Burnham hits Disappointment Street

It seems to be an infallible rule that new prime ministers disappoint those who supported them. Margaret Thatcher may have said: “You turn, the lady’s not for turning”, but even she was forced by reality into U-turns on things like the poll tax. Nowadays, governments have so circumscribed their freedom of action by neoliberal policies, their cherished ambitions hardly seem to last any time at all.

Andy Burnham has already had to rail back on some of the optimism that greeted his succession, one such area being electoral reform and devolution, where his nostalgia for his old office of “elected mayor” undermines both.

First-past-the-post voting is rightly criticized for usually putting all of the power in the hands of one party. Elected mayors – regional or local – always do this, and moreover put it all in the hands of one person. The argument is that they re-energise voters despite the lack of evidence, but they certainly undermine electoral reform.

Now it appears they’re going to undermine devolution too. The Government is to give regional mayors powers to over-rule elected councils on planning decisions for large-scale developments. This basically confirms that regional mayors will be little more than Government-controlled governors, summoned to Whitehall periodically to be given their orders in a “situation room”.

Well, so much for optimism about electoral reform and devolution. One area where Mr Burnham hasn’t even bothered to pretend the Government intends anything positive is central government’s long campaign to destroy the planning system.

We’ve already seen that Mr Burnham’s “Manchesterism” involves the continuing neoliberal attack on planning. He hasn’t even bothered to suggest a better way is possible in Whitehall’s 25-year onslaught on planning and protection for the environment.

The Government sneaked out the intensely destructive National Planning Policy Framework changes in mid-August, clear confirmation that ministers are ashamed of them. But while Angela Rayner may harbour private doubts about the increasingly megalomaniac house building targets – now ramped up to a ludicrous annual 370,000 – she has long shown herself to be a happy passenger on the free-market bus ride down Tufton Street.

The news that regional mayors will be given powers to overturn elected councils’ planning decisions is just another sign of pressure from neoliberal junk-tanks and lobbyists. This was confirmed when it was hailed by “Labour Future”, Maurice Glasman’s “Blue Labour” pressure group, a tendency whose influence over Keir Starmer helped bring down his premiership.

“Excellent move,” said the group. “We need homes and nothing will stop us delivering them.”

Of course, all this will actually deliver is highly lucrative planning consents at car-dependent sprawl locations for volume house builders – the people sitting on many of the existing 1.4 million unused consents. Many of those actually built will be luxury homes, or new stock for international rental companies. Nothing will stop them “delivering” those, of course.

Also suffering was Mr Burnham’s commitment to building council homes. The recent “Social and Affordable Homes” announcement gave the game away by admitting the hoped-for surge in council house building would now be “council, social and affordable homes”. We’ve long known that the definition of “affordable” usually just means slightly less unaffordable, but “social” here means the Government has made the same mistake John Major’s government made in expecting registered social landlords to do the heavy lifting that councils should be doing. It didn’t work then and was soon abandoned.

For many voters, Labour or otherwise, Tufton Street has long meant Disappointment Street. Some of us hoped for better from Mr Burnham.

We’re still waiting.

Jon Reeds