Dear Subscribers,
Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield appeared to be easy, as he won 54.8pc of the vote, and has been treated as such. But these votes came less from Burnham’s positive appeal than from the negative aim of removing Starmer and shutting out Farage. Voters who would have gone with the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens seem to have voted tactically for Burnham – their combined vote share collapsed by almost 19pc from the 2024 general election. Burnham gave a boring victory speech, sodden in slogans – ‘[making] politics work again’, ‘big change at the national level’, ‘voting for hope’. Above all, Burnham has arrived in what he considers to be ‘the last chance to save the Labour party.’ Thus it is highly likely that Burnham will challenge Starmer for No.10: Cabinet Ministers have pressed Starmer to step aside to avoid controversy and friction, according to The Times. Starmer is pondering his future over the weekend.
Earlier in the week the government implemented its ban on social media for under-16s. While this is a popular cause for parents, there is no guarantee that it will work: in fact, teenagers will likely download VPNs and continue to use social media anyways (and Starmer is considering banning those next). What matters, for Starmer, is the appearance of doing something. Of course, anyone who follows such things closely can see where it will lead – digital ID through the backdoor. Starmer seems to be heeding the vision Blair offered in his essay a couple of weeks ago. Starmer is signalling his ‘openness to the digital revolution’, and a recognition of the importance of digital ID for welfare and health to ‘define the future of the British economy’. It of course all amounts to empowering the state yet further.
With the ten-year anniversary of Brexit in sight next week, Remainers insist that it was a mistake and to blame for the present state of things. Most prominent, perhaps, is Andrew Bailey, who has consistently claimed that Brexit has damaged the economy. He believes his prediction that Brexit would have a ‘negative impact on growth’ has been vindicated; and the BBC presents such views as unarguable and indefeasible. Yet these positions are based on Remainer prejudice – pessimism about the present and resentment at the past (ie 2016) – rather than any standard of objective judgement at things as they actually are. Against Remainer prejudice are the reflections of Michael Gove in this week’s Spectator which affirms the liberating aspect of Brexit – not to mention the recent publication of Brexit: The Facts Strike Back.
Book release – Brexit: The Facts Strike Back
Almost exactly ten years after the June 2016 referendum, Brexit and its consequences again dominate British politics. These ten years have seen the country divided and its political system tested almost to destruction. The public debates have often been based on assertions and arguments that are highly technical, especially those concerning economics and trade. Has Brexit made us poorer, and do we therefore need to return to the EU fold, as the present government and its supporters insist? Or is it the government’s own policies that are responsible for our economic handicaps?
There has been a ten-year campaign, still continuing, to persuade the British public that they made the wrong decision in 2016, and that they should have listened to those politicians, intellectuals and ‘experts’ who told them to vote Remain. Yet much of what we have been told, and are still being told, has no basis in evidence, and it is often provably wrong. Resolving the biggest political issue of our time needs facts, not propaganda, and this book gives them.
The contributors are members of Briefings for Britain, a volunteer group that has been supplying information to the public since 2017. Catherine McBride OBE is a professional trade economist, Wilf Glasby is a professional economist working in the private sector, Nick Busvine OBE is a former diplomat, co-editors Robert Tombs and Graham Gudgin CBE are respectively a historian and an economist at Cambridge.
You can purchase a copy on Amazon for £12.95.
Blog
A Triumph of Hope Over Experience by Rt Hon Lord Lilley
Lord Lilley’s latest Policy Exchange report warns that Labour’s EU reset will impose heavy costs on British industry. Discover the severe economic risks of dynamic alignment, from billion-pound trade hits to costly renewable energy mandates.
BBC Bias on Brexit by David Keithley
In a BBC first David Keithlley’s News-watch organisation obtained an admission of bias for a BBC item. More generally the BBC insists that its reports of significant economic damage from Brexit reflects the predominant view among economists, with no significant body of opinion maintaining that Brexit had been beneficial or even neutral.
Media
The Brexit decade: was it worth it? by Michael Gove for The Spectator
A Burnham coup would be disastrous for Labour – and the country by Charles Moore for The Telegraph
Key Points
The Meanings of Makerfield
So not so close after all: what promised to be a Labour-Reform showdown, complicated by Restore, turned out to be a Labour landslide. What can we take away from this?
First, the limits of a local candidate. Reform’s choice of Robert Kenyon seemed to be a corrective to their loss to the Greens’ local candidate (also a plumber) in Gorton and Denton. The assumption being that the contrast to Burnham would win over sympathetic voters who hate Labour. But for all that is said for Burnham’s being a career politician, it showed and worked to his advantage. His reputation is well-established and he has his distinctive style (thoughtless northern sentimentalism) which had a positive impact. Kenyon was an unknown quantity: the unearthing of his old tweets by the media probably lost him most of the female vote. Perhaps in retrospect it could be said that what was needed to fight Burnham was not a local figure, but a national figure with a strong political personality that could have met Burnham on his level and made arguments (as opposed to existing, as Kenyon did, as a symbol (ie David to Burnham’s Goliath)): one wonders what could have been had Matt Goodwin stood there instead of Gorton and Denton.
Secondly, the prospects of a Burnham administration. This may or may not mean Miliband at No.11; it may or may not mean Mahmood stays put at the Home Office; it may or may not mean Burnham triggers a general election to stun Reform and to purge Starmerism from the Labour party. Everything here is equivocal and unstable because Burnham has no ideas. You can listen to Burnham speak on anything, whether it’s a formal speech or a TikTok video, and it is vapid and hollow – he just wants people to feel good (about him). What actually lies behind the ‘politics of hope’ (probably hate), ‘making politics work’ (probably taxing those whom he hates), giving back ‘fairness to the north’ (exploiting the south) etc? Nothing – yet. If – or when – he becomes Prime Minister, Burnham will pursue answers in policy. It is plausible that Burnham develops a brand of leftist ‘populism’ that absorbs the Greens and Lib Dems (where did Zack Polanski go? What does Ed Davey actually do with his time?). All ‘populisms’ rest upon the personality of the ‘populist’. And this is how Burnham exists, not on policies; and personalities can save parties.
Thirdly, the impact on the right. This is harder to measure but it is taking shape. Despite increasing its vote share by 2.6pc, Reform’s loss has given fresh hope to Conservatives – who on the same night won a decisive victory in an Aberdeen South by-election. Farage is clearly deflated. In The Telegraph Charles Moore thinks this is a sign of things to come (ie Conservative resurgence) and Camilla Tominey thinks ‘the seeds have been sown’ for a Conservative ‘renaissance’. In reality, the right-wing vote is fragmented nationally: no one conservative party has a comprehensive grip on the electorate. One way of seeing this fragmentation is between conservatives who have no bones about Farage and those who do. And Badenoch, perhaps to her credit (although she has been luckier than people think and is overrated in the circles Moore and Tominey move in), has emerged as a plausible right-wing leader. Thus the Conservatives are claiming that Reform has reached its ceiling. But what they are observing has in fact always been there: Farage is a marmite figure. He is most effective as a performer, not a thinker. (Dominic Cummings has long held that Farage has a ceiling that can only be transcended by seriousness about governing.) Performance goes far in a democracy, but thought – or the semblance of thought – is necessary to being elected to govern.
The future historian of our politics could do worse than start on 18th June 2026 in Makerfield. Not because it is the ‘cause’ of anything per se, but because it has flashed, like a bolt of lightning, and illuminated for a moment the state of things and potential futures for British politics.
