Recapturing the

spirit of ‘45

Andy Burnham, Leeds, 28 July 2015

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This week marks the 70th anniversary of the formation of the post-war Labour Government.

It should be a moment for quiet pride and celebration in our Party.

And while I do take inspiration from our movement’s past, I can’t help but come to this sad realisation about our present: the modern Labour Party could not have created the NHS.

Somewhere along the way, we lost the ability to think big, to dare to dream. We have become frightened of our own shadow, lacking the courage or capacity to bring about major social change.

Perhaps that would be understandable if the progress made in these last 70 years was so great that big change was no longer required and incremental change was the order of the day.

But that’s not the case. Many of the things that the post-war baby boomer generation took for granted are no longer attainable for many.

A secure, steady job.

A place to call your own.

Good prospects for your kids at the end of school.

Proper care for your wife, husband, mum or dad.

Universal hopes shared by all. But we live in an age when these simple dreams are dying for millions.

In every town in England, there are young people who can’t see a way on to the housing ladder.

There are parents who have seen industries close and who worry about what jobs their children will do.

There are older workers who can only find part-time or zero-hours work and have given up hope of finding a full-time job again.

There are elderly couples who fret about how they will cope if one of them needs daily care and the only help on offer is a 15-minute visit, if you’re lucky.

These are the things people worry about — but nobody is providing any real answers.

As the social challenges we face have got bigger, modern politics has gone in the opposite direction: pettier and smaller.

In today’s digital age, politics has been reduced to a form of marketing. Parties have become purveyors of retail politics, trading in the devalued currency of policy gimmicks designed to grab a quick headline or two but which don’t change the world.

So, given all this, is it any real wonder when we knock on those doors seeking votes that the same refrain comes back and back — ‘there’s no point, you’re all the same’?

You can hear this from the Northern tip of Scotland to the South coast of England and all points in between. The public are telling us something. They are fed up of seeing parties scrabbling over the same scrap of the centre-ground repeating back to them what the focus groups said.

Isn’t it high time we actually listened to what people are saying and did something about it?

People are looking for real answers to their worries but have become tired of waiting. They are giving up on today’s politics, which isn’t providing any and appears shallow and self-serving.

And this is the hard truth we must hear: people haven’t drifted away from Labour; Labour has drifted away from them.

It is in this context that we need to assess the current state of the Labour Leadership race. The question is this: to what extent is it getting to the heart of the deep distrust of modern politics and can it produce a solution?

The encouraging answer is that it might be beginning to.

There have been a range of reactions from the Party hierarchy to Jeremy Corbyn’s obvious impact in this race.

Most have been negative with dire warnings about ‘electoral oblivion’.

This response mis-reads the mood of the moment and the minds of our members.

What they are telling us is that they are yearning for a different style of politics from Labour and a break with the bad habits of the past.

They are sick of identikit politicians speaking in soundbites, sticking to the script, looking like they don’t believe a word they are saying.

In a world that gets leaner and meaner, they are looking for inspiration and hope — for ideas that don’t just change headlines, but change the world — for a Labour Party that dares to dream again.

People say to me: but aren’t you part of this political class that you criticise? I have worked in politics for 21 of my 45 years so, yes, that is of course true.

But what people may not realise is that I too have become increasingly disillusioned with it over the years. I have seen the gulf open up between that Westminster bubble and the place where I grew up and represent.

And this, in the end, is why I am standing in this contest and before you tonight.

I want to change Labour and change politics.

I am as fed up as anyone with today’s synthetic politics. If we carry on as we are, I have great worries for where Labour will be in 10 years time.

And our retreat into irrelevance will open up the way for parties of the extremes to prosper.

So the stakes are high. I want Labour to use the opportunity presented by this Leadership contest to break ourselves out of this cycle of decline.

And the way to do it is to recapture that spirit of 1945.

I want to give you an example of why I feel this so personally.

For the last six years, I have tried to persuade our Party to embrace a major reform of the way we care for older people.

Here we are, fifteen years into the century of the ageing society, and we are still saying that the generation who built the NHS after the war are only deemed worthy of a 15 minute care visit.

We are still saying to people who work in care that looking after someone else’s mum, dad, brother or sister is basically the lowest form of work — lower than the minimum wage because you don’t get paid the travel time between your 15 minute visits.

And we are still saying to the most unfortunate amongst us — with the highest care needs — that it is acceptable for people to pay for that care with everything they have worked for — home, pension and savings.

Didn’t the Labour Party create the NHS in the last century to free people from the fear of medical fees?

So why is the Labour Party of the 21st century standing by while people with dementia are not just wiped out physically by their condition but financially too?

This is one of the major injustices of our age.

How many more people are going to have to suffer before the Labour Party is prepared to act?

I have been on a mission to reform social care in England ever since I saw my own grandmother go on a depressing journey through the care system 15 years ago.

She was so proud to have escaped inner-city Liverpool and bought a semi-detached home of her own; so determined to pass on what she’d built up to me and my brothers; and so heartbroken when it was all washed away by the costs of her care.

Going forward, how can we protect people from the same fate? How can Labour help people fulfill their basic human instinct to pass on what they have to their children and grand-children?

I am determined to make Labour the Party that helps everyone protect what they’ve worked for.

And I believe the only way we can do that is to extend the NHS principle to social care — where everybody is asked to make a contribution according to their means and when everybody then has the peace of mind of knowing that all their care needs, and those of their family, are covered.

And yes, let me be clear: I would have to persuade people of a difficult financial change to bring this about.

And this is where the modern Labour Party has always backed off, fearing difficult headlines in the Tory press.

