The warm bath of Burnhamism

I like gherkins as much as the next man. But I can’t have been the only one a little bemused that chancellor John Healey’s pledge to knock a few pennies off the cost of a cornichon was one of the more memorable moments from yesterday’s budget. We are lumbered with a government that is incapable of tackling the big things and thinks we can coupon-cut our way out of a crisis.

The expectations were low and they were just about met. The main aim of Healey’s budget was to avoid an adverse market reaction. On that score, mission accomplished. Having once raged against Britain being ‘in hock to the bond markets’, PM Andy Burnham seems to have learned his lesson – not least because those comments, made while he was still Manchester mayor, actually moved the markets. You can lament our precarious economic position, but you can’t wish it away.

Instead, Labour is offering us ‘breathing space’. Crumbs would be a better metaphor. Alongside a trim in tariffs for gherkins and marmalade, 20million households will get £100 to help towards energy bills. Given energy prices are expected to soar by 27 per cent in January, and are already among the highest in the developed world, this is cynical politicking at its worst – a simple, eye-catching giveaway that won’t make the blindest bit of difference.

We are £3 trillion in debt. We are spending more on debt interest than on defence, policing and justice combined. Growth is anaemic. Welfare spending is ballooning to unprecedented levels. But all the big decisions have been mañana’d. Were it not for poor old France periodically going up in flames, we would be a shoe-in to win the proverbial ‘ugliest baby’ contest – the nation most likely to invite the wrath of the bond vigilantes.

When Burnham became prime minister, he promised a break with ‘40 years of neoliberalism’. He hasn’t even broken with 14 years of trundling along under the Tories. We had a wasted decade after the 2008 financial crisis. Then came Covid, Ukraine, Iran – a flock of black-swan events in the space of just a few years that exposed how fragile our economy had become: hooked on cheap and imported labour, saddled with ruinous ‘green’ energy policies, and willing to put unprecedented numbers of working-age people out to pasture on welfare.

Burnham’s conference speech was hailed – or decried – as a return to ‘socialism’ by SW1 journalists desperate for something to get excited about. But this budget betrays a profound timidity. Perhaps he’s just waiting for his own mandate. But Burnham is also telling left-wing voters what they want to hear without ever actually saying it, promising ‘public control’ of utilities rather than public ownership, getting them all excited with no intention of following through. The prick-tease PM.

Even so, Burnham’s priorities are telling. You would think times were relatively good. That the foundations of the economy were sound. Finally sorting out social care is a worthy endeavour. But we are faced with economic problems that are more fundamental. The sky-high price of energy. The inability to build anything. Record-level taxes producing paltry public services. Then there is the more dangerous world we find ourselves in. Burnham might think national security shouldn’t come at the cost of social security. But of course it must. You can’t claim PIP if your city is reduced to rubble. Burnham appears to be on an extended holiday from reality.

This is the appeal of Burnhamism, such as it is. It’s a warm bath. A comforting but fleeting indulgence. The commentariat and Labour’s bourgeois base seem desperate to pretend it is still, basically, 1997. That we have the luxury of practising eco-penance and infinity welfare. That we remain at the End of History, with conflict confined to far-flung lands you’d struggle to point out on a map. That the only big debate of our time is a new funding settlement for elderly and end-of-life care.

But the bathwater will soon turn tepid. Cheap and reliable energy. Strong, defended borders. Economic growth. A sense of who we are and where we are going. This is what our scratchy, uncertain era demands. This is what ordinary people have demanded, at election after election after referendum after election. But a Labour Party marinated in greenism, multiculturalism and welfarism is incapable of delivering on any of this.

Before long, Burnham and Healey will be forced to realise that a nation cannot live on gherkins alone.