Finally: Someone who wants to reform Westminster has the power to do it

An outsider is on the verge of power. And things which were once unthinkable now feel possible.

Photo by Cayetano Gros on Unsplash

We’ve not seen anything like this before. That doesn’t mean it’ll work. It just means that finally there’s a chance - a fragile, tentative chance - of reform.

This is not about policy. At its core, it is about personality and experience. It is about a man who does not like Westminster, does not feel comfortable there, thinks something is deeply wrong with it, and is I think, on some level, haunted by the version of himself that he became there.

When Andy Burnham was a minister in the Gordon Brown government, he was a very different guy to the one you see now. He sounded robotic, like one of those politicians you get direct from the factory floor, with a button that you press for them to read out lines-to-take from party command. He wasn’t particularly striking in this respect, there were plenty more like him. But he was indistinguishable from them.

It was in Manchester that he changed. He found his voice and he found his manner: easy going, enthusiastic, authentic, self-effacing, articulate. And he then began to layer political convictions onto this change. First, a commitment to local politics. Second, a critique of the Westminster system. A lot has been said about the first. Very little has been said about the second.

“It’s a silent process,” Burnham told me for How Westminster Works. “You arrive in Westminster. You’re full of the joys of spring. And that is slowly sucked out of you. I woke up to that in 2016, after 16 years of being in parliament: voting the way you’re told to vote, taking the line you’re told to take. I realised people’s impression of me was not really me. It’s that silent Westminster effect. It does it to everyone.”

People don’t seem to have quite clocked it yet, but Burnham has a really rather radical critique of Westminster. He wants to change the entire culture of the place. And he is entering the estate as a complete outsider: with no power base, no loyalty to it, no tribal commitments, and a fairly limited degree of association with the party. Someone who really wants to change the Westminster system is finally in a position to do it.

Might he fail? Yes, absolutely. Might he not even really bother trying? Sure. We’re all well versed in the most cynical and depressing possibilities. We’re living in them and have done for years. But honestly: when was the last time we saw a scenario like this? The answer might be never. We are in an unprecedented situation.

The vast majority of prime ministers come up through the Westminster system. Before standing as an MP, they’re often a special adviser to a minister, then they enter parliament, hope to be made a parliamentary private secretary, then a junior minister, maybe spend some time in the Treasury, then become a secretary of state, move around the Cabinet table, and eventually go for the top job. No matter how they started, by the time they get to No.10 they are creatures of the system.

Burnham is different. He’s an outsider, but of a very specific sort. He’s not just some guy who has never been in government railing at it from outside, shaking his fist from College Green. He’s someone who went through the system and then rejected it. He was thrown into the machine, munched up, spat out, and then reinvented himself. He knows how the system works, in granular detail. He has had a lot of time to think about who he was when he was a minister, how he behaved and spoke and thought. His sense of political reform is therefore wrapped up in his sense of individual development. It is not abstract or procedural. It is personal. It is a part of his identity and a core element in the story he tells about himself.

He is a Labour man, but the party has a weak hold over him. He did not win the mayoralty because of Labour. He did not win Makerfield because of Labour. He is not firmly embedded in one of the Labour tribes.

There is also something specific to his manner which might be pertinent in the days to come. He is humble. He projects modesty. I am not naive enough to think that these qualities are completely genuine. They are obviously part of a public persona and they are balanced by the fact that he is capable of acting in a highly mercenary way. There is obviously a massive ego there. But it is possible to have an ego and be modest - sounds weird, but it is. And anyway, it is simply not possible to get anywhere in politics without an ego.

Burnham’s manner is relatively rare among men in Westminster, whether it’s special advisers, or MPs or staffers in Downing Street. You see it much more with women, for the obvious reason that we live in an impossible dark reality where men succeed by demonstrating their tendency to psychopathy and women try their best to remain relatively normal in a work environment made insane by the other gender. Don’t get me wrong, many female MPs are completely batshit, but psychologically normal female MPs are not rare, whereas psychologically normal male MPs kind of are.

Many Westminster men are thrusting competitive types, quite shouty-crackers, with very little curiosity and limited emotional intelligence. This emotional temperament is closely related to the constitutional temperament: Winner takes all, the assertion of dominance, all issues reduced to triumph instead of cooperation, the fierce demand for tribal loyalty, the insane hatred for opponents, the obsessive need to project strength at all times. Our political system is toxic masculinity in constitutional form and it therefore attracts people who share those values.

