Will The Next Tennant Redecorate Or Rebuild?
The resounding win for Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election may prove to be one of those moments that political historians look back on as a turning point. Burnham speaks of a "new politics", of putting place before party, and of returning key infrastructure to public control. Many voters clearly find that message attractive. It hints at a shift from managerialism to good old-fashioned leadership. When Burnham speaks of the country "going in the wrong direction for forty years", he is stepping outside the bounds of party politics and challenging the assumptions that have underpinned the UK's socio-economic settlement since 1979.
It is worth taking stock of the scale of that challenge.
The Tenants Are New, But It's Still Maggie's House.
There were many of us in 1979 who felt that Thatcher's election victory was just another battle in the class war, and that whatever happened over the next few years, the tide would eventually turn.
Forty-five years later, the railways have only partially been taken back into public hands. Right to Buy is still stripping social housing from the bottom rung. Tuition fees saddle graduates with almost lifelong debt. NHS backlogs are still supposedly solved by paying private providers. Instead of 'trickling down', wealth has flowed upwards. It seems now that even the government of the day are subjogated to the idea that government policy must consider 'the markets' before and over the needs of the people. Meanwhile our public infrastructure, from hospitals and schools to roads and water, has crumbled and failed while private investors grew rich at the expense of the people.
That's the Britain we live in today, still dominated by Margaret Thatcher's legacy.
Thatcher didn't just govern for eleven years. She reset the rules of British politics. Privatisation, market discipline, weaker unions, home ownership, monetarism: these were never truly challenged by subsequent administrations, let alone reversed. In many cases they were strengthened. New Labour didn't dismantle the Thatcherite socio-economic settlement, it cemented much of it. Kier Starmer's Labour government still sits comfortably inside that settlement, with fiscal rules that could have been set by Geoffrey Howe.
"...we are still living in the house that Thatcher built."
Housing is treated as an investment asset as much as a home, and Right to Buy, though watered down, still survives. Ambitious housebuilding targets continue to rely primarily on private sector delivery, fall short of housing experts' recommendations, and leave millions trapped in insecure housing or living with parents longer than they ever expected.
NHS waiting lists may be falling, but government continues to rely heavily on private-sector provision to patch capacity, while investment in the service's basic infrastructure continues to fall short of the level needed to fully reverse decades of underinvestment.
Despite repeated reforms, education continues to be organised around competition, choice and performance measures rather than the universal public-service ethos that once defined it. Recent moves to strengthen media literacy and critical thinking skills are welcome, but the fundamental objectives of the system are still shaped by economic priorities rather than civic ones.
Even as confidence in NATO is tested and Europe explores greater strategic autonomy, Britain's commitment to Trident, Atlanticism and the trappings of great-power status remains largely unchanged. The post-imperial British state still struggles to decide whether it is a middle-ranking European power, a global influencer, or America's indispensable ally.
None of this is to suggest that nothing has changed. The Workers' Rights Act represents the most significant strengthening of employment protections for a generation, while the gradual return of the railways to public ownership marks a notable departure from the shareholder-first model. Both are steps in a different direction. Yet the continued dysfunction of the privatised water industry and the scaling back of ambitions for public ownership in energy suggest the limits of that shift.
"Thatcher chose her revolution; Burnham may not have that luxury."
Despite the changes, we are still living in the house that Thatcher built. Subsequent administrations have rearranged the furniture and refreshed the decor, but the walls remain largely the same and the foundations still creak.
Margaret Thatcher brought about a revolution in industrial relations, adopted free market economics and led the country to a whole new socio-economic settlement. A Burnham government must face an even bigger revolution as artificial intelligence begins to reshape not merely how we work, but who owns productive capacity and how wealth is created. Whether the socio-economic settlement of 1979 can survive that transformation remains an open question. Thatcher chose her revolution; Burnham may not have that luxury.
Winning Is Not The Same As Leading
There is a recurring phenomenon in Westminster politics: parties keep winning elections and then struggling to govern. It is time to ask why.
It may initially sound strange to compare the softly spoken and reclusive Morgan McSweeney with the abrasive and rebellious Dominic Cummings, but they have much in common. Both were unelected, data-driven technocrats who were the back-room architects of sweeping and portentous victories. Cummings delivered Brexit and Boris Johnson's 2019 landslide. McSweeney delivered Labour's reformation under Starmer and a massive parliamentary majority on a relatively small share of the popular vote.
