Those words were uttered by the great election strategist Sir Lynton Crosby.
They are truer now than they have ever been.
For those of us who are slaves to the logical and the factual, we despair at such a notion – enraged by the idea that our fellow voters can choose a sob story over what is historically proven to benefit their lives.
It reminds me of watching Britain’s Got Talent, where the contestants would go to considerable lengths to outline the terrible struggles they had endured over the course of their lifetimes. They did this knowing that it would influence the outcome.
My type of frustration often leads to two suggestions on how to solve this British tendency.
The first of these involves calling our fellow countrymen and women idiotic for being so gullible. Those who fail to thoroughly scrutinise policies and decipher ideologies are seen as inferior; they are portrayed as children posing as adults, given the power to influence the direction of our great nation. Irresponsible at best and dangerous at worst – the theory goes – these people must be controlled.
This was the belief that guided much of the left during the Brexit years. The people situated in the Red Wall didn’t know what was best for them, therefore this necessitated the intellectual elites of our society to correct this grotesque error of judgement by securing another spin of the Referendum wheel. This awful line of thinking was systemically debunked by the success of Boris Johnson and later Nigel Farage, who appealed to the working classes not by patronising them or implying that their democratically expressed wishes belonged on the ash heap of political history. They appealed to them by saying that their verdict was wise and justified and that a coterie at the top of society were conspiring to block their decision. The truth prevailed and they were electorally rewarded.
The second of these is the idea that, to compete with this phenomenon, opponents themselves must adopt their approach. Sometimes, these theories can be intertwined. If the political audience are so corrupted by their proclivity to become infatuated with this technique, then what is the use trying to get another tactic to work? Absent the rhetorical genius of Winston Churchill and the immensely coherent and impassioned arguments of Margaret Thatcher, hope is typically lost.
Consequently, politicians begin to allow their personal lives to dominate the conversation.
Have many times did you hear that Rishi Sunak worked in a pharmacy when he was younger? I lost count.
How many times did you hear Keir Starmer reveal that his father was a toolmaker? Enough times for me lose respect for the whole profession.
How many times have you heard Angela Rayner talk about her GCSEs (or lack thereof) and being a care worker? I know I have endured such personal statements in her speeches praising the trade unions.
The problem is so bad now that politicians are judged based off of their ability or inability to detail their personal background.
It doesn’t seem to be considered that the politician might not want to examine their backstory in the television studios because it has precisely nothing to do with the policy programme about which they would like to speak.
The defining test of our politicians should not be one crafted on personality, likeability and background. The defining test of our politicians should be one crafted on outcomes, ideology and truth.
I fear this indulgence in the world of fantasy, into which I do not tend to stray, has been confirmed as just that by recent events.
The Prime Minister’s Speech
Yesterday, the Prime Minister stood up at the Labour Party Conference to give his first conference speech as Leader of The Labour Party.
Expectations of the content and style of the event were largely influenced by the previous day’s speech, given by the Chancellor John Healey.
Mr Healey, who was widely regarded as a deeply honourable man for resigning over an issue of principle during the tail end of the Starmer government, spent his time failing to outline a serious and credible plan for tackling the huge economic problems that plague Britain – from cripplingly high taxation rates and ever more burdensome regulations to the challenges of AI and the accumulating debt.
Instead, the Chancellor opted to go down the route that many choose in a time of disaster: nostalgia.
Not even authentic nostalgia.
Fake nostalgia for a time considered to be almost unmitigatedly awful. Of course, I am referencing the 1970s.
You needn’t recall the upwards of 25% inflation, huge unemployment, trade unionists having sandwiches and beer in Downing Street, billions upon billions of pounds of taxpayers money going to subsidise grotesquely inefficient nationalised industries, children doing their homework by candle light, three day weeks and blackouts amongst other horrors.
