Andy Burnham says we must be wary of shutting out voices
The 2024 General Election campaign was a campaign unlike any other, reflecting the public mood with politics, a product of the previous government which had corroded trust. It was a low turnout by historical standards. People did not necessarily vote straight for the party of their first choice. There was probably a higher level of tactical voting than we have seen before. The British public have a way of making sense of things. They voted for change, gave Labour a strong position to make a change but they also said “you are on notice”. It is not a 1997 moment but could be a better moment for Labour.
1997 was a different era. The expectations were higher than Labour could deal with. There was no infrastructure in the country to deliver. The fact that mayors were in Downing Street within a few days of the 2024 election means we can move things much more quickly now. This government has a difficult economic inheritance but a good political one, with manageable expectations that can move change forward. Maybe these are the ingredients for a slightly healthier political climate.
Looking back, Brexit was a protest at Westminster and Brussels combined. This led me to question everything about our political culture, our political system. People are definitely looking at PR through different eyes. The mood of the country is not fully represented in the way the House of Commons is constituted. I was uncomfortable in 2015 at how UKIP only got one seat for its four million voters, a forerunner of Reform UK getting its five MPs. If you want a healthy culture, everyone on the progressive side of politics needs to question this. Did the 2015 result contribute to the frustration building in the country, the rupture of Brexit? I was told “We are going to get heard this time. You’re going to hear us”. All this built into my understanding for the need for reform.
It was the beginning of my political journey. I questioned the norms of Westminster. I felt in my bones the sense of impending doom, anticipating the Brexit vote. I had to look at my political career and ask whether or not that culture of First Past the Post combined with the Whip system was in some way responsible for the alienation, my own feeling of dislocation. Through my work on Hillsborough I saw how the voting system combined with the Whip handed inordinate power to the unelected British State and allowed levels of inequality and injustice to go unchallenged.
There is concern about letting in the far right, some of whom are already there. But worst in the end is a political system that doesn’t let opinions and voices be heard. That creates the conditions in which people say “we are being shut out, we are being silenced by the elite”. That narrative is destructive of the health of democracy. Proportional systems will generally deliver you a majority of people you can work with and create a more balanced approach.
That decent majority which is always there is nothing to be feared. We now have government elected without over 50% popular support, in more turbulent and more polarised times. That may make the pendulum swing more violently so you don’t get long term government. I hope Labour gets at least two terms but the current voting system is absolutely straining with the complexity of the modern world and delivering results that will look increasingly bizarre.
I feel elated seeing all the new Labour MPs but it’s so easy to get drawn into that Strangers’ Bar culture, defending first past the post and also bizarrely vigorously standing up for the Whip system. I would encourage them to think about a small number of things in which they can make a genuine difference.
We have lost the art of thinking big. We politicians on the left tend to focus on campaigning. Labour in government has already made a tremendous change. We have an English Devolution Bill in the King’s speech which is going to tilt the British State in a way it has never been tilted before, so the regional and the local are addressed. They will have the courage on these constitutional questions in a way that the government I was in never did. We are seeing the beginnings of the rewiring of the British state in some of the things they are doing, in the manifesto, there’s talk of Lords reform. There has been a period of retail politics where politicians have traded in quite small things and have been fearful of quite big change. Politics has become smaller while the problems have got bigger and that is one of the reasons for the corrosion of trust.
Think about the kind of country you want to leave behind. Let us not talk about constitutions but power – that is the key thing.