It’s telling that the one time Downing Street really worked in recent decades was during Tony Blair’s second term, when Michael Barber was running the delivery unit. His approach was academic, curious, understanding, collegiate. His principle was that you spoke honestly but left the relationship in a better place than you found it, that shouting at people in the normal British political way wastes prime ministerial authority, whereas working with them invests it.

It is not surprising to me that someone with Burnham’s personality has taken so against the Westminster system. I suspect it had to be someone like that - an unaffected doesn’t-touch-the-sides macho political type would never have had the introspective ability Burnham demonstrated in Manchester. And now, after a decade away, he’s back and in a position to change things.

Why is Westminster the way it is? Three issues stand out above the others. One is the candidate selection process, whereby local parties pick who they want to represent them at the election. Another is the first-past-the-post electoral system, which is designed to hand one party a massive majority. And a third is the whips’ office which functions as a political parties’ surveillance and discipline enforcement operation.

The first selects conformist, obedient politicians. The second allows the government to do whatever it wants. The third discourages independent thought from MPs or practical cooperation between parties. As Burnham said on Question Time the other day: “It’s the point-scoring isn’t it? The whole set-up of Westminster, people go to point-scoring before they go to problem-solving.”

Things can be improved relatively easily. Open primaries would mean party candidates have to appeal outside of the ideological rank-and-file, to the public at large. Institutional assistance to MPs, with a dedicated cadre of civil servants, would help understand what they are voting on and highlight dangers in legislation.

Most important is electoral reform. Under proportional representation, parties have to work together to form a government. Their slim majorities mean they need to convince other parties to accept their legislation through addressing their concerns rather than just railroading through them. This makes for much better law.

A guy came up to me once in the street in Soho, basically just wanting a fight. It was all very random and threatening and strange. He put his forehead right up against mine, eyes inches from my own, and started shouting. Then the most extraordinary thing happened. I always imagined I would step back from this kind of situation and try to talk someone down. But instead I found myself, almost involuntarily, responding in kind. Without thinking, I pressed my forehead into his, acting like I was John Terry. It was absurd and pitiful but completely and utterly intuitive, like some monkey bit of your brain just activated and grabbed the controls: ‘It’s alright lads, I know what to do here.’

Westminster culture will try to destroy Burnham. It doesn’t matter how many people want change. It doesn’t matter what his mandate is. It doesn’t matter how friendly he is. Having a more independent-minded, pragmatic approach to politics is completely anathema to the way it does things. It will try to kill it in the crib.

I suspect it will do so in the same way that I responded that day in Soho. Machismo is a default setting. And the behaviour of other people will remorselessly push Burnham towards reciprocating in kind.

The media is a major part of the problem. It will interpret any issue about contrary views as a test of his authority. It does not know any other way. So if an MP has a different opinion on some matter - Heathrow expansion, rewilding, benefits, whatever - it’ll ask them about it every time they do an interview, then Burnham will be asked what he’ll do about it. If several MPs vote against the government, it’ll be treated as a challenge to his leadership. On and on it goes: the forehead pressed against the forehead, shouting in his face. Fight fight fight. And it’s really hard not to respond in a macho way - disciplining MPs, enforcing the whip - even though that will ultimately undermine the project he is pursuing.

The same will happen with the opposition. Burnham wants a more practical working environment in Westminster - more productive adversariality rather than the pathological adversariality we’re presented with now. This will be considered counter-cultural and insane.

Party leaders reflect the culture in which they became party leader. That’s how they succeeded. No political culture that wanted intelligent, practically-minded opposition would have made Kemi Badenoch leader of the Conservative party. If we’re lucky, Ed Davey will live up to it, perhaps the Greens. It’s hard to imagine the SNP doing so. It’s impossible to imagine Badenoch being anything but belligerent and inane.

The very people Burnham wants to bring in will probably react venomously to his attempt at doing so.

The press will then come for him just like they went for Starmer. He’ll be portrayed as weak, or naive, or hypocritical.

Starmer’s way of dealing with this was to emulate the New Labour techniques of the 2000s: Attend Rupert Murdoch’s parties, write op-eds for the Telegraph, send out ministers on the broadcast round. Perhaps Burnham will do the same, but there was a hint of a cannier approach this week.

At PMQs, Kemi Badenoch called him “a pair of eyelashes and black T-shirt”. He responded with a cute video online - depressingly on X, no change there - saying “it’s dark blue actually”.

