It’s amazing how far a prime minister can get just by not being Keir Starmer. There’s considerable political success to be had in simply reversing his stupidest policies, from digital ID to scrapping jury trials, and today, for now at least – assisted suicide – which Mr Burnham announced he wouldn’t be taking forward until social care is in better shape.
The most kamikaze-shaped policy of the Starmer government, the Chagos surrender, still technically remains on the books. Whether Burnham will have the balls or nous to do a full-scale scrapping of his predecessor’s deranged programme remains to be seen.
Burnham is helped by the contrast in his tone – Starmer invariably sounded like an impatient undertaker when announcing policy. In contrast to the tedious baby-and-bathwater style of his predecessor, the PM began his speech today by speaking about what the social care sector did well.
Of course, there was the classic Burnhamite schmaltz as he announced that he wouldn’t be reading his speech after all: ‘You can’t speak from notes, I’ve just gotta speak from the heart.’ Lines like this, which could be delivered by an anthropomorphic car or seagull in a Disney Pixar film, might well take people in during the summer of goodwill but they will inevitably begin to grate eventually. He compared the iniquity of social care to American healthcare, since ‘the vulnerable pay for everything and it can completely leave them with nothing’. Catchy line but a tad misleading. Unlike in America, vulnerable people without assets pay nothing; it’s those who have saved who really get rinsed.
