It was last year that Martin Lewis, the money-saving guru, advised the government to find “100 small things that piss people off” and set about sorting them out.
That approach has been adopted almost immediately by Andy Burnham since entering office, as he began his programme of “everyday fixes” to tackle problems that can be dealt with through minor policy tweaks.
Labour strategists say the philosophy behind this is to show that Burnham notices the frustrations of people’s lives, and that he will be decisive about improving these issues.
This started with scrapping VAT on electricity bills and capping bus fares. His latest policy assault is on garish signs on the high street and everything from excessive vape and betting shops to subscriptions that auto-renew without warning.
It is applying to politics the “broken window” theory of crime that suggests clamping down on small-scale antisocial behaviour such as littering can help discourage more serious crime.
As much as anything, Burnham’s moves against rip-off Britain should be a warning to companies that the government is paying attention to their behaviour towards voters, as he mulls over how far to go with a programme of increasing public control over essential services.
The intention is a long way from Keir Starmer’s promise to be a government that treads more lightly on people’s lives, as the new prime minister has taken a bet that voters want leaders who are active about everyday frustrations as well as embarking on major structural reform.
Burnham’s instinct to show the public that he is prepared to act on their behalf is a sound one, according to Peter Kellner, the pollster and former chair of YouGov, who has written recently about the difficulty of winning round “ungrateful voters”.
“Probably the best any government can do in the short run – short of some educational programme about where our taxes go – is gain the perception that they as politicians are on the voters’ sides. This is the key to the Burnham bounce. Plainly the amounts of money involved on bus fares and VAT and so on are small in the great order of things.
“But they are part of a story about where Burnham stands in relation to the responsibility of the government to look after people. How long this lasts I don’t know because we have yet to see what’s in the budget. And if at the end of the day they announce tax rises, then that changes. But if I were his communications adviser, this is what I would have advised him to do.”
He said Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher successfully told the stories of their premierships in their first five to six years, and that Burnham needs to do something similar in terms of building a narrative. “What we have yet to see is Burnham joining the dots of what he’s done so far. And it’s got to be something clearer than Starmer saying life is difficult and we are doing the best we can and we want to make Britain fairer and more prosperous,” Kellner says.
However, there is also a risk for Burnham that hailing small changes as achievements will veer into the dreaded territory of consumer gimmicks that American strategist David Axelrod warned against.
The former Obama adviser, who was drafted in to help Ed Miliband’s 2015 campaign, memorably branded Labour’s approach on the cost of living in that election as: “Vote Labour and win a microwave”. In other words, it was a consumer retail offer of short-term bargains without an overarching big and inspiring message to pull it all together.
Another cautionary tale can be found in the fate of the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration. Together they targeted price gouging and unfair consumer practices. But while the overall economy began to improve under Biden, voters never give the US government credit for small changes like holding down medicine bills and expanded child tax credits because they were unhappy about the lasting effects of food and housing costs inflation that had an effect globally.
It will be a test for Burnham how far he can reap the rewards of dealing with consumer frustrations at a time when he has little room for bigger giveaways to help with the cost of living while the economy is barely growing.
Burnham must also guard against a third possible peril: the potential for mockery if the issues seem too inconsequential for a prime minister to be bothering with – in the vein of John Major’s “cones hotline” for people to report nuisance roadworks.
The new prime minister, however, seems aware of these pitfalls. He is openly flagging the policies as small wins – while promising bigger structural change to take place in the longer term on social care and public ownership of utilities.
Labour was also ready to paint Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, as out of touch when she tried to ridicule the cost of living policies by saying: “Is that it? The problems go way beyond bus fares and VAT on bills.”
Polling so far seems to suggest that voters are tentatively impressed and moving back towards Labour at a time when both Reform UK and the Greens are sliding. However, the latest data from Ipsos Mori says seven in 10 remain dissatisfied with the way the government is running the country. While they make think Burnham is outperforming the other parties and a substantial number feel he is on their side compared with other leaders, voters are still going to take some convincing that the new prime minister really will be able to change their lives for the better.
