Watching Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Steve Reed, Peter Kyle, Liz Kendall, Hilary Benn, Darren Jones, Nick Thomas-Symonds and Jenny Chapman get marched out of Downing Street on Monday night, it was hard not to enjoy it. These were ministers and tribal factional politicians who spent two years marginalising the left within the party, who enthusiastically pursued policies that turned Labour into a toxic brand in the minds of the voters who elected them. Good riddance to the lot of them.
But the cabinet Andy Burnham announced afterwards wiped away the smile of satisfaction fast. Their replacements are just as bad, just as dull, just as unimaginative – and in several cases worse. Despite the new PM’s pledge to end factionalism and use the talents of the whole parliamentary party, not one single representative of the left has been appointed to any cabinet role. Not one.
Burnham kept 12 members of Starmer’s cabinet – seven in the same post, five moved sideways – and added 15 new faces. The reshuffle might change the nuance here and there, but the top team is set to cleave to Labour’s failed political outlook and its failed fiscal rules, with the purse strings now marshalled by John Healey, the hawkish and militaristic former defence secretary, installed as Burnham’s first chancellor.
Retaining Shabana Mahmood as home secretary, keeping the hated work and pensions secretary in post, and installing a key Blairite to run the Department of Health – these appointments aren’t nuance. They’re the same direction of travel that got Labour into this mess in the first place.
As the socialist economist Yanis Varoufakis put it: “This is the definition of a bad start. The new finance minister will deepen the public debt even further to buy American weapons that contribute neither to the security of the United Kingdom nor to boosting productivity. The same home secretary will continue to exercise the same ritualistic violence against refugees. Cooper will continue to undermine the National Health Service, fully following Blair’s model. And Ed Miliband has taken it upon himself to transform complicity in the Genocide of the Palestinians into something more… cutesy.”
Given the years spent hollowing out Labour’s ranks and stuffing the parliamentary party with nodding dogs and supine Starmer loyalists, what else could anyone have expected? Burnham inherited a cupboard bare of political talent and he hasn’t strayed far beyond the tried, tested and failed in refilling it.
Media dictates the boundaries of discussion to suit the system
Individuals matter less than policy and the media’s framing of what Burnham now faces is predictably reductive. As writer for The Left Lane Ben Sellers said: “The BBC coverage of Burnham’s coronation tells you so much about what is wrong with British politics. Experts paraded on to tell us what the talking points are and what’s so fascinating to watch is the way they draw the boundaries of the discussion. According to the Beeb, the big issues the new PM faces is how to pay for his defence spending commitments, to pick the right person to ‘reform’ welfare and the balancing act he has in reassuring the markets whilst committing to taking water, transport and housebuilding into public hands. No way can we ever discuss the fact that the markets have failed – on the utilities, housing, the NHS, education and delivering public services. Expect, ultimately, lots of private sector solutions, when that’s exactly what the problem has been all along.”
Sellers is right. No amount of “our Andy” niceness and folksy presentation can change what’s actually broken this country. We’ve had 40 years of privatised utilities charging monopoly rents while pipes leak and rivers fill with sewage, a railway carved up between competing operators charging some of the highest fares in Europe, a housing market that treats a place to live as a speculative asset class and an NHS starved of capital investment then blamed for the waiting lists that starvation produced.
That’s what neoliberalism did, in concrete terms, to people’s lives – and it is squarely to blame for the state Britain is in now. Burnham knows this. He’s talked about the country being on the wrong path for 40 years. He’s even talked about the need to move away from neoliberalism. But talk is cheap.
So, here’s what needs to happen – and fast. Burnham has to take on the City, the arms industry and the welfare-cutters who are already lobbying him, not manage a more polite version of their agenda. If he doesn’t – if this cabinet delivers more of the same privatisation, more of the same benefit sanctions, more of the same deference to the bond markets – then Reform will be in government within a couple of years and everyone who cheered the departure of Reeves and Lammy on Monday night will have got a change of faces and nothing else.
Rearranging the cabinet table was never going to be enough. Watch what Burnham does next – and don’t let him get away with less than what he’s promised.
Subscribe to our regular updates to receive the latest articles, analysis and news direct to your inbox at https://theleftlane.media/subscribe/
