Andy Burnham interview: grassroots opposition

Labour needs to reconnect with its members and can reach out to Northern Ireland by running for election here, according to Andy Burnham. Peter Cheney talks to the leadership candidate.

“I’m standing to be leader of the Labour Party because I fear Labour has become dangerously disconnected from ordinary working people,” Andy Burnham told journalists as he accepted his nomination from Northern Ireland members. While proud of its achievements in government, he saw a need to “stand on the side of ordinary people” in a time of spending cuts.

Cuts suggested by the coalition were “akin to public service vandalism”. He continued: “They will hollow out public services across the UK, leaving young people without hope, vulnerable people without help. And I believe the British Labour Party can stand with parties and people around the UK in opposing cuts on this scale.”

David Cameron’s comments on cutting Northern Ireland’s public sector had been a “chilling moment” for him during the election campaign and he warned those cuts would “threaten” the province’s economic development.

“The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have used this language about unavoidable [cuts]. Well, it’s not unavoidable. It’s an ideological choice and, in my view, it’s an ideological assault on public services.”

His alternative is using more tax increases, rather than depending on spending cuts for 80 per cent of the deficit reduction. This would include the proposed national insurance rise and a “more ambitious” tax on financial transactions tax: “If the public see the bankers play a bigger part in reducing the deficit, I think they would feel that was natural justice.”

Tax, he contends, makes life harder when it has to be paid but large scale cuts can wreck lives and damage communities.

“This view that you can just remove public investment and miraculously private sector investment will take its place. Well, it didn’t happen then [in the last recession] and I don’t believe it’s likely to happen now.”

Burnham was once Treasury Chief Secretary and was asked whether he felt any responsibility for the deficit. In response, he stood over the last spending review, especially putting investment into former manufacturing regions.

“It was the case that Labour reigned in public spending at that time at less than growth in the economy,” he added, “and I would put it to you that that was a prudent decision in the wake of what subsequently [happened].”

Election plans

Many people are still not aware that Labour accepts members from Northern Ireland. However, local membership has been open since 2003 and is now close to 300. A constituency labour party, covering the whole province, was set up in February 2009.

Burnham is the first Labour leadership candidate to campaign in Northern Ireland. He received local support after giving a clear commitment to visit the province and also supporting their moves to run for election. Thirty-seven thousand local trade unionists can also vote in the contest.

Labour hopes to contest the local elections next spring and is also considering whether to stand in the Assembly poll next May. Running for election would provide more political choice and, under Burnham, party members would be trusted to decide the pace of that process, a break from the “London-centric” past.

“I will not be a Labour leader who tries to dictate to Labour members anywhere,” he promised. However, Labour’s national executive would also need to approve that decision and he repeatedly said that Labour would need to be “sensitive” to its sister party, the SDLP. The UUPConservative pact was held up as an example of insensitivity.

Ultimately local people would be able to vote for Labour candidates if that is what they wanted. The party’s Northern Ireland secretary, Boyd Black, felt that there was a growing body of “modern, secular, anti-sectarian” opinion which was fed up with the old political arguments.

“They watch the BBC, they watch Newsnight, they’re tuned into modern politics and there’s a swathe in Northern Ireland that has actually been suppressed in my view by the Labour Party over decades,” he remarked, claiming that the absence of Labour politics had caused “enormous damage” to Northern Ireland’s society.

Burnham points to three main achievements from his political career so far. Firstly, the NHS Constitution as it “builds a political consensus around the NHS for the rest of this century.” He believes that his proposed national care service will also be created in future. Both ideas apply to England due to devolution.

A third, much more personal, result was overseeing the disclosure of documents on the Hillsborough disaster.

His Irish ancestors who came to work in the Liverpool docks would feel “very proud” at his nomination. When he visited Liverpool Central Library as Culture Secretary, its family history staff offered to look at his own background.

At Christmas 2008, his family sat down around a bottle of whisky and opened a package from the library, telling the story of “lots of people, Finnemores and Kellys and other names, coming from parts of northern Ireland to work in the docks in Liverpool” in the late 19th century. Donegal, he recalls, was one place of origin.

He thinks his “underdog spirit” comes from that ancestry and his family’s traditional support for Everton. That certainly was his status when interviewed as a BBC poll put him joint third, alongside Diane Abbott.

If unsuccessful on 25 September, he could well be in place for a Shadow Cabinet position when MPs stand for those posts in October. Based on his political interests, that could mean a post covering health, sport, education, crime or the media.