Burnham strives to appear inclusive but he ignores the voice of industry and defence. Signs are emerging that this is a government which doesn’t listen at all, says Eliot Wilson

This week will see Chancellor John Healey deliver his Budget. At 66, he will be the oldest Chancellor of the Exchequer to present a first Financial Statement and Budget Resolutions to the House of Commons. Since his appointment in July, the veteran frontbencher, first given a ministerial post in 2001, has seemed quietly resolute, even content.

Chancellor and Prime Minister alike know how important this Budget is. With Burnham taking office after the House of Commons had adjourned for the summer, and with a break for the party conferences, the government has only really had four weeks of “normality”. Burnham’s overall rating is still positive, but the margin has fallen sharply. As his honeymoon inevitably fades, voters may want to know what sort of leader he really is, what – apart from Everton FC, the Labour Party and the Catholic Church – are his lodestars and how he steers by them?

However inclusive and welcoming Burnham may strive to appear, however much he repeats his technocratic false dilemma of “problem-solving, not point-scoring” or talks about “collaboration”, the Prime Minister is not throwing open the doors of Whitehall to seek rigorous challenge or alternative policy. He knows what he thinks. Signs are emerging that this is a government which doesn’t listen at all.

It started as soon as Burnham took over. He made several substantial machinery of government changes, a habit of new premiers to show dynamism. The department for science, innovation and technology, created in 2023, was dismantled. Rishi Sunak had set it up to develop the UK’s scientific, research and technological outputs: in essence to put the future under one ministerial portfolio.

Burnham reversed that approach, returning digital policy to the department for culture, media and sport (where it had never really set comfortably); hiving off artificial intelligence to a small “taskforce” in the Cabinet Office; and merging science and innovation with business and trade in a sprawling, baggy department for business, innovation, science and trade. When a department has four titular focuses it has no focus at all.

The disappearance of a department dedicated to technology, research and innovation was mourned by many in the sector who warned that policy would be less coordinated and less high-profile. It was criticised by techUK, the Startup Coalition, Baroness Lane-Fox, Lord Vaizey of Didcot, the Institute for Government, the president of the Royal Society, Solarwinds, Tom Loosemore of Public Digital and Matt Clifford, Chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. Burnham remained unmoved.

Warnings

Last week, Rain Newton-Smith, head of the CBI, warned the Chancellor on behalf of her organisation’s members that increasing the Bank Corporation Tax Surcharge, currently three per cent, would damage not just banks but the economy as a whole. “When London thrives,” she said, “it creates jobs across the UK. The strength of London sustains supply chains, attracts investment and supports growth in every part of the country.” But banks are popular targets, and the surcharge is expected to rise.

Meanwhile former cabinet minister Liam Byrne was incandescent. The House of Commons business, innovation, science and technology committee, which he chairs, issued the government’s response to a report on investing in the UK economy published by its predecessor business and trade committee in June. The government accepted 16 of its recommendations, partially accepted 18 and rejected 13.

The committee felt this “falls short of the coordinated reform needed”. Byrne was more emphatic. Having spent five years as a minister, he damningly pinpointed an institutional weakness: “I fear ministers have yet to grip the scale of reform needed. Too often, proposals for the next stage of reform are met with a defence of what is already being done.” No sign of listening mode.

There was another decision which must have provoked dissenting voices behind closed doors in Whitehall. Luke Pollard, minister for defence readiness and Industry, revealed in response to a written parliamentary question that the repair and recovery version of the Boxer armoured fighting vehicle was “no longer being pursued” (which is how the MoD says “cancelled”).

There is a simple equation. If an armoured vehicle breaks down, you need a vehicle of comparable size and weight to recover it. Boxer weighs just shy of 40 tonnes. But with the armoured vehicle programme due to be cut from £7bn to £5bn, the recovery version has fallen to the spending axe. This potentially makes it much more difficult to retrieve stricken Boxers in combat. It is crude cost reduction and no-one in uniform is likely to have advised this course of action. But the government has chosen other priorities.

If we had paid careful attention, we could have foreseen this disinclination to listen. Burnham presents himself as a fanatically reasonable everyman, living in a world in which good people have ideals and bad people have ideology. But his first speech as Labour leader was significant. After his bromides of “a new politics” and “seeking more consensus”, he declared:

“We will work with other parties… from the clarity of knowing where we stand… we win by being us. Boldly, confidently, authentically us – Labour. That’s how we win.”

Burnham wants consensus and problem-solving, but he already knows what he wants to do. Labour represents “unity at the service of people”. This is no less doctrinaire than Margaret Thatcher, and it is much more dishonest: Thatcher never pretended to prioritise consensus. “The Old Testament prophets,” she maintained, “didn’t say, ‘Brothers, I want a consensus.’ They said, ‘This is my faith, this is what I passionately believe. If you believe it too, then come with me.’”

Burnham has no room for that ‘if’. “I know what I want to do,” he told his colleagues at his coronation. It follows that he had nothing to learn from tech bodies or the CBI or the armed forces or any parliamentary committee. The course is set, and, to coin a phrase, there is no alternative.

But socialists should know by now that there is always an alternative. That’s the point of freedom.

Eliot Wilson is a writer