Andy Burnham’s first speech as prime minister to a Labour conference was a serious attempt to argue that rebuilding the public realm will be better for the country than shrinking the state. He is right about this. Mr Burnham’s belief in the power of government is welcome, as is his instinct that by spending now on public services he will save money later. Admitting that Brexit “has done more harm than good” before setting out options for a closer relationship with the EU could be the speech’s most consequential sentence. Offering voters a bargain at the next election – give up a little of the annual triple-lock increase in pensions for free personal care for older people – is a gamble.
But Mr Burnham clearly thinks that he will be able to show that enough has improved by then for him to ask voters to let him finish what he has started. The prime minister smartly recast “take back control” as a Labour argument. His pitch was that privatisation removed economic control, emasculating local government removed political control, and Brexit reduced control over immigration. This was deftly done – threading a common idea through housing, water, energy and Europe.
