Will Andy Burnham’s commands solve our problems?
I share Andy Burnham’s commitment to placing care at the centre of our economic and political systems, and who wouldn’t empathise with his determination to end rough sleeping? But does he really think he can achieve that by instruction?
On the doorstep of No. 10 Downing Street on Monday Burnham drew to a close his first speech as Prime Minister with this flourish: “I will soon go through that door behind me and issue my first instruction: to end rough sleeping in our country.”
Burnham’s commitment has landed well with housing and homelessness charities, just as it was intended to do with television viewers. And why wouldn’t it? As Matt Downie, the Crisis CEO, put it: “Rough sleeping is a moral stain on our country.”
But the word in Burnham’s statement that undermined my confidence was ‘instruction’ – a commanding word presumably intended to have the opposite effect.
Of course, Prime Ministers must issue instructions – indeed, the need to do so is one of the huge burdens of the job. And as he was replacing Keir Starmer, I can see why Burnham would want to show his readiness to take action.
Burnham must know, however – he is not stupid, obviously – that putting an end to rough sleeping cannot be achieved in the same way as removing VAT from electricity bills.
So you might object that in fixing on a detail of vocabulary I am neglecting the more important intention of his message as a highly public commitment to which he is ready to be held accountable. But that’s precisely the problem.
The ministers and officials who receive Burnham’s instruction, and who pass it on to others in the governmental hierarchy, might succeed in fulfilling his promise.
But our public services are already littered with the effects of hitting a target while missing the point, and I dare say there are ways of shifting rough sleepers from our streets that will not necessarily help them fix their lives or repair the ragged social fabric through which they have tumbled.
On the other hand, it is just as likely that Burnham’s very public commitment will not be achieved, precisely because of the complexity of the homelessness challenge. That disappointing outcome would demonstrate that it was bad politics as well as questionable strategy.
Do we want our new government to focus its attention on manifestations of our economic and social problems or on their causes? Doing both would be ideal, no doubt, but each has its own effect on political and institutional culture.
That is why I fear that Burnham’s headline-grabbing declaration could return to haunt him, and that it could undermine his commitment – also made in his Downing Street speech — to “change politics, to make it more collaborative”.
It’s a cliché that we only have one chance to make a first impression, and of course a new Prime Minister will want to rally the nation on his way into 10 Downing Street for the first time.
But I would have preferred Andy Burnham to do so with a different sort of Churchillian rhetoric, one that addressed us as adult citizens with agency in exercising both our responsibilities and our rights; one that involves being a leader rather than a fixer.
I am among those encouraged by Burnham’s embrace of communitarian and cooperative values. I don’t doubt they are sincerely held – or that they will be severely tested in government.
Will his government do all it can – and which no other agency can do – to rebuild the civic and economic infrastructure needed to support and proliferate the increasingly promising examples of collective problem-solving at neighbourhood and workplace levels?
Or will it doom itself to failure by perpetuating the false promises of political consumerism in an environment in which the populist charlatans will always have some snake oil to sell and a scapegoat to blame?