In fact, Mr Healey doesn’t – wink-wink – think that really happened. Shut the history books and Charles Moore biographies of Margaret Thatcher. Return your racist black Labradors to the pound and pour that Warm Ale down the drain! The 1970s were the golden age, baby!
Well, I am sorry to be the one that informs the Chancellor that…um… the 1970s were a disaster area.
The Chancellor did achieve one rather remarkable achievement over the course of his speech though. He provided the perfect warm-up act for the main man.
Finally, at two o’clock, the Prime Minister walked out to a conference that was relieved to see somebody other than Keir Starmer. Tieless and without a lectern, it was immediately clear that the Prime Minister was utilising a perception of himself that some of the public currently hold – that he is a friendly, approachable man with whom you would like to have a beer – for his own electoral gain.
He stated that he wanted the speech to be centred around ‘honesty’, displaying that, at least, our Prime Minister can be defined by his sense of humour.
The entirety of the speech was littered with falsehoods.
Not little white lies that a more generous political observer could choose to ignore.
Unmissable and glaringly prominent lies.
Chief amongst them was implicit in the Prime Minister laying our his vision for Britain. In doing so, he explained why he has become a believer in the socialist ideology.
Let me try and establish his argument for the readers.
Life was one of uninterrupted beauty for his parents. They had stock in what he called the ‘common wealth’ and were possessed by ‘the aspirations of the working class.’ The governments of the time – all Labour ones apparently, despite a little thing called history telling a different story – enabled them to live a better life through controlling industries and spending lavishly.
The beauty continued into the birth of Baby Burnham in 1970. He was inspired by them and the brilliance of the Labour governments during that time – again, ahistorical – resulting in a far higher chance of him living a better life than his parents.
Then, like all good stories, an enemy emerged – around which all the people united to opposed: Margaret Thatcher.
Her election victory in 1979 led to the country taking ‘a series of wrong turns’ and took power away from people and put it into the hands of ‘vested interests’, who sought to do our country harm. Nationalised industries were sold off; council house tenants were able to buy their homes; mining towns were destroyed; people were left without the most cherished of all the virtues: hope. This massively harmed the chances of the working classes and helped to create an economy that benefitted the few, not the many.
Apparently, the Thatcherite revolution proceeded at full speed throughout both Conservative and Labour governments in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and up until 2026. In Burnham’s thinking, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer were and still are all neoliberals.
To be honest with the readers, I have to confess something. There was a lot of shouting and there was a lot of banging of heads as a consequence of rhetoric like this.
There is a transition on which a conservative goes when such a speech is being performed. At first, it is laughter at the overt lies. Then, it is rage at the fact that people are buying into them. To conclude, it is despair that this man can and will use the supermajority obtained by his predecessor to secure these policies.
The Prime Minister’s account of his childhood and view of the Thatcherite period is plain wrong.
Worse than wrong.
A lie.
A cheap lie told by the left for years to win favour amongst the country.
Andy Burnham’s account deliberately leaves out the context behind the Thatcherite reforms that the country endorsed in three subsequent general elections. He seems to believe that the government having total control over the key industries at the time – water, energy, railways, steel, coal, mining alongside others – benefitting the country as a whole.
This directly contradicts history. The lives of the beer-drinking and sandwich-eating trade unionists who exploited the taxpayer did improve over that time. The lives of the rest of the country – tens of millions of hardworking British taxpayers who spent years following the rules – were destroyed because of them and Labour’s governmental incompetence. So, for the few, not the many, is okay when it comes to the nationalised industries then?
He seems to believe that the wealthiest in society facing a 98% marginal tax rate was just and enabled the rest of the UK to live an excellent life. Any student of history will know that such a radically high tax rate is supremely ineffective and has the opposite effect of the intention. As the 1970s showed, these tax rates encouraged the rich to leave the UK, view our country as a devastatingly bad area for them to reside and hire loophole-keen tax lawyers.
