Why Andy Burnham risks repeating the mistakes made by Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak – Brian Monteith
Andy Burnham must be wary of the kind of broken promises that did for his predecessors in Downing Street
My understanding of why Labour was elected in 2024 is relatively simple. Keir Starmer’s party offered a fresh start, not so much because of what it offered in its manifesto, but because ‘Labour was not the Tories’ and ‘Starmer was not Sunak’.
This is important if we are to understand what Andrew Burnham has to do if he is to take Labour from the lows it reached under Starmer to go on and win the next general election. I phrase Burnham’s challenge in that way because the reason his leadership coup was successful was he offered hope to Labour MPs that they might keep their seats and the party could scrape a majority to remain in power.
The Conservatives were in power for 14 years, five of them in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. They offered significant change but failed in so many respects to honour their pledges that the accepted narrative is that they were 14 wasted years. Yet, after 2010, the Tories did ‘win’ three further elections in 2015, 2017, and 2019.
Spending like a drunken sailor
The point was, the Conservatives were not Labour, who frightened the horses because of their own previous scandal-ridden history and threatened to re-run the EU referendum.
But by the end of their tenure, the Tories had worn out the public’s trust, increasing taxes to their highest level since 1948, increasing hugely the levels of legal immigration rather than reducing it, and failing to rebuild the property-owning democracy they once represented (the lack of housing being acutely felt).
But no sooner had Starmer, Rachel Reeves and co taken office than they trashed the hopes of many for real change by spending like a drunken sailor, increasing borrowing and taxes to pay for it. Add together the conveyor belt of ministerial scandals that caused resignations and the broken promises or U-turns that had passed two-dozen examples in as many months and Labour was heading for defeat. The May elections of 2025 and 2026 emphasised Labour’s destiny.
Starmer had to go and everyone’s political pal with the fluttering eyelashes and cheery smile was engineered into Downing Street. But is he just Starmer with better vibes and smarter communications?
Here we are, his first Labour conference as Prime Minister and he’s looking to reset Labour as if the last two years have never happened. Angela Rayner and Louise Haigh are back in the Cabinet despite their past scandals and there’s a new Chancellor who resigned as Defence Secretary because the defence budget was too small – can he find the money to increase it?
Labour’s lamentable track record
However, already the problems are beginning to mount up for the Prime Minister. On the one hand, Burnham regularly passes blame for the country’s economic malaise on past events – from Thatcherism 40 years ago to Brexit today, without recognising the responsibility of Labour’s own failures in how those two phenomena came about.
Starting from the government handover in July 2024: inflation was 2 per cent but is now 3.1 per cent (and going up); unemployment was 4.0 per cent but is now 4.9 per cent with an additional 1.77 million people out of work (and going up); youth unemployment was 14.3 per cent but is now 16.5 per cent (the highest in 11 years and going up); year-on-year second quarter GDP growth was 0.7 per cent but is now only 0.4 per cent for the comparative period; and year-on-year second quarter GDP growth per capita in both periods was only 0.1 per cent.
So, under Labour since the election, inflation is 55 per cent higher, unemployment is 22.5 per cent higher, youth unemployment is 14.6 per cent higher; year-on-year GDP growth is 42.9 per cent lower; and per capita growth has flatlined. The cost-of-living crisis is worse, more people are out of work, even more young people cannot get a job, and people are not better off.
These are the direct result of Labour’s choices, broken promises, U-turns and misjudgements – the chief of which was to put up employers’ National Insurance while lowering the threshold where it starts – and combining that with increases in the minimum wage.
The increased spending has caused government borrowing to grow about £8 billion ahead of official forecasts announced only in March. At the end of August 2026, public sector net debt was just under £3 trillion and the monthly interest paid on that debt hit £8.8bn, marking the highest August figure since records began in 1997.
And for all that the Chancellor’s speech to the Labour conference talked of reindustrialisation, Labour’s acceleration of net-zero policies is exporting industries and jobs outside the country.
Broken promises
The Prime Minister is showing signs of aping Starmer in saying one thing and doing another. He promised the Mauritius Prime Minister he would pay his country billions to give them the Chagos Islands and then abruptly agreed with President Donald Trump that he would review the transfer.
He previously said he would back the third runway at Heathrow but on Sunday said it was not a decision for him but for London. Is it any wonder he has not announced that the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields can start producing oil and gas?
Burnham needs to do as he says he will – and not break his promises. That is what the Tories and Starmer did. If he goes the same way, no amount of good vibrations will bring him victory.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European Parliaments and a senior advisor to the Tax Reform Council
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