A Change of Mind

I have changed my mind about Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham.

That is not a phrase one writes lightly in politics. Normally you pick a side, build a small fort out of opinions, and spend the next five years firing stale beans at anybody who points out that the roof has fallen in. But changing your mind is not always weakness. Sometimes it means you have listened to an argument and noticed that your previous one, while perfectly logical, was not sufficient.

I had something of an Epiphany after listening to a Vlad Vexler podcast. I rate Vexler very highly as a political philosopher, and he put his finger on something I had missed.

I had been inclined to support Starmer against Burnham. The argument seemed straightforward enough. Starmer has the mandate, the majority and the job. He has inherited weak growth, public services held together with cable ties, the long economic drag of Brexit, a Treasury that can smell an unfunded promise from three counties away, and a country which expects miracles by Thursday teatime.

Burnham, I thought, might be warmer, more fluent and better at looking as though he has just been told something infuriating outside a bus depot. But unless he had materially different levers, what was the point of changing leader? Public ownership, rent controls, devolution, tax changes and a tougher line on Thames Water may all be worthwhile, but none makes the public finances magically generous or repairs public services overnight.

That is still a rational argument. It is just not, I have come to understand, a complete political argument.

I was asking whether Burnham had more money, better institutions, a faster route through the same problems, or some large red lever hidden in the Manchester tram depot which Starmer had inexplicably failed to notice. If not, replacing Starmer risked doing nothing except raising expectations, changing the mood for six weeks, and leaving Labour with the same hard choices plus a more expensive set of curtains.

All perfectly valid. The trouble is that electoral politics is not a rationalist exercise. Most people do not vote after carefully comparing fiscal rules, borrowing costs, productivity forecasts and the likely implementation timetable for a regional transport settlement. They vote because they are angry, frightened, poorer than they expected to be, and tired of being told that things will improve later.

They have watched their towns get shabbier, their local services get worse, their wages fail to move, their children struggle to buy homes, and the high street fill up with vape shops, betting shops and businesses called something like Urban Living. They do not necessarily want a lecture on why the repair programme is technically demanding. They want somebody to acknowledge that the bridge has been shut for twenty years and that nobody seemed remotely bothered until they started shouting.

Starmer speaks to the electorate as though it were a room full of politically engaged children who have already read the briefing papers.

Burnham speaks to the same children as an adult should, in language they recognise and without pretending that Westminster is ordinary life.

Farage speaks to them by becoming one of the children himself and urging them to burn down the school.

That, I think, is the difference.

This is where the idea of the metropolitan elite comes from. It is not really about where people live, whether they own nice spectacles, or whether they know what an aperitif is. It is about speaking to voters as though they already understand the language of Westminster, then appearing faintly baffled when they do not. I have discovered that I am a member of the metropolitan elite, despite living in the Cotswolds.

Reform understands the emotional mechanics almost perfectly. Its answer is poisonous, but emotionally legible. Yes, you have been cheated, it says. Here is who did it. Migrants. Judges. Civil servants. Brussels, somehow, despite the fact that we left. Wind turbines. Whoever happens to be standing nearest the dartboard that morning.

That is why Reform is dangerous. It does not need to win every argument. It needs people to feel that nobody else is listening.

Starmer can explain why Reform is wrong, and he is usually right. Burnham may be better at explaining why Reform is tempting. That matters.

Burnham’s communication style seems to start with voters as they are: suspicious, impatient, weary of being patronised, and fed up with feeling that their own lives have become a footnote to somebody else’s economic model.

That is a form of populism, but it need not be the destructive sort. Not the populism of smashing things, but a constitutional populism: recognising anger, naming failure, and offering democratic repair rather than scapegoats. Not contempt for institutions, but a demand that institutions remember whom they are there to serve.

That is potentially useful, but it is not a substitute for delivery. Burnham would still face the Treasury, the markets, weak growth, battered public services and financial limits. He would not make years of underinvestment vanish by force of personal warmth.

Indeed, there is a risk. A more emotionally fluent leader could raise expectations faster than government can meet them, then turn hope into a worse sense of betrayal. That is the serious case for Starmer. Politics cannot repeal arithmetic.

But arithmetic is not enough either. People need to believe that constraints are being fought, not merely explained to them. They need to feel that somebody is on their side in the argument, rather than simply managing their disappointment with a better spreadsheet.

That is where Burnham may have an advantage. Not because he has found a hidden route around the constraints, but because he may be better at turning restraint and repair into a shared political purpose.

The target is a general election. By then, even measurable improvements may not save Labour if people have spent four years feeling talked at rather than spoken to. Inflation can fall, waiting lists can shorten and growth can return, while voters still feel poorer, less secure and ignored.

That is the space Reform occupies. It does not need a workable programme. It merely needs to persuade people that nobody else has noticed the bridge is still shut.

Burnham may be better placed to close that space. Or he may simply raise expectations and discover that warmth, like policy, has to survive contact with the Treasury.

Starmer explains why the bridge must be repaired properly.

Burnham understands that half the country is already standing in the rain, shouting that it has been shut for twenty years and asking who nicked the bloody toll money.