If Starmerism sought to present the Labour government as more rightwing than it is, Burnhamism seeks to do the opposite.
The change in rhetoric is certainly stark. Unlike his sulking predecessor, the new prime minister offers both an analysis and a vision. British stagnation and decline, Andy Burnham correctly told the House of Commons, can be explained by a series of “wrong turns” taken from the 1980s onwards: the privatisation of economic power, the deindustrialisation of the country and the ruinous austerity that followed the 2008 crash.
