Andy Burnham is a magician: he hasn’t really done anything and yet he is popular

Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today. Join today Already a member? Log in I was wrong. I said the Labour Party would not solve its problems by changing prime minister. On the contrary, its outlook has been transformed. The assumption that Nigel Farage would win the next election has been wiped from the memory and replaced by the calculation, as I wrote last week, that if he plays his cards right, Andy Burnham could be the longest-serving prime minister since Tony Blair. But I was also right. The Labour Party has not solved any of the country’s actual problems by changing prime minister. Burnham has made a number of small announcements that have been well received – on rough sleeping, cutting bus fares and taking VAT off electricity bills – but nothing big that has an immediate effect. There are perhaps two exceptions. One is that he restricted the number of prisoners who would be released early, to ensure that the killers of PC Andrew Harper stayed behind bars. We cannot know what Keir Starmer and David Lammy, his justice secretary, would have done about that, but they would have been under the same pressure from public opinion. The other is that Burnham took the brave and right decision to “adjust” the triple lock for uprating the state pension. Again, maybe Starmer and Rachel Reeves would have done that too. The Treasury has long been pushing for this change, which makes the public finances more sustainable in the long term, as anyone would know if they had heard Nick Macpherson, the former permanent secretary of the Treasury who is now a colleague of mine at King’s College London, wax evangelical on the subject. This won’t affect the state pension until after 2029, but the announcement should have an effect in reducing interest rates now. More broadly, though, the Budget arithmetic is roughly what would have faced Reeves if she had still been in the Treasury. She and Starmer would probably have made more or less the same decisions as those that have been made by John Healey and Burnham – presumably to raise a modest amount by taxing banks and restricting reliefs for the better-off, to reduce the headroom a little and to offer a token breathing space for the poor on their energy bills. Recommended Andy Burnham’s Gogglebox appearance is clever politics Why John Healey’s ‘business Budget’ will be a ruthless snub to Rachel Reeves By drilling Jackdaw, Mr Burnham offers the nation a drop of hope Yet this Budget, I suspect, will be greeted with a polite “best they could do in difficult circumstances” instead of “how dare she come back for yet more”. The mood has changed. The Zeitgeist has shifted. What lies behind this miracle? Part of it is that Burnham was popular in the first place, having made a good impression beyond north-west England as mayor of Greater Manchester. That was why Labour MPs imported him to Westminster, because he was the only potential candidate with a net positive opinion-poll rating – Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Ed Miliband were all net negative. Part of it is that Burnham has been lucky, in that his arrival coincided with the fading of the reputations of Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski. And part of it is that Burnham is “good at politics” while Starmer was not. But what does this glib phrase mean, beyond a personable manner and a talent for gimmicky small policies? I think it means communication, which is often treated as a superficial skill or an afterthought when it is the essential core of democratic politics. Starmer seemed to think he was good at making decisions, and sometimes he was, but he was not so good at communicating the reasons for them. Burnham, on the other hand, is always explaining, always engaging with people’s concerns and trying to respond to them. Kemi Badenoch unwisely mocked him at Prime Minister’s Questions for “worrying about loud music on trains” when the country is in debt and the feeble government announcement will make no difference to enforcement. But it showed that Burnham was on the side of the majority on one of the irritations that erode the quality of life. “I’m all for the little things to be honest,” said one poster on Mumsnet. Similarly Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England economist who was briefly an adviser to Burnham, in the second of his “rare interventions” this week, accused the prime minister of being “penny wise and pound foolish”. It is true that Burnham is not doing enough to cut public spending, and that this Budget is likely to be another exercise in postponing necessary cuts to after 2029. But the decision on the triple lock was important and right, and it is possible that the Budget will lean towards disappointing Labour MPs more than it will disappoint the bond markets. Whatever is in the Budget, we know that Burnham will not stop communicating the reasons he has made those decisions. It won’t be enough to satisfy Haldane or Badenoch, but it will probably keep the honeymoon sentiment afloat. Recommended Andy Burnham’s North Sea gas gamble is greener than you think Victoria’s Secret’s celebration of postpartum models is a dystopian nightmare When Trump loses big in the midterms, prepare for the worst I thought that the sudden change in the public mood towards the Labour government when Burnham stepped off the Avanti West Coast train at Euston might be a bubble. Without a change in policy substance, I believed Burnham would quickly find himself as unpopular as his predecessor. Now I am not so sure. Being “good at politics”, by communicating, empathising and explaining, may be enough to keep the Burnham magic going for some time.