SerpApi.Org
That did not take long. Less than 24 hours after he was sacked from the cabinet, former chief secretary to the former prime minister Darren Jones attacked Andy Burnham’s opening bid on the cost of living, a VAT cut on electricity bills.
“Good news,” Jones said. It will save families “a few quid”, he said, but it is supposedly paid for by scrapping the government’s digital ID programme, which, he pointed out, “was unfunded”.
Jones should know, because he was in charge of the policy. He was admitting that the sums did not add up under Keir Starmer, but pointing out that, under Burnham’s “new economic model”, the sums still don’t add up.
The Starmerites are furious about Burnham’s brutal reshuffle – the night of the long eyelashes, as one commentator called it. I am told that one former cabinet minister was “livid” at being sacked, and blames an ex-colleague who survived the cull for leaking damaging stories designed to do down one and advance the other.
Steve Reed, the sacked housing secretary, went public with his fury in his resignation letter, saying to Burnham: “I hope those who did not show loyalty to Keir will now show it to you.”
He has a point. Burnham promised in his acceptance speech on Friday, when he became Labour leader, to “eradicate” infighting, “and the insidious briefing culture that goes along with it”. He said “today we move beyond” the “factionalism” that has “bedevilled us”.
Three days later, he sacked 11 cabinet ministers, all of whom had shown conspicuous loyalty to Starmer. The Starmerites are not even a coherent faction, but they thought it was in the interest of the party and the country that they should not undermine the prime minister.
“I’m proud I acted with integrity at every step over the turbulent past few months,” Reed said, pointedly suggesting that others did not.
One of Burnham’s weakest moments over the weekend before he became prime minister was when he said in an interview that Starmer’s fall was nothing to do with him, because he hadn’t been sworn in as an MP at the time. That seemed like sophistry.
No wonder the warm words of Burnham’s email to Labour MPs, promising to consult, include and empower everyone, suddenly seem a long time ago. For the dispossessed, the honeymoon is already over – and many of them do not intend to go quietly.
The best defence against factionalism, of course, is to get things right – and thus to minimise the opportunities granted to enemies to criticise. And the key decision of the cabinet reshuffle was a sound one. New chancellor John Healey is a capable minister, fiscally conservative and popular with his colleagues.
Long ago, in 2010, the last time the Labour shadow cabinet was elected by Labour MPs, he came second to Yvette Cooper. Most of the parliamentary party has changed since then, but he and Cooper are still seen as reliable, likeable and non-factional.
To have made Shabana Mahmood chancellor would have looked like a factional appointment, favouring the overlapping old Labour right and Blue Labour groupings.
Getting Ed Miliband out of the energy department was also an important move, because even if Miatta Fahnbulleh, the new energy secretary, is a Miliband supporter, his departure gives the prime minister and the Treasury some scope to change the pace of the drive to net zero that is such a drag on the cost of living.
But the VAT cut on electricity shows how little scope there is for short-term cost of living fixes. It is a bad tax cut, favouring the better-off, who use more electricity, and it is unfunded, which means that Healey will just take the money back in higher taxes in the Budget.
Darren Jones is quite right to pour scorn on it. The same problem afflicts Burnham’s other day-one policy, a national drive against rough sleeping. This was said to be “funded from within uncommitted MHCLG budgets” – in other words, it is unfunded, except in the sense that “£340m is not a huge sum of money, and we will find it somehow”.
But Burnham should be worried that it is only day two and the party’s internal divisions are already back out in the open.
The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.