"Leadership has given way to analysis"
Neither Cummings nor McSweeney care much for political tradition, but both believed they had the data required to rewire British politics, and both emerged from a political culture that increasingly treats political campaigning not as a debate about values, but as an optimisation problem; which phrases motivate voters, which messages persuade swing constituencies, which seats deliver maximum gain for minimum risk and effort?
If you view them generously, both men are technocratic visionaries. If not, they could be seen as data-fixated zealots whose values are reduced to numbers. Either way, they represent a shift in how politics is practised in this country. Leadership has given way to analysis, bold visions have been replaced by policies calibrated to echo popular opinion, and optimisation has led us to managerialism.
The new belief is not about deciding which sunlit uplands society should be led to, but about finding the least unpopular route through the terrain that has been inherited. Which may be a winning strategy on the campaign trail, but it is not leadership.
Interior Decorating - The Triumph And Tragedy Of Managerialism.
Cummings may be remembered for Barnard Castle and the bullshit excuses that followed, but his larger failure was strategic. Brexit was won. Yet years were spent arguing about what Brexit should actually mean and whether it could deliver on the promises made in its name - notwithstanding that some of those promises like the £350m a week were patently impossible to deliver. Victory had proved much easier than governing and delivering.
Labour now risks discovering the same truth from the opposite direction.
"Leadership begins where the spreadsheet ends."
Data may tell you that winter fuel payments are unpopular with younger voters, make little difference to many recipients and cost a small fortune. It may tell you that disability benefits cost too much, and suggest that some claiments could be in employment. Data may tell you which messages are more likely to keep certain voters onside. What it cannot tell you is how people react when a party that once claimed to stand for the vulnerable begins to sound like it is auditioning for the front page of the Daily Mail. Voters are not spreadsheets, you can't run the macro, read the results and hit File >> Save and know the job is done. Spreadsheets don't have moods, feelings, ambitions, relatives, memories or susceptibility to a powerful headline. Leadership begins where the spreadsheet ends.
In politics winning is not the same thing as leading. Numbers and algorithms can deliver votes in an election, but they fall short on vision, values, conviction and the art of persuasion. Data can measure people, but it takes those other, human, qualities to fight for policies that might not look attractive in a focus group but are worth defending for the sake of the country, for the sake of society. Trying to square the numbers to please everyone leads to compromises, which lead to confusion in both government and in the public mind, and that eventually leads to failure.
"Britain needs a new socio-economic settlement"
The big failure of British politics since Thatcher is not that it chose markets over the state; it's that it increasingly stopped investing in the foundations that allow either markets or the state to succeed.
Spreadsheet politics means polling, focus-groups, segment audiences, test messages, optimised slogans, and adjusting policies according to feedback. One has to ponder whether that feedback reflects what the subjects think will be best for them, rather than best for the country.
The problem is that transformative leadership often involves imagining a future that does not yet exist, taking risks whose outcomes cannot be confidently predicted and convincing people to support something they do not yet want.
In other words, taking bold action in areas where data-driven prediction is weakest. Leadership often requires doing something that changes not just policy, but the very ground rules underpinning the art of government.
Every major new settlement in modern British history was created by a leader willing to challenge prevailing assumptions.
Winston Churchill wasn't following public opinion in 1940. Much of the British establishment favoured negotiation; war was not the popular option.
After WW2, Clement Attlee helped create institutions that most voters had never experienced before as part of his post-war socio-economic vision.
Margaret Thatcher adopted what was then a radical economic theory and rather than reflecting existing opinion told us confidently, "There is no such thing as society".
Each of those cases involved a leader trying to alter the political landscape itself. Britain needs a new socio-economic settlement suitable for the 21st century. Whether Andy Burnham or anyone else is ready to deliver it remains to be seen.
Beyond Thatcher's House
Four decades after Thatcher's revolution, Britain faces stagnant wages, weak productivity growth, unaffordable housing and mounting pressure on public services. Whatever the strengths of the settlement, these are not the hallmarks of a country at ease with itself. These persistent issues and the coming disruption of artificial intelligence all raise questions that managerial politics, constrained by an outdated settlement, has struggled to answer.
It's no longer good enough to keep redecorating Maggie's house.
The question is no longer whether Labour is the alternative to the Tories, and the emergence of a genuinely multi-party political landscape suggests that growing numbers of voters no longer believe the old assumptions are capable of solving the country's problems.
It's no longer good enough to keep redecorating Maggie's house. For 45 years various tennants have changed the wallpaper, refreshed the paintwork and moved the furniture around. The odd leak has been fixed and the roof has been patched, but the foundations are unchanged and no longer doing the job.
When the foundations are rotten, no amount of redecorating will stop the house falling down.
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