Government Ownership Does Not Empower The People
Furthermore, one of the main critiques that Mr Burnham launches at the Thatcherite period was the loss of people’s control of the economy.
Firstly, this is an incorrect framing. Government ownership of the means of production does not give the general population more control. Actually, it does the exact opposite. It empowers a select few at the top of the state, rather than allowing for the creative spirit and innovation that capitalism so expertly provides.
Secondly, the privatisation of these industries did give people control of such industrial giants. Ordinary members of the public had the ability to own shares in these companies that were, in the vast majority of cases, run markedly better by private enterprise when compared to the government’s performance. This helped them take part in ‘popular capitalism’ and the move towards an economy where a sizeable amount of economic power was devolved to individuals.
This basic examination of Mr Burnham’s criticisms reveal the most troubling contradiction that lies at the heart of his devolution argument. He longs for devolution because he wants to ‘move power out of Whitehall’ and into ‘the hands of local communities’. If this truly is the case, how is the central government massively expanding through nationalisation going to ‘move power out of Whitehall’ and ‘into the hands of local communities’?
And, by local communities, he means local politicians. That is not the same thing. Giving politicians power is not giving the rest of the population power. This intellectual sleight of hand shows the prism through which Mr Burnham views politics: you are a hostage of your circumstances and only by giving me and people like me more power can your suffering be alleviated. It is the most malevolent of political pitches and one that should be resisted.
Mr Burnham is famous for his powers of sympathy. Yet, he failed and continues to fail to sympathise with anybody who, during the 1970s, suffered so greatly at the hands of an agenda that bares freakish resemblance to his. He is militantly ideological, a man who will appear moderate to secure electoral success, but will burn with socialist passion until he ceases to exist.
‘Forty Years Of Neoliberalism’ Is A Lie
Concluding my analysis of his view on the Thatcherite period is the claim that this unleashed forty years of ‘neoliberalism.’
Mr Burnham’s desire to use words that he doesn’t understand, only to repeat them, should terrify everyone in our nation.
What does ‘neoliberalism’ mean, I hear you ask?
Let us use the official definition: ‘It is a political and economic philosophy that advocates for free-market capitalism, minimal government intervention, and economic liberalization.’
Furthermore, to score the Prime Minister’s claims on honesty grounds, I will now state the key principles of ‘neoliberalism’ to determine whether our country has been following this ideology for the past forty years:
Deregulation – We have substantially more regulation now than we did in 1980. That makes Mr Burnham WRONG on this count.
Privatisation – Large amounts of industries/enterprises have been privatised over the past few decades, whilst only a few have been nationalised. The Prime Minister regards all privatisation as wrong, regardless of the outcome. This makes Burnham HALF-RIGHT on this count.
Reducing Government Spending – The government spends more than it ever has in its history. Servicing our debt is the third largest government department, if you were to measure it that way. That makes Mr Burnham WRONG on this count.
Lowering The Rates Of Taxation: The tax burden is the highest on record. That makes Mr Burnham obviously WRONG on this count.
This means that the Prime Minister’s claim that the last forty years have consisted of ‘neoliberalism’ is wrong, and quite considerably so.
The Policy Blitz
Despite making such untrue claims, the Prime Minister abruptly shifted the tone of his speech.
That brings us to a point where the Prime Minister talked about his recently deceased father.
May I start this segment by saying that this must be a devastating loss for the Prime Minister. To have to grieve so publicly is a greatly unfortunate part of his role. I wish him and his family all the very best in dealing with this tragedy.
On the topic, Mr Burnham was visibly emotional, stopping the speech to cries of ‘Go Andy’ from the audience. He proceeded to ensure he said his piece to the huge support of the hall.
However, the undeniable horror of him losing his father should not be the basis of forming public policy.
He promised to establish a ‘National Care Service’ (NCS) via abolishing the triple lock in favour of pensions going up by either inflation or 2.5%. The money saved from that, unidentified at this point, would be spent creating this ‘free at the point of delivery’ service, despite sources later claiming you would still have to pay the fees for staying in a care home.
