No prime minister has ever lived up to their promises. Can Andy Burnham break the mould?

Floyd Patterson was formidable until one night in Madison Square Garden he was pummelled by Sonny Liston, who dropped Patterson to the canvas in the first round. The rematch a few months later was a further humiliation for Patterson as the boxing world could see the fear in his eyes. 

Thirty years later I saw that fear and humiliation in the eyes of another departing prime minister, who up until that moment had been seen as the Iron Lady. One occasion was a boxing match, the other a political drama, both soaked in pity. The mighty fallen. 

At least Sir Keir Starmer’s ejection from power did not have that sense of humiliation that I had seen as a 16-year-old boxing fan, and again later when my political enemy the Iron Lady fell from power. Starmer’s passing from power was a bitter pill for him to swallow, but he got it out of the way two years after Rishi Sunak stood at the same dais and feebly called an election in the rain.  

The once powerful losing their power is not a joyous sight. I saw it once close up in my reformatory when a known bully was pasted by a bigger bully. It seemed like looking at the end of the Roman Empire, as dominance was destroyed. Last week’s draining of power, completed outside Number 10, fortunately left intact the defeated premier’s humanity. Gloating was not on the cards. 

On a split screen the buoyant victor left Manchester in carnival mood as Starmer exited history. He had been given a go and he had been defeated. Defeated not by a superior political pugilist, but because he seemed as if he was little more than a continuation of the ancien régime of failing leaders. The ancien régime of incompetence that finally embraces all holders of the highest office at the point of their exit. No one comes out of that office smelling or looking pretty. Managing humiliation is the best that can be done. 

But why this continuous circus of setting someone up to fail? Why the initial carnival followed some years later by the booby prize of failure? What’s wrong with the stinking office that draws the ambitious and self-deluding to it, possibly believing – and buoyed up by – the idea that their exit when it comes will be splendid? 

The office itself is wrong and crushes the incumbent. The government itself is wrong because it is always the same Victorian edifice that hides itself behind lies. Truth and government do not go hand in hand. The realities of crisis and decline are denied; vast, vast sums of budgeted money are spent keeping people poor and all of us unsafe. Every minister who held the defence portfolio, for instance, had to lie about the shrinking defence pound and how it was spent. Every minister holding the portfolios of health and social security had to dress their office up with the appearance of credibility. Governments had to seem credible, while in the background they manufactured discontent in the country. 

If you believe the hype, Andy Burnham is our latest ‘get out of jail’ card. He’s our latest Moses. He’ll know how to lead us into the promised land. He’ll see off the frightening and threatening multitudes, seemingly a majority, who reject what the UK has become. Fear not, the bloke’s got it sorted. 

Read more:

• Andy Burnham is a southern-blessed northerner. He could continue Oxbridge’s grip on Downing Street
• Keir Starmer has resigned. What is his legacy on the biggest issues in Britain?
• Andy Burnham: ‘Housing is a human right’

One of Starmer’s parting comments in praising his own record was the declaration that they have lifted 500,000 children out of poverty. Half of that number is accounted for by the ending of the two-child benefit cap – have more kids and you’re on your own. Alas it is dishonest to claim this as getting children out of poverty. It makes their poverty slightly more bearable; a feature of social security is that it doesn’t get you out of poverty but tries to take the edge off it. 

Where is the poverty-busting agenda that refuses to accept tinkering as policy? Tinkering governments have existed since before the creation of the welfare state. The welfare state was a heroic attempt at going beyond tinkering. ‘Rebuild the edifice of government and society’ was its mission. Alas it left too many people living the inheritance of poverty, meaning that by Starmer’s time the consequence of poverty was government’s biggest expenditure. 

If the latest incumbent of the supreme office is not going to lead us in three years into the tempestuous politics of outrage at the UK’s decline then he will have to rethink government. He will have to begin to dismantle poverty, which governments so far have only increased. He will have to not continue government as a series of
disconnected departments. 

A revolution in government thinking needs to take place. A revolution in investment to skill people away from poverty. Ending our low-wage, low-investment economy. It’s a gigantic task. Decline is not an option for the UK because it will throw up such hatred and division among people not blessed with the advantages of prosperity. And Andy Burnham will have to be bigger than anyone else has ever been in the office he has thirsted after. 

Alas he is lumbered with the structure of government that includes a ‘steady as you go towards the iceberg’ civil service. An electorate used to being promised manifesto miracles. But, at the same time, an electorate that is largely uninvolved.  

And a fluid world order that offers threats as well as opportunities. 

No one has ever lived up to their promise or promises. Surprise us, Burnham. 

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words from our archive.

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