With Andy Burnham poised to pick up the keys to Number Ten we’re all set for a new style of government. A new vibe. But as yet there’s no way of knowing whether that’ll translate into a new and better deal for the rest of us. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, it’s not like we’ve had any say in the matter.
Half a century ago the Czech writer Milan Kundera was penning his seminal novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which explored the impact on the lives of ordinary folk of leaders they hadn’t chosen.
Though he was talking about totalitarian regimes and we’re supposed to be a democracy the clue’s in the name.
And it is bordering on hilarious how hard it is to even remember all those on the recent ex PM list.
No fewer than six of them in the last ten years, mostly chosen by their parties, not the people. So it’s little wonder that voters aren’t exactly holding their breath now.
But then there’s that song from the Life of Brian movie. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Tricky when you’re being crucified, but let’s not be nitpicky.
Burnham’s upside is that he won’t fall into the same traps as the now rebranded No Longer Here Keir. Plenty of others kicking around, but he is better qualified to swerve the obvious ones.
Remember the fuss about winter fuel allowances for pensioners? The first knobbly nail in the coffin of Starmer’s premiership?
That wouldn’t have happened under Andy. Simply because he’ll sound out his own MPs before making making big announcements, and so not have to backtrack later and look a complete plonker.
There’ll be plenty more nasty medicine he’ll try and tip down their throats. But as well as talking it through with them, he’ll make a fair fist of talking them round.
Much was made in Starmer’s last few days of how he’d finally learned to act human. But that’s only an obit. It’s still exit stage left, even if it is pursued by plaudits.
OK, there is a lot more to politics than performance. But the ability to weave a narrative, and make it stick, is a vital tool of the trade.
And on this front poor Keir always came across as more soporific than sensational. A constipated Dalek in need of a lie-down.
But alongside delivery content matters too, though here also the contrast is compelling. Starmer’s slogan was: ‘Another future is possible.’ Burnham’s was: ‘Vote Andy, vote hope.’ Vague, but a lot more glass half full.
And he followed it up in his Friday speech taking the Labour crown with the promise that his government would have the: ‘Courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected. And the conviction to argue for our plans.’
However, there is truth in the old saying that you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. And, when asked about his own stunning 1997 election victory, Tony Blair had a few cautionary words for Burnham:
‘You may think you’re going to be loved, but you’re not going to be.’ And the rest in his case, after the Iraq fiasco.
Nonetheless, he added: ‘Andy’s got a very sure political touch. He’s a genuinely people person. You know, he’s interested in people.’
He also, during the Blair/Brown years, ran major, mainstream, government departments. So, unlike Starmer, he does know how to pull levers in Whitehall. A great help in turning press releases into realities.
On top of that, while he’s only so far given bullet points about how he’d like to transform Britain, he has got lots of them. Again unlike Starmer, whose one-time aides now admit he didn’t really have any.
To give the guy a break, he did manage to stabilise the Labour party after the chaos of the Corbyn years. And he did a pretty impressive job with the seriously smelly smorgasbord of stuff overseas.
That got him labelled Never Here Keir, unfairly, as Ukraine is arguably the West’s first line of defence against an increasingly aggressive Russia.
And with the American backstop looking more fragile by the day under a President who seems to be getting loopier by the day, it’s easy to see how Starmer got sucked into being more of a Foreign Secretary than PM.
Fitting, perhaps, that his last job before hanging up his boots was a trip to Kiev. And doubtless gratifying to be given that country’s top medal. Hard on the heels of getting the equivalent from France.
The two underscored his vital work in putting together the so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to counter the Kremlin. Whose spokesman, incidentally, called it the: ‘Coalition of warmongers.’
Had to be joking, surely, given who actually started the bloody business. Talk about laughter and forgetting.
Any road up, Andy Burnham, who’s the first self-professed northerner running the show since Harold Wilson, will have to do his damndest not to get drawn too far onto the world stage – at the expense of the home front.
We’ve been drowning in opinion overload about who he’ll choose as next door neighbour, that’s to say Chancellor. But his pick to run the outfit opposite Number Ten, the Foreign Office, will matter pretty much as much.
Then, when the top team’s in place, he’ll get a bit of a breather, with no Prime Minister’s Question time until parliament comes back from its summer hols in September.
Very likely though he’ll use much of that time travelling up and down the country and fleshing out his ideas about spreading the icing on the nation’s cake away from the affluent south and across everywhere else.
Likely too that on his travels he’ll burnish the Burnham brand of folksiness and approachability. Basically, get people to like him. Certainly worked in Manchester, but that was only a start.
Here again, performance counts. Cue more cautionary words from Tony Blair:
‘The single hardest thing for a practicing politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long.’
But impressions linger. Which was why Wilson, all those years earlier, cultivated his man of the people pipe and pint image, even though he was a brandy and cigars chap really.
Then again, is anything as it seems?
A golden retriever named Barley, who lives with her owner in a small town on America’s Long Island, lost her sparkle when she had to start taking medication for epilepsy.
But all that changed when her owner, Tori Cannarelli, took in a four-day-old duckling whom she named Louie.
Love at first sight, apparently. Within weeks the two were inseparable, and, joy of joys, Barley was as jolly as a puppy again.
They even play the sort of silly wrestling games that little dogs are so fond of.
Fact is, not having had time in his first four days of life to meet any other animals, dear little Louie’s clearly under a misapprehension regarding his genealogy.
In short, Ms Cannarelli announces, with a huge smile on her face: ‘The duck has no idea he’s a duck. He thinks he’s a dog.’
Impressions, performance. Good for the animal? Good for the politico? Could be.
Watch Peter’s report at peterspencer.org
Peter Spencer has 40 years experience as a Political Correspondent in Westminster, working with London Broadcasting and Sky News. For more of his fascinating musings on the turbulent political landscape, follow him on Facebook & Twitter.