Andy Burnham has been vociferous in his opposition to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, and made his views clear at a stormy meeting of the Shadow Cabinet this morning. He followed that meeting with a speech to the press gallery about his candidacy to become Labour leader in which he repeated his opposition to that legislation.
He even went so far as to lump Harriet Harman in with George Osborne in one of his jokes, which won’t stop sniping from some sections of the party that Harman is behaving in a ‘Tory’ manner (this comes as a great surprise to anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to Harman’s legislative victories and personal projects). He spoke facetiously about his wife always borrowing his mascara and his working class credentials, about Leigh being the ‘place where the M6 turns to cobbles’. Then he said:
‘While it’s been good on the whole, good natured on the whole, inevitably things get said in the course of a contest, inevitably they do, and tests get set for the candidates. One of the things that has been said is that candidates who aspire to this job have to have children, and of course that is absolute nonsense. But of course at the other end of the scale, we have got George and Harriet’s two-child test, and I have to say and hold my hands up and say I’ve already failed that one.’
He told the lunch that the Bill was ‘unsupportable’, and that he had this morning recommended to Shadow Cabinet that a reasoned amendment to the Second Reading be tabled and that if that amendment fails, then the party oppose the legislation at Second Reading. So what would happen if the party either failed to table a reasoned amendment, or the reasoned amendment failed and the party continued to abstain on the Bill? Wouldn’t the most principled thing for Burnham to do be to rebel against his party on this Tory measure? This is how he responded:
‘Well, I’m going to have to see what happens in terms of the discussions that presumably are ongoing, it is a decision for the interim leader of the party to decide on the back of the wide range of views and there are a wide range of views, what to do, I will make my decisions at the point where the party has its agreed position, but as you will know I am somebody who supports the collective line of the party, and I’ve made my views in the proper way in Shadow Cabinet, I put them forward, I am not normally somebody who then goes outside of the collective ways of agreeing things, but, you know, I’ve made my position very clear in terms of what I expect to see.’
The ‘normally’ in that quote adds a frisson of excitement, a suggestion that Burnham could yet rebel, and he didn’t rule it out. But his line about supporting the collective view having made his views known in the ‘proper’ way is important. Burnham may well think that being outspoken, that calling the two-child limit on tax credit ‘George and Harriet’s’ will be enough to separate him without forcing him to resign from the front bench in order to rebel.
Burnham was also quizzed on what really big cuts he would make in order to bring the deficit down, but he stuck largely to what he’s said before on the benefit cap, on allowing councils to build more homes and so on. Certainly the benefit cap for workless households is not a major deficit reduction measure, and has long been understood in Westminster as a political device, not a money-saving exercise, given how little it does save in proportion to the overall welfare Budget, let alone the deficit.
Given no candidate for anything wants to talk about big cuts, Burnham put in a good performance, though it wasn’t his best. The reason it wasn’t his best was that he tends to be at his best when he is stirring up the Labour membership at conferences and so on, or in broadcast interviews when he really gets the chance to emote about the NHS. A group of hacks asking over and over again what he might do on a vote on welfare reform isn’t the ideal opportunity for a tubthumping performance. But it was still a solid one.
Comments