Posts Tagged ‘Brownite’

Smiling Andy has iron teeth

26/08/2026, 10:24:20 PM

A Blairite, a Brownite and an Corbynite walk into a pub. “Hi Andy, what are you having,” says the barman. Its a joke so lame it staggers in on calipers. The Prime Minister’s party critics have long sought to portray Andy Burnham as inherently insubstantial. A chameleon wearing flip-flops.

But Burnham has now had the last laugh. Being fleet of foot (sans flip-flops), has certainly worked out for him in the end. Essentially, he’s a classic old-right-wing Labour pragmatist. Economically a bit left-wing, socially a bit right-wing is a pretty decent centre-of-gravity for the British public.

Meanwhile the post-Blair Blairites who took the brunt of his Corleonean reshuffle are now a depleted lot. Memorably it is they, not Burnham, who went to the pub. None of them has The Master’s chutzpah or his feel for politics and it seems few of them will reemerge as significant players any time soon.

It’s worth noting Burnham’s sheer ruthlessness when the top job was finally his. He has never before had a reputation for doing the rough stuff. Niceness is Andy Burnham’s superpower. Clearly, he now speaks softly but carries a big stick – with a nail in the end. Andy the sweet-natured assassin. As Andrei Gromyko noted of Gorbachev, he has a nice smile but iron teeth.

Burnham has been consistently underrated. He was content to take criticism for being all things to all people and assume whatever positions were needed to remain relevant in Labour politics, but clearly he has been  working on shaping his own agenda.

A combination of devo max, active redistribution and prioritising working-class lives, together with some red lines on issues like rough sleeping, which he regards as a moral test of the state’s capacity to deliver social goods.

Already, we are much closer to the definition of ‘Burnhamism’ than we ever were with Starmer. Similarly there are a phalanx of club-wielding Burnhamites ready to do battle for their man. Being a ‘Starmerite’ was to risk being confused for an item of executive luggage.

All of which means Burnham is the only game in town. He cannot plausibly be replaced, however things pan out over the next three years. And no-one is much interested in noises-off from displaced Starmer-era voices.

Only a Burnhamite walks into the pub these days.

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How are we going to refer to Starmer’s approach and its followers?

08/04/2020, 06:02:26 PM

by Kevin Meagher

So, after the rapture of his victory on Saturday with a 56% share of the vote, followers of Labour’s new leader can be forgiven for indulging in a bout of Starmerama, but how are we to describe his credo and what are we going to call his disciples?

This mania for suffixing ‘ism’ and ‘ite’ to the names of political leaders or factions started in the 1950s with the Bevanites and the Gaitskellites – the Crip(p)s and the Bloods of post-war Labour politics.

You can’t imagine Clement Attlee going in for such nonsense and there were never really any Wilsonites either, although, like Peter Mandelson, things were done in a Wilsonian way. (And it’s not meant to be complementary).

Of course, we had Thatcherism and Thatcherites. Fair enough, given it was a distinct ideology and had a set of adherents. As were the Bennites at the opposite end of the spectrum.

So, not to be outdone and given it was then de rigeur in British politics by then, we had Blairism and Blairites.

We didn’t really have Brownism, but there were certainly Brownites.

During his five years at the helm, we had neither Milibandism, nor Milibandites. He was too much the intellectual gadfly, never settling on a coherent approach above and beyond ‘moving on from New Labour.’

Of course, there was Corbynism and Corbynites. Lots of them.

So, are we entering a bright new dawn of Starmerism? Or perhaps it will be Keirism?

Starmerite sounds like a household adhesive.

And Starmite doesn’t work because it could mean you either love him or hate him.

How to sum-up his approach?

Well, if the job of Opposition Leader is to benefit from the multifarious failings of the government of the day, then there’s only one term for his approach: Steer karma.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Uncut

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The Brown inner circle: from spearhead to shambles, by Dan Hodges

12/08/2010, 12:00:25 PM

On Sunday I had my first opportunity to watch ‘Five Days That Changed Britain’, Nick Robinson’s exposé of the deals, double deals and expressions of sincerity from Nick Clegg that culminated in the establishment of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition. Although the programme wasn’t revelatory, I found it candid, insightful and, to my surprise, moving. There was something genuinely poignant in the picture it drew of Gordon Brown’s growing isolation as the political options narrowed and his enemies closed in.

It reminded me of a little vignette from the morning after the election, when Gordon arrived at Labour HQ to address party workers. After a few brief words of thanks, he prepared to depart for Downing  Street, only to be unceremoniously bundled into a side room by Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, who proceeded to lay out their strategy for a grand alliance to keep the party, (though not necessarily him), in power.

Peter, Alastair and Andrew Adonis featured at length in the transition drama, and were clearly – to the extent that we had a negotiating strategy – its architects. Which goes beyond poignancy, stampedes right past pathos and dives headlong into Shakespearian tragedy. At his darkest hour, with all hope fading, the King calls out for his trusted aides, only to find himself surrounded by the henchman of his bitterest foe. “That one might read the book of fate/And see the revolution of the times”. Or, in Gordon’s case, the Sun and the Mail.

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