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It wasn't so much ‘honest guv’ as 'honest gov' when Andy Burnham spoke at The Labour Party conference in Liverpool yesterday. The PM pledged to say the things politicians usually avoid – “naming and shaming” deindustrialisation, deregulation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit for the plight of modern Britain.
The headline announcements included the promise of electoral reform and the scrapping of the existing triple lock system for pensions, with the savings being used to fund a National Care System.
Byline Times Chief Reporter Josiah Mortimer, who was in the conference hall at Liverpool Convention Centre said the speech was, “quite remarkable… I think much of that was about the sense of emotion that Andy Burnham conveyed. He was very clear that he wanted to be honest about the problems that he saw Britain facing, and the changes he thought were needed. He also said he accepted responsibility for some of the missteps along the way, but I think what was different about this speech is that for so long people have been calling for a clear vision from a Labour leader, and it felt like he was really responding to that and knocked on the head the claim that Labour has no vision.”
Adam Bienkov, Byline Times Political Editor, cautioned that Burnham was taking “a big risk” by modifying the triple lock, remembering that “we saw what happened with Keir Starmer and the winter fuel payments – that really really wounded his Government in its early stages. This attempt to adjust the the triple lock could be very politically damaging for the Labour Party if he's not able to sell it.”
But, he added, Burnham has “the potential to win over the public on this and and lots of other things” thanks to “that ability to make that sort of emotional, personal, human case for politics, which is something that we've just haven't seen in recent years.”
Listen here to Adrian Goldberg discuss the speech with Josiah and Adam on the Byline Times Podcast.