Insider · Berlins Today
I t is Old Labour versus New Labour again. Angela Rayner (Old) still disagrees with Shabana Mahmood (New) about immigration policy. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary who was briefly the New Labour candidate in the 2020 leadership election, agreed with Mahmood in a radio interview this morning.
Most of the delegates arriving in Liverpool this weekend for the party’s annual conference probably agree with Rayner. Andy Burnham , who was New but is now mostly Old, agreed with Rayner when she first said in March that it was “un-British” to make recent immigrants wait longer for the right to settle in Britain permanently. But then he also said before he became prime minister that he supported the “broad thrust” of Mahmood’s immigration policy.
This sets the pattern for the next few days. Many of the sharpest disagreements in Liverpool will be between liberals (Old Labour) and social conservatives (New Labour). Burnham will try to straddle both positions in his big speech on Tuesday.
One of the most interesting pre-conference poses was struck by Alex Norris, Burnham’s surprise choice as justice secretary. YouGov reports that only 21 per cent of people say they have heard of him. That number may increase.
He has given an interview to The Sun – a newspaper to which the prime minister says he won’t give “special” interviews because of its reporting of the Hillsborough disaster, 37 years ago, falsely blaming Liverpool fans for causing it. Norris says there is nothing “progressive” about being soft on crime; that deporting foreign criminals is the key to solving prison overcrowding; that he wants to rewrite the law to tighten the way the European Convention on Human Rights is interpreted by the courts – and he refused to rule out mandatory castration of paedophiles. Even accounting for his need to compensate for having to let out prisoners early, this is quite bracing Blairism.
Norris confirms the change in government thinking about foreign prisoners that happened under Mahmood, his predecessor-but-one. Previous governments wanted to ensure that criminals served their time in British prisons rather than deporting them and risking them going free in their home country. Norris says: “I would resolutely defend the principle that the removal from this country – I would say, the best country in the world – that is a really significant penalty.” He says he is working with other countries to ensure deported prisoners stay behind bars, but will not wait to sign deals.
“In the meantime, it is right ... to get foreign offenders out more quickly.” I suspect that most people would agree with him – their main concern being that they cannot trust British border control not to let them back in again. 'Bring back hope' is Labour's conference slogan (Reuters) All of which will feed into the same strategic debate as last year: whether the party should be chasing after liberals who have defected to the Greens and Liberal Democrats, or social conservatives who have defected to Reform and the Tories. Burnham will try to say “both”, but there is only one right answer to that question and it is the New Labour one. The same divide will run through the economic debates as Burnham and John Healey prepare to strike the balance between raising taxes and cutting spending.
Although the boundaries are fluid. Rayner, in her Times interview today, answered a quick fire question, “Wealth taxes or income taxes?” by saying, “No taxes. Reduced taxes.
We have got a really high tax burden.” Those are just words, though. Burnham will be able to build the same verbal bridge between Old and New Labour in his speech. After all, he managed to get through four solid hours of interviews with 26 regional TV stations yesterday while generating a single news story, namely that the next election will be in 2029, which is what he would say until he decides to hold it earlier.
But he and Healey cannot get through the Budget on 28 October on fumes alone. Then they will have to choose between tilting towards New Labour by cutting spending or towards Old Labour – what Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England economist, called a “traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos”. Those words from 10 days ago should echo through the halls in Liverpool, not least because Haldane was briefly an adviser to and a fiscally responsible figleaf for Burnham, just before he became prime minister.
The conference over the next few days is just a war of words. The Budget in a month’s time is when words become deeds.
Source: The Independent
