You can tell he didn't say anything because of the headlines my colleagues in the journalism trade put on Andy Burnham's campaign launch speech. The Independent said: “Makerfield voters ‘will write script’ for change in British politics.” Other media had: “Manchester mayor says politics ‘needs a new script’;” and “Vote for me to change Labour.” I watched all 15 minutes of it, because here was a chance for the person widely expected to become prime minister within weeks to set out why Makerfield should choose him, on behalf of the rest of us, to move into 10 Downing Street.
“This is not business as usual,” he said. “This is a change by-election.” At last, I thought, we might get some idea of what he means by this. After all, it is quite important. He is bidding to replace a prime minister who disappointed people because he offered the empty promise of “change” and who delivered what most people thought was more of the same. So let us hear how he is going to bring real change as opposed to just repeating the word. All we got, though, was 15 minutes of nothing. He repeated the lines we had already heard.
Of course, there is no harm in repetition. There will be people who haven't heard him condemn “40 years of policies that took away the good jobs and left people struggling”. They haven't wondered what happened in 1986 that took the country on to the wrong path. They haven't heard him promise “change to the economy, to education, to housing, to transport, to care, to politics and the economy” (again). They have not yet been given the chance to decode his claim that he has fought all his life for the people in the north-west, and “I'll take that fight as high as I can take it”.
But if you are trying to take it to the highest place, they are entitled to know a bit more about the few specifics offered in this speech. Who is going to pay for “action to lower energy bills and water bills”? What does he mean by “reindustrialisation”? How much does he think an anytime return fare from Wigan North-Western to London Euston ought to be if £364 is too much? We also need to know about all the things that he didn't mention, and that journalists would have asked about if he had taken questions, which he didn't. That would have told us what he thinks we should do about the oil price shock that is coming from the Iran war; how his position on the EU differs from that of the prime minister; and when he will tell the Waspi women that his support of their cause gave them false hope.
Instead we had some cheerful repartee with a small band of supporters who clearly adore him. They readily agreed when he told them that Makerfield was not being treated as a “stepping stone” because he was hoping it would take him back to where he started. “It's not a new journey for me, it's the same journey, just a different phase.” He told the story of how, 25 years ago, as a newly minted candidate for Leigh, he turned up at Bickershaw Labour Club, “a couple of miles over there”, he gestured, “with a 10-page speech in my jacket pocket – I used to wear a suit in those days”. He was “nervous as anything” and the steward poked him in the chest and said: “You're on between the bingo and the turf. Keep. It. Short.” He said it was the best political advice anybody had given him, and he would stick to it today.
“I'll summarise everything I've said in three words: I'm for us.” His audience greeted this deliriously as if it was the magic phrase that would unlock the secrets of electoral success – either that or because those were the words that were printed on the placards they were holding. But it is almost a parody of the vacuous political slogan through the ages. It is very much “business as usual”. It is precisely the contentless promise of change that is bound to disappoint because there is nothing behind it. “Politics in Britain is tired,” Burnham said at the start. But if all he has to offer is an easy manner, a northern accent and “I'm for us”, he is not going to re-energise politics. He is merely going to take it on another turn of the downward spiral of overpromising and refusing to be straight with people about the challenges the country faces. Burnham will have to do better than this over the next four weeks.