But that timidity is leaving a broken care system in place and seeing many more family homes sold like my gran’s.

I believe Labour needs to rediscover the self-confidence to make a big argument. It’s time to trust the people. If what we’re saying is right, and provides people with an answer, they will support us, whatever the media says.

On care, our case is quite simple: would people prefer to pay what would be in effect an insurance payment to allow everyone to protect what they’ve worked for; or do people want to stick with the status quo of entering later life with everything on the roulette table — home, pension and savings — and take their chances?

I remain utterly convinced that we can make this argument to the public and win it. I believe it would help win more than just the 26% of over-65s who voted Labour at the Election.

But it saddens me that, having tried to get this policy into the last two Labour manifestos, the Party was only prepared to adopt a weak version that wouldn’t have brought about the change we need.

But I am never going to give up on this. Indeed, I’ve concluded that the only way to achieve it is to become Leader of the Party. So here I am.

This isn’t just the right thing to do. I believe a big political dividend awaits for the party that has the courage to build a care service ready for the ageing society.

Worrying about a partner and how an older couple will cope with an inadequate care system is the single biggest concern of many voters. The Tories have realised it — but their values and philosophy prevents them from finding the answer.

Their answer is to keep the random charges — or dementia taxes — but to introduce a care cap.

But they’ve already broken their Election promise on this by delaying it. And when it is finally introduced, my confident prediction is that to most people it will feel like a care con, not a care cap.

Over this Parliament, we are looking at five more years of brutal cuts to adult social care budgets.

In the last Parliament, three hundred thousand fewer older people received social care, and that is set to be repeated in this one.

Councils will have to cut support, increase care charges and introduce new ones. This will mean more people paying care charges, increasing the likelihood that they will pay the full amount — right up to the level of the £144,000 cap per couple.

If Labour can muster the courage to introduce a system of the kind I am describing, the vast majority of people would pay a much lower contribution towards the costs of their care.

If you let people fend for themselves, as the Tories would suggest, then you will always have winners and losers like my gran. If you adopt an inclusive, collective approach, then everyone can gain and no one will be left behind.

The reason why this policy is an example of how Labour can reconnect with people beyond its own core support is because it is a classic example of how our belief in collective action can help people fulfill individual ambitions to look after your children and grandchildren.

In that way, it is a policy that speaks to everyone — whatever their background — and can reach areas where Labour has struggled in recent times. It gives us something to say to people in Ludlow and Loughborough as well as Leeds.

So this is what I mean by recapturing the spirit of 1945.

This Party should pledge to create a national health and care service that supports people with dementia or autism as well as it treats cancer.

Isn’t that a Labour vision for the 21st Century worth voting for?

And isn’t that something that people who used to vote Labour or have never voted Labour might even get behind?

The point I am building to tonight is this: if you elect me as your Leader, I can assure you that Labour will fight the next General Election on a very different manifesto.

It wouldn’t be a long list of detailed policies as we’ve had a habit of doing.

Instead it would contain a smaller number of ambitious policies that speak to people’s innermost worries and tells a simple story: how Labour will be the Party that helps you get on in life, the Party that revives those dreams that have died for millions.

To provide a flavour of what I mean, I will next week send out my own manifesto to all members with the theme of Labour as the party helping everyone get on. It will pull together the threads I have laid out in this campaign — all bigger ideas than Labour has put forward in the recent past.

So it will start with a commitment to building a truly comprehensive education system for the 21 century — one that gives equal priority to children who want a technical education as those on the university route.

It will propose a UCAS-style system for apprenticeships and extend the full support of the student finance system to young people who want them so they can move to get the best in the same way a university student can. This is the best way to build the high-skilled workforce of the future and to equip everyone to succeed in the modern economy.

Second, it will commit to an affordable home to rent or to own for everyone — through the most ambitious housing policy since the post-war period.

We’ll do that by lifting the borrowing cap on councils and allowing them to build more homes, piloting new forms of tenure like rent-to-own. It will also propose much tougher regulation of the private rented sector.

Third, it will commit to a secure well-paid job for everyone by extending the living wage to all ages and abolishing the youth rate minimum wage.

And fourth, it will commit to building a National Health and Care Service.

These are some of the fundamental changes this country needs if it is to lay the right foundations for a prosperous 21st century.

They are an investment in our future.

To look at how they can be paid for, and to ensure fairness across the generations, I will appoint a Beveridge-style Commission as Leader of the Opposition.

It will consider moving away from tuition fees and towards a universal graduate tax model for young people on both the academic and technical routes.

It will look at new ways of paying for housing to get people on the housing ladder.

And it will consider the options of paying for social care, including a new care levy.

I will establish a broad-based, inclusive Commission because I want to build a new social consensus about how as a society we pay for these crucial things.

But I also want to ensure that each of them is underpinned by a credible financial plan. Labour will not return to Government if people think we are cavalier about the deficit or the public finances.

It is no good promising the earth if we are not clear with people how things will be paid for.

In conclusion, I believe our country is crying out for a change in its politics and a vision it can get behind.

Life is getting harder for millions. A whole generation is in danger of being left behind. People in their 70s and 80s are beginning to fear old age and a longer life.

I believe what I am outlining here is the beginning of a Labour vision for the 21st century.

I am determined to make this Leadership election a turning point for Labour.

We cannot carry on as we are.

It’s time to be as bold in this century as we were in the last.

On this special anniversary, let’s vow to recapture the spirit of ’45.

Let’s dare to dream again, show how life can be better tomorrow than it is today and provide something in very short supply in this country right now — hope.