted lapse into doom-mongering from sections of the left. Recalling Burnham’s previous association with New Labour, his vocal support for the Israeli state and the invasion of Iraq, the editorials of the ultra-left press, as well as online chatter, have competed to denounce Burnham and all his works before he has a foot in the door of 10 Downing Street.

Burnham’s political history is of course not one to give the socialist left much cause for comfort. Burnham has indeed been a strong supporter of the Israeli state and member of Labour Friends of Israel. Even the most forgiving of us would be hard pressed to salvage much to commend from previous iterations of brand Burnham.

But any response too eager to resist expectations in what is being sold by Burnham as a “circuit-breaking” political moment seems to me to have broken from rudimentary socialist principle. Firstly, things change. People do, too. Tony Benn began his political life on the right of the Labour Party. By the time he stepped down as an MP to “spend more time in politics,” Benn had moved decisively to the left. In particular, his work around the Chesterfield Conferences sought to empower Labour’s rank and file by linking the Party to extra-parliamentary campaigns.

Burnham is no Bennite. But the principle stands. Of course, the extent of Burnham’s shift will be revealed in time. But if we aren’t convinced of the capacity of human beings to change their minds in the light of material experience, we may as well pack up our bags and vacate the trenches. The war of ideas is already lost. Socialists who refuse to recognise a crack in the Overton window have in practice given up on transformative change altogether.

Secondly, it is perhaps a measure of the left’s crisis of confidence that so many voices appear fixated on the limitations of a single political leader. Burnham is neither the messiah nor a very naughty boy. More prosaically, he has come to office promising a break with mass privatisation, a return to public ownership, and a redistribution of political power. Internally, Burnham has committed to a party culture more comfortable with debate and dissent. We should call Burnham’s bluff. When did sections of the left become comfortable with political pessimism?

Yes, Burnham should be judged on deeds, not just words. His apparent warming towards the exploitation of the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil fields and appointment as Chancellor of John Healey, the party’s own Dr Strangelove, are both red flags. On the other hand, some of the biggest hitters (and worst offenders) of the Starmer period – Lammy, Reed, Reeves – have been directed to the backbenches.

In emphasising the corrosive impact of Thatcher’s assault on society, the new PM says out loud something left economists have been at pains to stress for decades: that unregulated economies don’t only fail to provide the effective and just delivery of public services. By outsourcing essential utilities to profiteers, successive governments also extended political power to the worst forms of extractive capital.

In insisting on the political asset of hope – a carbon element essential to any progressive project – Burnham has chosen to raise expectations rather than to suppress them. Fundamental to the Labour Together mission – now rebranded as Think Labour and desperately trying to hitch itself to the Burnham bandwagon – was the suppression of public expectation. Any serious war of position demands a seizing of the political optimism available to us, shorn of illusion but determined to make the most of the opportunities history affords us.

In Scotland, Burnham’s emphasis on devolving power will be welcomed by those committed to using the full powers of the Scottish parliament to redistribute wealth. Devolution has hit an impasse. With barely over 50% of the electorate voting in May’s Scottish general election, and with most candidates drawn from professional political backgrounds, the parliament’s founding principles have long been consigned to memory.

Sean Griffin’s Remaking the British State remains a key document in addressing the archaic institutions of a British state engineered to prevent radical social change. It points the way to the redistributive benefits of federalism. Burnham’s commitment to further devolution is an opportunity to revive the best democratizing impulses of the 1998 settlement.

The Scottish Executive Committee is currently embarked on a series of online regional reviews of the Party’s electoral performance. Empowering members and affiliates to contribute a critique of the Party’s performance and the opportunity to agree outcomes would have been embraced by a dwindling membership (less than 12,000, with many CLPs redundant husks). But the review has no such plans. Not only is it bereft of any democratic decision-making character, it studiously ignores the elephant in the room. Namely, why are Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie still in situ?

The Scottish Labour Party’s leadership enjoyed complete control of the Party apparatus, manifesto, election narrative and candidate selection in the lead up to May. As a consequence, they are the principal authors of the Party’s worst result since the parliament’s founding. The Scottish labour movement desperately needs a comradely and composed discussion about how best to squeeze Holyrood’s devolved levers to maximise wealth distribution. A debate about Party democracy and what role members can play in the further devolution of powers throughout the UK is overdue. But to have that conversation, Sarwar and Baillie must quickly follow Keir Starmer out the door. Only under a new leadership which better reflects the politics of the membership – pro-Palestine, pro-wealth taxes, pro-just transition – can we feel confidence in the SLP’s ability to take advantage of a Burnham bounce.

Starmer’s departure opens up an opportunity to reinsert members and affiliates into the policymaking process. Rather than observing shifts in the existing labour movement from a distance, writing off our chances before we have tested our strength and Burnham’s resolve, the left should now hold Burnham’s feet to the fire. As always, our most effective leverage comes from our workplaces, community campaigns, unions and CLPs. If we can mobilise even a fraction of our powers, Burnham’s Cabinet may find that promising an inch obliges the government to walk a mile.

Mike Cowley is Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism Co-Convenor.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Official_portrait_of_Andy_Burnham_MP_2026_(cropped_3x4).jpg. Source: https://members.parliament.uk/member/1427/portrait. Author: House of Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.