Labour has fallen down the mother of all rabbit holes

Beneath the performative radicalism, the party has nothing to offer but empty promises and technocratic bungling

Daily Telegraph 30/06/26

A strange paradox has loomed over Labour’s party conference in Liverpool.

On the one hand, the event has carried an air of triumph and vindication. The PM’s fans have been singing “Burnham Baby Burnham” to the “Disco Inferno” tune while queuing for their coffees in the arena. Outside, the loud speakers have been playing the Game of Thrones soundtrack on loop to fete the King of the North.

On the other hand, considering that the party finds itself with a brand new leader, the atmosphere has at times felt oddly subdued. True, I came across pockets of exuberant energy. Placard-wielding activists have been out in force, campaigning for everything from the liberation of Lucy Letby to the pedestrianisation of the M6. The book corner has been packed with people poring over Andy Burnham’s tome Head North and Adam Rutherford’s How to Argue with a Racist.

I spied massive crowds for fringe events on Gaza and how to create a richer education system through multi-sensory learning.

Yet the party ranks showed decidedly little desire to discuss the one issue that should really matter to them: namely with two years of this Labour Government already squandered, what can the party do to materially improve the country before 2029?

In light of the Neets criThis party conference was not the launchpad for a renewed Labour mission to tackle the country’s thorniest problems, it was the starting gun for the party’s 2029 election bid, with a proposal to end the triple lock in 2030 at its centre.

Yes, his willingness to entertain abolishing the triple lock is bold. And yes, he has announced a raft of policies: building more council homes, nationalising water and establishing a new state-owned electricity company.

But this is performative radicalism, chiefly an attempt to flesh out a distinct identity for the next national vote. Scrapping the triple lock won’t solve the most urgent problems of the day, from sluggish worker productivity to the bloated benefits bill. For all his talk of council houses, nothing is being done to address the underlying causes of the crisis, namely permanently removing the barriers to housebuilding.

If the Prime Minister were truly bold he would have used his conference speech to announce a range of brave and controversial policies to be immediately drawn up and implemented. He would vow to overhaul Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and bring in stricter criteria for health-related disability benefits. He would pledge general automatic planning permission for all developments that meet minimum conditions.

Despite all the grandstanding, Burnhamism appears quietly lacking in courage: a movement that has risen on a wave of Left-wing grassroots support is terrified of offending Labour members.

One senior Labour figure suggested to me that Burnham is haunted by the ghosts of Tory prime ministers past. Rishi Sunak exposed the perils of staking all on a promise of quick, measurable wins, from shorter waiting lists to stopping the boats. 

Theresa May’s dementia tax fiasco is a cautionary tale of the dangers of springing provocative plans on voters rather than laying the groundwork, so the story goes. Surely though, Burnham’s game plan – to spend the next three years fighting an election campaign rather than getting things done – is fraught with its own risks.sis (young people not in education, employment or training), I was eager to attend a fringe panel on reforming apprenticeships. I was dispirited to find that the room was half-empty. Lacking in big-picture thinking, the conversation quickly became bogged down in technocratic chat about regional mayor brokerage pilots and tweaks to funding criteria.

Another debate on the cost of living left me without hope. As policy wonks pitched “cleverly designed” rent control and muttered under their breath that their models for properly targeted energy subsidies would require invasive state data collection, I finally realised: when it comes to addressing the difficult stuff – from the benefits crisis to energy costs – Labour has fallen down the mother of all rabbit holes.

Faced with a failing, bloated state, the centre-Left’s answer is to introduce new, complicated layers of governance through devolution, “smart” design, coordination hubs, more data collecting, more consultation boards, more quangos, more financial engineering and more policy “dosages”. Such “solutions” are not only circular but boring. No wonder the Labour grassroots have checked out.