Neoliberalism, according to Britain’s latest Prime Minister, is on its way out. The politico-economic consensus which has dominated politics in this country, devastating lifeworlds, decisively weakening trade union power, curtailing democratic rights, and transforming welfare and work into punitive regimes that do not pay, is seemingly coming to an end.
Andy Burnham, a man who sailed to the premiership effectively unchallenged, wants to rebalance the scales of power across Britain. His declared route consists of devolving power to the regions by rewiring the state, regulating privatised utilities, and creating a Number 10 North in Manchester. He also wants to recreate the compact between labour and capital, transforming UK PLC into a productive growth engine again, whilst building council housing at scale and getting young people into work.
During his first week in office, Burnham has sought to depict his administration as a “cost-of-living government”. Last Monday, he announced a new national drive to end rough sleeping, a policy commitment he also made - and failed to achieve - as Greater Manchester Mayor. On Tuesday, he pledged to cut VAT from energy bills, saving families a grand total of £3.75 a month, slightly more than the price of a coffee, significantly less than the cost of a pint of beer. On Wednesday, he declared a £2 cap on bus fares, a saving that will be felt by millions of society’s working poor. On Thursday, the Prime Minister announced that his government would cut business rates by 20% for pubs, clubs and music venues. And on Friday, he opened Number 10 North.
His next seven days could involve an offer of a national care service and the redistribution of income tax revenue to local councils.
From the very outset, Andy Burnham has been determined to project an image of a government that is real about change and committed to delivering. His team has put a lot of stock in ensuring the vibes of his leadership are the day to Keir Starmer’s night. With a social media game straight out of Zohran Mamdani’s playbook, Burnham’s team insists upon making lots of noise about his wins, creating a gentle aloofness between him and the legacy media, and insisting upon a picture of the Makerfield MP as affable and down to earth.
Consequently, he has traded Starmer’s lectern for Ask-Me-Anything sessions across British cities and towns. Within a few days, Burnham has shown his predecessor up as a poor communicator, an incompetent ruler and an out-of-touch politician.
But how far will vibes get the new Prime Minister?
Protecting the centre
Those around him have insisted that his first week of policy announcements has been accounted for, but if he is to stick to Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules, this will pose obstacles to his wider policy agenda. Burnham has sought to strengthen his position by not picking a fight with the bond markets, building his own close-knit power base around First Secretary of State Louise Haigh and new Chief Whip Anneliese Midgley, whilst employing John Healey, a relatively deferential Labour right-winger, as Chancellor of the Exchequer over polarising powerhouses, Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood.
One may be tempted to arrive at the conclusion that his choices for Cabinet would temper his reform ambitions, and that would not be a daft calculation. Of his 27 Cabinet appointees, the overwhelming majority represent no meaningful political shift from Labour’s centrist flank to its soft left base. If Andy Burnham does represent a break with neoliberalism, his reliance upon some of its most enthusiastic exponents to prosecute his ambitions may be a foolish misstep.
In many respects, Burnham’s claim that he will end neoliberalism is politically profound. Even Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour leader who could be trusted to be a genuine enemy of the neoliberal settlement, never called as sharply for its demise, nor constructed as compelling a story as Burnham over what this particular politico-economic arrangement had done to working-class lives over the preceding three decades.
But Burnham’s intervention comes at a time when neoliberalism is already on its knees. The globalised economic order is increasingly fractured by inter-imperialist war, inter-state competition and climate change-induced shocks. The state - in Britain too, where parts of the steel and transport sectors have been nationalised - is increasingly intervening in the market. And the social contract has frayed under the weight of rising house prices, ballooning inflation, and soaring interest rates.
Burnham’s claim that the economic order that has shaped our lives for decades is over is as deft and symbolically significant as it is increasingly obvious. The problem, as the world descends into war, runaway climate change and ensuing far-right hegemony, is that its successor arrangement looks even darker.
The bottom line for the former Greater Manchester Mayor is rescuing the system from itself and shaping it into a different, more resonant form, which works better for people precisely so capitalism in this country can be saved from both itself, its populist detractors in the form of Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski, and those it governs over.
Far from a radical transformation
Andy Burnham knows the system is decaying. He knows one of its mainstay political institutions, his beloved Labour Party, is running the risk of breathing its last gasp. And he knows, in a way that Keir Starmer couldn’t because he’d made it his mission to defeat the Corbynite left, that he must reanimate public consent for this system before it is too late.
But there are three crucial ways in which the Burnham project, for all its vibes, rhetoric and tame but immediate interventions to alleviate the social crisis, will struggle to revive the institutions of statehood. Firstly, Burnhamism’s unwillingness to challenge the fiscal rules or the bond markets means it is less well equipped to challenge Treasury orthodoxy altogether.
If you want to transform the British state, you cannot solve the problem of political power without disrupting the state apparatus' fiscal conservatism. Hiring John Healey as Chancellor, a man who resigned from his position as Defence Secretary in order to force the Defence Investment Plan through and match Donald Trump’s demands that NATO allies reach the 3% GDP defence spending target, doesn’t bode well for the future. It signals the continuation of an order which will prioritise nuclear submarines and F-35A fighter jets over clean energy, infrastructure projects, and welfare spending.
This brings us to Burnham’s second challenge: the impetus for Labour Prime Ministers to choose funding militarism over welfare payments will not be popular among his MPs, much of Labour’s activist base, nor, of course, substantial parts of the electorate. But cleaving to the militarism endemic to the British state is a habit typical of Labour leaders, as is their repudiation of building clean, sustainable energy.
Burnham’s announcement that he will expand upon existing oil and gas drilling projects whilst considering new ventures on the Rosebank and Jackdaw locations, his third struggle, reflects an administration in no meaningful way wedded to either creating a clean, sustainable planet, or a genuine “cost-of-living government” shorn from its dependencies on extractive and polluting energy.
If Andy Burnham’s claim that neoliberalism is coming to an end is to be taken with any seriousness, we should not necessarily expect that it will presage the more optimistic, hopeful society we might like.
Wildfires inflame Europe. Major cities are contemplating evacuating their populations. Heatwaves and supply chain shocks will lead to soaring food prices. Without tackling the fundamental roots of today’s problems - entrenched political and financial power, runaway climate change, and imperial violence from Iran to Ukraine – people’s declining living standards will continue to be felt. Those effects will continue to rebound on the political system, eviscerating the legitimacy of everyone who tries to manage the system without fundamentally transforming our lives, our relationship to other countries, and our relationship to nature.
Jonas Marvin is the author of forthcoming The Breaking of the English Working Class, due out for Verso Books in August 2026. He also cohosts Life of the Party podcast and blogs at Marx’s Dream Journal.
Follow Jonas on X: mØØdyjonas
Have questions or comments? Email us at editorial-english@newarab.com
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab.