Andy Burnham’s Labour Allows the Left to Breathe, a Little
The first Labour conference under new leader Andy Burnham saw a rhetorical turn away from his predecessor’s austerian and managerial approach. Burnham has regained trade unions’ confidence, but his real policy shifts have been cautious.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks of a break with neoliberalism and rediscovering Labour’s working-class roots. The real policy change has been more muddled, and the Left within the party is only slowly regathering its strength. (Ian Forsyth / Getty Images)
“For too long, politics has not been working for people across Britain. We need to do better, and we will.” Such was Andy Burnham’s welcome to this year’s Labour Party conference. Gemma Bolton, a left-wing member of the party’s National Executive Committee, more simply summed up the change after years of purges, suspensions and rigged candidate selections: “Isn’t it nice you can breathe again?”
This is roughly Burnham’s fortieth Labour conference, but his first as prime minister. His acclamation as party leader in July and this conference have been a break with the recent past under both Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer, but in many ways represent a return to a much more traditional form of Labour politics. It’s a line often called the “soft left” or a “Blue Labour” appeal to the traditional working class but is best understood by the party’s own name: Labourism.
Conference Tradition
On one level, Labour’s annual conference is like any other in British politics. Party leaders use them to announce policy and direction for their time in opposition or in government. This provides the bulk of media analysis. But while this is important, Labour’s internal life, and by extension how it governs, can’t be understood without grasping the history of its annual meeting.
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