With 'hope again' Labour must flesh out its change in direction

Political parties, like businesses, devote a lot of time and money to coming up with defining slogans. They are tested exhaustively in focus groups.

Presumably then, Labour’s new “Hope Again”, to be brandished everywhere at next week’s annual conference in Liverpool, is tailored to leader Andy Burnham's personal appeal. Like all slogans it has been put through the mill. In which case, I must be in a minority that finds it uninspiring, although I ran it past friends at the weekend and they felt the same.

It implies “we failed before so we’ve having a second go”. It smacks of previous defeat.

CommentStarting today, Andy Burnham's honeymoon is over

Hope is a weak word. I hope every time I watch Fulham play that they will win. Too frequently, they don’t. But we carry on hoping. As they say in football, it’s the hope that kills us. Likewise, I hope on each occasion I buy a Lotto ticket, to no avail.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham's new party slogan, Hope Again, aims to appeal to voters while also galvanising his Labour party. Getty Images

Perhaps they thought that by adding the word “again” they were borrowing from Donald Trump's proven playbook. Maga, though, uses “again” after a strong opening of “Make America great”. Labour’s comes after “hope”. As Homer Simpson might exclaim: “Doh!”

If the Brits were searching for a better campaign statement, they could have adapted the one that to my mind is the standout of recent times: Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can”. That oozed confidence and positivity. Much better than the political equivalent of another well-worn, going nowhere English phrase, “here’s hoping”.

Apparently, Labour is aiming to reach two audiences with the credo. One is to tell the electorate that Labour and the country are now in stronger hands and they should be optimistic. The other is to Mr Burnham’s fellow Labour members – that together they can win the next general election, a prospect, a hope, that was rapidly vanishing under Keir Starmer.

That is Mr Burnham all over: having to appeal to voters while also convincing and re-galvanising his own party. Weird as it may seem, the two years when Mr Starmer was in power, having secured a thumping majority, were draining for the UK as a whole and for Labour. You would think that Mr Starmer would have used the springboard of a substantial mandate to go on and launch a series of eye-catching, uplifting policy initiatives. Instead, he did nothing of the sort. It was as if, no sooner did he land in Number 10 than Mr Starmer retreated behind lawyerly caution and obfuscation. The UK entered a period of stasis and worse, reverse.

Andy Burnham on a visit to Gravesend, in south-east England, but the former mayor of Manchester has aimed to keep a focus on the North. Getty Images

Mr Starmer is a southerner, living in north London, someone who worked as a barrister in the capital, who follows Arsenal. This may seem trivial – after all the UK is a small island and every place across the world has some sort of divide that overall does not signify much. That is not true of the UK. Relatively tiny yes, compared to some, but the geography is important.

Mr Burnham is not only addressing two constituencies with Hope Again, but also a third: the North of England. Lack of belief and aspiration is trotted out repeatedly where the post-industrial part of the country is concerned. Over decades, under successive governments, Tory and Labour, the North has become increasingly left behind. While the South has motored ahead, enjoying economic growth and prosperity, the folks beyond the Watford Gap, the iconic divide on the main motorway between the southern and northern halves (it’s the name of a service area near Daventry, to be specific), have stagnated and suffered.

The new prime minister is about returning hope to them as much as he is to the UK at large and to his own Labour people. He’s doing so because that’s where his heart is, where he grew up and his family lives. It’s an abiding theme of his rise and premiership. No sooner did he take charge than he opened Number 10 North, a second office of his rule in the centre of Manchester, where until recently he served as regional mayor.

The idea is that siting civil servants in the north-west metropolis will ensure the area is not forgotten, that everything he and his ministers do will have a northern connection and hue. In some respects, the move is bizarre. Manchester is only 200 miles from London, which in many nations would be viewed as insignificant, but in the UK, such has been the capital’s historical dominance that it carries enormous distance. There are financial, social and cultural differences that together create the North-South divide.

Add to that pivotal moments from the past – most recently the official response to the miners' strike in 1984, which was seen by Northerners as an assault on the North, and the cover-up of the causes of the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989, which Mr Burnham cites as seminal in his personal journey – and the feeling persists of an abandoned land and inhabitants.

Level up

Mr Burnham has vowed to right this. In saying so, he is also keeping an eye on the polls and his chances of winning at the ballot box. The last two general elections have been determined by swings in support from Labour to the Tories and back again, with the bulk of that shift occurring in the North, in what were previously guaranteed Labour seats forming the so-called Red Wall. Boris Johnson promised them he would “level up” with the South and won. When he failed to deliver, they reverted to type and went with Mr Starmer. If Mr Burnham wants to triumph in a poll that may come sooner rather than later, he must convince those seats.

Campaign posters in Makerfield. Labour will need to convince 'Red Wall' voters to stay in power. Getty Images

The problem is that by stressing the North at every opportunity he diminishes the South. The Conservatives are sensing an opening here – every pound spent in Mr Burnham’s favoured territory is a pound less in London and its surrounds, given the tightness of UK public funding. It is also fraught with economic risk since the powerhouse, whether he likes it or not, is London.

No sooner does the Labour conference end than Mr Burnham faces a vote on his approach, one that is more telling than any focus group. The parting “gift” of Mr Starmer was a by-election in his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, in the heart of London. There, Labour faces a tough challenge from the younger, social media-savvy, more left-wing Greens. To lose would be an embarrassment for Mr Burnham, an uncomfortable reminder that a five-party system (with the Lib Dems and Reform UK) is now the norm.

Hope is fickle. As Karin Christiansen, chair of LabourList and a candidate for the party’s general secretary, said: “Asked why they back a party, voters in many countries rank 'most likely to change things' above 'has the best policies'.

“People are not generally drifting to the populist right because they have signed up to its ideology. They are reaching for the nearest port in a storm – for whoever voters feel really acknowledges their experiences and anxiety and offers some practical hope.”