I’m not going to pretend that this is some brave new era in online communication, but the mere fact Burnham can use social media with some basic degree of competence provides a potential way of sidestepping the press attack. This is where most people get their news, this is where minds are made up. And he is able to operate in it in a way that no previous prime minister has done, with the possible exception of Boris Johnson.

There is a chance here - no more than that, but a chance nonetheless - to neutralise the press attack. It is coming regardless, it doesn’t matter what he does. But Burnham can change the way the game is played.

When individuals try to take on a system, the system usually wins. It is the system which sets the incentives. It dictates the pressures, which establish the behaviour, which creates a web of actions dedicated to sustaining itself. It is extremely difficult to alter, especially when the system is as old and as firmly established as this one.

But then, we’ve never quite been in this situation before. It would be unusual enough to see someone who believed in electoral reform reach Downing Street - it literally hasn’t happened since 1997. For that person to come from a completely different power base, with independence from the Westminster culture, is stranger still. What’s happening right now is the kind of thing that happens once in a lifetime.

Obviously there will be disappointments - he has plenty of flaws and has already retreated on important liberal issues - but there is more opportunity here for radical constitutional change than there has been in a very long time indeed. I keep trying to think of a moment in democratic British history which is comparable to it and I fail.

The next few years are going to be undeniably fascinating. Perhaps it’ll fall apart instantly, or his more virtuous instincts will be corroded over time. Or perhaps, just perhaps, he will actually accomplish something. Perhaps finally, when the system is failing so badly that a figure as pitiful as Nigel Farage is threatening to win, it’ll finally see the need to change itself.

We should be clear what’s happening here. This is populism without the populism. Burnham has not made the Zack Polansky mistake and tried to copy the people-versus-the-elite narrative into a progressive framework. Instead, he is channeling the demand for change, for a new way of doing things, and directing it towards a better set of goals.

Who knows? Maybe when he unveils his agenda it’ll be bitterly disappointing. But he represents the best chance to change Westminster in decades. Reformers haven’t had this good an opportunity for a very long time indeed. It’s the kind of moment you bide your time for, and try to make the best of when you have it.

Just a few weeks to go.

Odds and sods

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Couple of pieces in the i paper this week - one on the hysterical briefings from left and right trying to stop Ed Miliband becoming chancellor and another on the publication of the royal finances.

The latest episode of Origin Story came out this week, with the second part of our history of think tanks. I take the reins, as we show how right-wing organisations started to congregate around Tufton Street, pumping out some properly horrible crap. We trace the secretive money flows from the US to the UK and demonstrate how even respectable organisations, like the Tony Blair Institute have been corroded by it.

But I spend much of the show talking about think tanks that work - the really valiant, important groups like the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UCL Constitution Unit, the Hansard Society, the Institute for Government, Chatham House and others. It’s a story of bastards, yes, but also of many hard-working, highly intelligent people behind the scenes who improve our political life.

Tickets are now on sale for our next live show, in September, at London’s beautiful Union Chapel. This is by far the biggest show we’ve ever done. The fact we’re even operating at this level honestly kinda breaks my mind. Origin Story started as a hyper-nerd operation with two non-celebrity hosts. We have built it episode by episode, season by season, with a really loyal, engaged and witty audience, to the point where we’re now knocking on the door of some of London’s biggest venues. Come along - it’s going to be amazing. Tickets are available here.

This week I did CBS News, which I gather is an American news channel. Watch out for the moment that I use the word ‘spanked’ and then try to press ahead while thinking: Did I just say spanked on breakfast TV? I also did my usual Late Night Live segment immediately after Starmer’s resignation. Last week I did the Making Money podcast on British political dysfunction. The hosts are great, but the stream of outraged comments on YouTube suggests that the audience is pretty right wing. So enjoy the fact that I spent most of it calling for higher taxes and talking about the need for more action on climate change.

This week I have exclusively watched the World Cup. I struggled to get into it at first - Trump antipathy, hatred of Fifa, the fact the whole thing is a grotesque corrupt monstrosity. But the videos of Scottish fans in Boston pulled me in. In the end you cannot make it ugly, because it involves people from different cultures mixing together in a shared love of something. That is, at base, such a beautiful thing that it cannot be mutilated, no matter how hard they seem intent on trying. Now I’m in that World Cup space where you no longer think ‘what am I going to watch tonight?’ You just turn on the TV and watch whatever match is on. Oh and: Ecuador. You fucking beauties.

See you next week you bastards.