By It has become fashionable this week to say that all Andy Burnham has been offering recently has been “vibes”. And, if “vibes” means emotional connection, optimism and generalities rather than specifics, then that’s fair. This speech was a vibes masterclass.
But it’s a ghastly term because it’s pejorative and sneery, and it misses what politics is about. When Winston Churchill delivered his brilliant speeches during the second world war, and promised to “fight them on the beaches”, that was just vibes too. You could say the same about Martin Luther King, or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama – or almost anyone else. There was not much policy detail in “I have a dream”.
Burnham is not in that class as an orator, but this speech was in better than anything that Keir Starmer has delivered, and really very, very good indeed. There were two passages that particularly stood out.
The first was the one where he cleverly appropriated and inverted the ‘Andy Burnham walks into a bar” joke. (See 12.31pm.) The self-deprecating joke, “a Burnhamite walks into a bar, as many Burnhamites are known to do”, was particularly nicely phrased, but overall it worked because he was using a joke to shore up a proper argument.
And the second was his line:
double quotation mark The right use the phrase “take back control”, but they are the ones who gave it away in the first place.
This was neat because it linked his argument about Thatcherism and the past 40 years (see 12.40pm) with the need to offer a policy response to the crisis in left-behind areas illustrated by the Brexit vote.
The narrative arc of progressive politics is, almost always, disappointment. Leaders who are best at inspiring hope are also those most likely to hear people saying a few years down the line they have not lived up to expectations.
But hope is always a good starting point; vibes on their own won’t deliver change, but it easier to get things done with them than without them. Burnham’s leadership has got off to a good start.
Originally published on www.theguardian.com — View original
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