Whatever Burnhamism is, you can keep it

I’m minded to ignore the psychodramas on the fringe right for a while. It’s all playing out the way I said it would. Last week underscored to me just how incredibly dumb the online right is - and how little they really understand about British politics. They're pushing for Restore Britain to be explicitly ethnonationalist, when its leader very much isn't, and when there is zero chance of an explicitly ethnonationalist party ever getting elected.

The cope they feed themselves is that millions of people no longer vote, and would vote if only there was a party that properly represented their views. There is zero evidence of this. In fact, there are many areas around the country, predominantly white, that think Reform is far right, dinghy migrants are refugees, and that random brownoid Deliveroo drivers showing up in rural towns is welcome diversity. The online right has no concept of just how addled the British voting public really is.

You can see this during election time. Go round wealthier white areas and they're populated by retired teachers, university staffers, civil servants and useless public sectoroids who've never had a real job. That's where you'll see all the Green Party posters, and they have zero idea who or what they are voting for. Not forgetting that a quarter of the active electorate is still voting Labour.

Then you have the spectrum of right leaving voters. The Tories now represent metropolitan liberals who would vote SDP if SDP was electorally significant, and they mainly back Badenoch because of her anti-woke posture, but are still essentially fine with become a minority in their own country so long as everyone has "British values". As to, Reform, I need not elaborate.

As such, a bunch of autists wearing tweed and monging on about the finer distinctions between ethnicity and nationality on their minuscule YouTube channels is not going to bring about the ethnonationalist revolution they want to see. To then join the party that's the first vaguely presentable manifestation of nativism, with the intent of turning it into a borderline neo-Nazi party, is so retarded we actually need a new word to describe just how retarded it is.

As such, it’s best to leave them to their infighting. I have no dog in the fight. For the moment, we have to decipher what horrors are in store for us under Andy Burnham. He’s spent the last few days sketching out what Burnhamism looks like.

Very superficially, Burnhamism looks quite appealing. One could almost mistake it for the sort of third way politics of the SDP. He’s talking about localism, and putting the North on the map, reindustrialising and investing in Britain. We’re still a bit light on actual details though. It is reported that Burnham intends to operate a branch of 10 Downing Street out of Manchester, which is an idiotic gimmick if ever I heard one, while promising the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period.

Of course, there is no reindustrialisation without cheap energy, thus without clarification on Net Zero, Burnham’s words are meaningless - as is his promise of “good growth in every postcode”. Meanwhile, there is a galaxy of reasons why any promise of mass homebuilding is pure fantasy without addressing the many obstacles first, and there’s no reason to believe that Burnham has any real understanding of them. In fact, the next few weeks will be an object lesson for Reform in why you don’t make big promises until you’ve understood the issues.

Beyond the gimmicks and high fantasy, there is zero chance that Burnham will fare any better than his predecessor. For all his rhetoric, and superficial populist flair, he is still a Blairite technocrat intent on propping up a failing regime.

As to his “localism” (or “Manchesterism” as it’s being called), it should be recalled that it was put to Manchester in a referendum as to whether they wanted a mayor. They said no. They got one anyway. Now, it would seem that Andy Burnham wants to replicate this model, whether anyone wants it or not. This is part of the thirty year long regionalisation process - gradually implemented ever since Mrs Thatcher.

In this context, devolution does not mean devolution. It means the amalgamation (abolition) of local authorities, and by extension, abolition of local democracy, to create regional development quangos with directly elected chief executives we will call mayors. They will say this is more democratic.

Very little, if any, power will be devolved. In most instances, the power that we (the people) actually have will be confiscated and centralised, and our powers of democratic veto will be erased. What you then get is gerrymandered rotten boroughs who pander to their client vote.

Any devolved powers will be to ensure that in the event Labour is kicked out of office, there is then regional institutional resistance to anything central government attempts to do. We will then see regional assembles along the lines of the Scottish "parliament" comprised of low-level kleptocrats who will spend most of their time debating Gaza and whether men should be allowed into female changing rooms - for eternity.

Others have looked in greater depth as to what Burnhamism might offer, looking at his unimpressive record as mayor of Greater Manchester, which betrays more of the same client group favouring and gesture politics, but we should also note that whatever Burnham’s talents are, he still has the brake-parachute of the Labour party that will rapidly bring him to a standstill. He will struggle to build a presentable cabinet given the raw material he has to work with. The only people worse than the current crop of ministers are the backbench recruitment pool from which they came.

I don’t recall who said it the other day, but I heard it said that just when Reform looks to be running out of road, Labour rather helpfully builds them a motorway. Even if Burnham does have any viable growth ideas, the issue driving discontent is still immigration. Even if he can get the numbers under control, Mahmood’s plan to admit thousands more refugees via “safe and legal routes” while repealing the vagrancy act, thereby turning Britain into third world flop house, means that Labour is still on course for a bloody nose at the next election.

I’ve yet to come across anyone who isn’t a Labour activist who seriously thinks Burnham has any answers. I strongly suspect that his already tanking popularity will tank even further in the coming weeks, and could easily end up as unpopular as Starmer. People may even come to regard a bland ideas-free bureaucrat as preferable to an incompetent left wing populist. I’d say that was a safe bet. While we cannot say for certain what Burnhamism is, we can be certain that we don’t want it.