Linking your recently deceased father to this policy makes it extremely difficult for the opposition to attack. If you don’t, you will be damned. If you do, you will be damned.
This proposal follows the theme of not letting the British public know from where the money will come.
How much for the potential renationalisation of the water companies? Bueller…
How much for the nationalised energy grid as an extension of Great British Energy? Bueller…
How much more money on welfare in a bid to apparently decrease the bill? Bueller…
And what was Burnham’s most prominent criticism of the modern era?
Withdrawing from the European Union.
He said that it did ‘more harm than good’. What we need now, according to the Burnham mantra, is the European Union’s guidance on a wide range of issues.
By rejoining the EU, which Burnham has admitted is ‘on the table’, we would become subservient to the demands of the centralised force of Brussels once more. The project that sucked power into the hands of Brussels bureaucrats from the British people and attempted to stamp out any variation that did not fit their narrative is fundamentally incompatible with Burnham’s belief in devolution. Does a local community in Grimsby have a greater ability to determine its future through Brussels or its own politicians?
Tying ourselves to failing economies that are regulating AI beyond recognition, for example, is not a recipe for economic success. One of the key points of freeing ourselves from the punishing shackles of this wretched institution was to boost engagement with emerging markets that would determine the future of world trade.
The left is beholden to the idea that leaving the European Union is the main source of our current economic woes, alongside the Labour-enablers in the form of the Liberal Democrats. There is a staggering incoherence within this argument.
The policies that contributed to the deterioration of our country’s economy are the very policies that Mr Burnham wishes to expand. Hence the fact that endorsing the entrepreneurial class of Britons and those who see private enterprise as inherently good and worth protecting was absent from the speech. Additionally, he has failed to use his authority as Prime Minister to promote an attitude that ignites the power of business, which will improve the lives of his citizens far more effectively than anything the government can dream of.
And, as for the Prime Minister’s jab that ‘the right gave away the power’, few things could be further from the truth. His friends on the left will happily admit that moving towards the EU or, heaven forbid, re-joining it, would cede power. This is right, they say, as the European project is superior.
Leaving the EU gave us the power to determine our own future. Just because Boris Johnson and co used that power badly is not an argument in favour of the idea that we didn’t get the power back in the first place.
Mr Burnham ought to have some intellectual honesty.
But, then again, the Labour Party are uninterested in such ideas. The obsession with the EU is the hill on which the left will happily choose to die.
What Was Missing Was Arguably More Telling
What is most telling is what the Prime Minister brushed over or didn’t mention at all.
- Immigration
- National Security
- Our Armed Forces
- Crime
- Policing
- Farming
You don’t need to be much of a political nerd to pick up on the emerging pattern. All of these issues are those that the right have traditionally owned.
This reinforces the Burnham electoral strategy: consolidate the left-wing bloc of Liberal Democrats, Greens and Gaza Independents to enable this radical platform to have a chance of winning the next general election.
There was not, and there won’t be, an attempt to move to the centre to attract some right-wing voters.
Why compromise your values when you may be able to win with them?
How Conservatives Can Combat Burnhamism
Then, with a detectable passion, the Prime Minister ended his speech to rapturous applause and a media waiting to sing his praises.
However dismissive I may have been of the policy proposals over the course of this piece, it must be known that there will be a portion of the country who like this speech. They will like the man. They will like and sympathise with his vulnerability. They will like some if not all of his ideas.
To succeed, the right must fight this clear expression of ideology with their own clear expression of ideology. Kemi Badenoch next week must outline what it means to be a Conservative, why supporting markets is both good and moral and forcefully articulate the evils of socialism.
I say this out of a degree of desperation.
Because, if she doesn’t, we may be stuck with the consequences of Burnhamism for the rest of our lives.
