Interview: Burnham on party factions, spending review and scrapping the whip – LabourList

“A Northerner in London, this is what happens,” jokes Andy Burnham as we hurl ourselves back off a Tube train we had just boarded in the wrong direction.

It’s only eight years since the former Leigh MP left Westminster, but if a week’s a long time in politics then eight years is a lifetime.

In an ideal world, LabourList would probably be interviewing the ‘King of the North’ on one of his fleet of golden carriages, the Bee Network buses he has proudly taken back into public control – “rolling back the 1980s”, as he puts it.

But when we heard Burnham was one of the speakers at soft left campaign group Compass’ recent conference, we tried our luck for an interview there, and were happy to secure one.

READ MORE: ‘Too much timidity and factionalism’: Burnham issues a radical rallying cry

It was due to happen in the unlikely setting of the nightclub-turned-conference venue Ministry of Sound’s ‘green room’ (read: basement offices) mid-afternoon in south London. The trouble was, conference done and national broadcast interviews complete, Burnham had to shoot for a train.

So LabourList settled for an equally unlikely but perhaps just as fitting setting in the eight minutes we had – a Northern line carriage rattling its way northbound as Burnham headed, of course, back up north.

We talked about Burnham’s view on and identifications with the party’s ‘wings’, the looming Spending Review, and how the whip system could be radically overhauled.

‘Let’s back the PM – but this Spending Review is critical’

Occasional charity DJ Burnham didn’t get a go on the decks at Compass’ daytime conference, but he was one of the headline acts.

With rapturous applause following his speech, it was no surprise he called it a “great event”, adding: “Any Labour government needs all parts of the party powering in behind it, and pumping the energy into it.

“Today did that. From what I could hear, the vast majority of it was calls for the government to be, if you like, cooperative in terms of all ideas.

“There’s just a real energy for people: let’s make a success of this Labour government, and let’s back the Prime Minister, back the government, but this spending review is quite critical I would say in terms of creating a programme that everyone can get behind.”

Starmerite loyalists would probably raise their eyebrows at the idea speeches by Burnham, Louise Haigh and others were “powering in behind” the government, though. Both didn’t mince their words in their critiques, and pushed for a slew of more progressive policies.

‘We need to talk directly to people on council house waiting lists’

The centrepiece of his speech – a call for the biggest social and affordable housing boost ever – does now look more in sync with the government than it felt on the day.

Whether or not mayors like Burnham can claim credit, suspected it was coming or it’s just happy coincidence, Rachel Reeves today pledges £39 billion for a 10-year affordable homes programme.

He called it “the single best investment this country could make”, potentially saving “billions” in housing benefit subsidies to landlords.

He also argued that the “scale and depth” of the housing crisis meant we we need to reach a “tipping point soon where we’re building more than we’re losing”, given the long shadow of Thatcher’s “ideological” refusal to let councils keep the proceeds of right-to-buy sales.

Burnham on ‘working-class ambition’

“Working-class ambition” was a key phrase in Burnham’s speech, with uncharacteristically Blairite echoes of “aspiration”, but more now-characteristically left-wing policy conclusions like council housebuilding.

He told LabourList: “I really feel strongly and passionately that Labour needs to start talking directly to people who are on council house waiting lists, who don’t have a home that they feel is good enough.

“People who feel their kids don’t get the support to have a good path in life. So, yeah, it’s about working class ambition. I feel we’ve not been talking about it meaningfully for a very long time.

READ MORE: Compass event: Is the soft left back – and a beauty parade to lead it underway?

“I went on the university route, and it’s really important, and it should be supported. But what are we saying to the two-thirds of kids in Greater Manchester who don’t go on that route?

“I don’t hear politicians on any side actually really talking about their life chances, what they’re going to put in place for those young people and create that approach to technical education that once upon a time this country was a real engine of social mobility. Combined with a council home, many people say it made all the difference for them when they were growing up.”

‘I’ve never subscribed to a wing of Labour’

The mayor’s speech was introduced by Compass director Neal Lawson, who used his own opening speech to decry Labour as a party run by “one small rigid faction” in a “dull sectarian interest”.

What did Burnham make of the recent 17-month party probe into Lawson himself over a controversial tweet, seen by some critics as a warning shot to the soft left?

He declined to comment on specifics, but added: “What I would say is, we’ve got to have more of a politics of cooperation. Because if the next section is about two worldviews, one that we really need to stop because of the really damaging effect it would have, you’ve got to have a different language haven’t you, amongst the left.”

Asked to expand more on his speech’s comment on the need to move beyond “factionalism”, he explained: “There’s way too much, and there always has been. I’m 25 years now as an elected, frontline elected politician. It’s one of the things I’ve never really bought into.

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“I have my views, but I have never really subscribed to a sort of ‘wing’, and being a zealot about it. It happens on both sides.

“I just think, when you’re moving towards a general election that will be more about two world views, when you have to get everyone together, you can’t afford factionalism anymore.”

‘Under Westminster’s whip system, people get less and less sense of what you’re about’

One Burnham idea with far-reaching ramifications for party factionalism – supporters would say positive, critics the polar opposite – is to scrap Westminster’s whip system altogether.

It’s an idea so radical it takes a while to process, and to think through what it might unleash. “People almost spit their coffee out when I say that,” Burnham chuckled.

Westminster party strategists, whips and critics might snipe that it’s easy to say from a directly elected fiefdom 200-miles north, and left-wingers might see it as buck-passing for some of his past decisions to toe the party line that went down badly in some quarters.

But Burnham spoke passionately about the benefits. “I think it would raise the esteem of parliamentary politics in the eyes of the public, if they knew people could do that more.

“I think they sense that people aren’t fully answering the question. And I’ve been there, I had to do all those things. I don’t see what’s so dangerous about it – 19 times out of 20 Labour MPs would support the party.

“In the social media age, people want to see people being true to themselves. It would seriously make politics connect better with the public, if people could say ‘I believe this so therefore I’m going to do X and Y’.”

“In my 16 years in Parliament, I kind of felt over time people get less and less sense of what you’re all about. Because you can’t vote all the time in the way that you would want to, and you can’t speak freely and authentically in interviews because you’ve got a line to take.”

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