Britains incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his first speech as Labour leader Friday to condemn the economic model established in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher and promise greater public control of essential services, signaling a shift to the left from outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer.Â
Burnham, who will formally become prime minister Monday, said that Britain had taken “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s,” when political power was centralized and economic power was transferred to private companies. He was unopposed to run as party leader, having been nominated by 379 Members of Parliament to lead it.
“The country surrendered control of the essentials â housing, water, energy, transport â and left people exposed to higher costs,” Burnham said during the July 17 speech in London, according to a transcript of his remarks.
He declared that four decades of neoliberal economic policy had “not been kind” to the working-class and industrial communities that traditionally supported Labour and described his ascent as the countrys most significant political turning point in 40 years.
“The government I lead will confidently lay that path out starting next week,” Burnham said. “That is why this change today is the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years.
Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, said Burnhams speech offered a clear ideological signal but little detail about how his government would carry it out. “With Burnham, there is a lot of light and heat, but not much actual substance,” he added. “We are all still waiting to see what that substance might be.”
Â
Mendoza said, “If he thinks Britain has been on the wrong track for the last 40 years, what is the right track? Is it socialism of a past kind? Is it some form of statism? What does he actually intend to do?”
Burnham’s speech offered the clearest indication yet that the former Greater Manchester mayor intends to move the party away from Starmers more cautious economic positioning and toward greater state ownership, expanded council and social housing, giving more power to regional government and increased state involvement in essential services.
Â
Burnham said Labour would no longer attempt to imitate the right and far-left parties. “We wont try to out-Green the Greens or out-Reform Reform.”
Although he did not explicitly advocate returning Britain to the 1970s or refer to the late Lady Thatcher by name, free-market critics portrayed his attack on her reforms as an effort to revive the state-dominated economic policies that preceded her government.
Britain experienced the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79, when millions of workers participated in widespread strikes over pay that disrupted daily life. The strikes left trash uncollected, reduced hospital services and affected public transportation. The unrest is widely seen as a major factor in the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives in 1979 as voters turned against the unions and the Labour government of that time.
The Adam Smith Institute responded to his speech by publishing a lengthy defense of the Thatcher era, highlighting reductions in income and corporate tax rates, privatizations, rising homeownership and fewer days lost to labor strikes.
“Since you mentioned the 1980s, Andy Burnham, heres a reminder of what was achieved,” the free-market think tank wrote before listing economic indicators it said improved during the period.
According to the free-market think tank, the top rate of income tax fell from 83% to 40%, the basic rate drop
