It was not long ago that Labour thought it was facing an existential risk. In 2019, the party suffered its worst defeat since 1935 and, for a while, it looked as if it might struggle to recover in a country divided by Brexit. Now, just seven years, three Conservative and two Labour prime ministers later, the party gathered in Liverpool to listen to Andy Burnham set out his claim on the future.
But just a day into the conference, there was an urgent reminder of the dangers of the wider world. Arrests near the US airbase in Gloucestershire diverted Burnham from party matters as he sought to establish whether the UK had been subjected to a terrorist threat. Meanwhile, the apparently ill-informed interventions of Donald Trump highlighted the difficulties of maintaining an alliance with the United States in the twilight of the rules-based order, which Aslı Aydıntaşbaş and Rana Dasgupta explore in their essays.
At the hot-ticket event on the conference fringe—the Prospect reception—the minister for artificial intelligence, Kanishka Narayan, gave a fluent account of the economic possibilities offered by AI. As Philip Ball points out in our cover essay this month, there has been a conversation among the executives of the industry about the potential for human destruction, which avoids all the genuinely important questions of cost and regulation.
Britain must confront some serious problems: stagnant economic growth, a deepening security crisis and a technological revolution for which it is poorly prepared. This is a government which is, by preference, preoccupied with domestic affairs. Burnham has shown an admirable desire to tackle one big issue that has been shamefully neglected—the state of social care—while proposing to fund it by tackling another—the triple lock on pensions. Political division has scuppered the attempt to reform social care before now. And the precise method of reform will have to await the report from Louise Casey next year. But the prime minister has signalled his intention to act.
Britain must confront serious problems for which it is poorly prepared
The challenge of finding the money for such reform has dramatically exposed the stubborn lack of growth in the UK. The chancellor of the Exchequer, John Healey, gave a headline account of the hope that the country might be reindustrialised. Burnham, meanwhile, believes the country has been beholden to a neoliberal consensus for 40 years. He blames that for the closure of heavy industry, privatisation, deregulation, austerity and Brexit, arguing it has left Britain’s institutions hollow and its people beaten down.
This raises two more problems. Healey was candid with his audience that, in the absence of growth, there was no money to spend. Burnham picked up this point and offered what he called a “theory of growth”—public control over essentials such as gas, water and electricity alongside local investment, guided by the mayors.
This is also Burnham’s putative answer to the problem of distribution. His own constituency of Makerfield sits about halfway between Liverpool and Manchester but is not well connected economically to either. Towns which share in the glow of a radiant city can thrive. Those more isolated may need more than public control to raise their spirits.
The big questions that crowd in on the British government explain why the nation’s politics has been so volatile. They include Britain’s place in the world, the alliances it should pursue and how it responds to a new technology that is potentially transformative for both good and ill. But on the home front one issue, which was pivotal to the appeal of Brexit and the rise of Reform UK, dominates: the average family has seen its income stagnate while its costs have risen. On changing the terms of that equation, the Burnham government will rest.
