The left should stop being so miserable

Andy Burnham’s arrival in No 10 is a moment to rediscover hope

Today on Arguably, Ian Dunt, the author of books including How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t and Centrism: The Story of an Idea, puts the case for optimism about Andy Burnham’s premiership.

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Hope and joy do not come easily to progressives. Maybe it’s the disposition. Maybe it’s the timeline. Maybe it’s our long history of emotional and intellectual disappointment. Whatever it is, we seem to live in a state of permanent discontent. We’re an England football song in political form.

This instinct has now gone too far. A new prime minister will take office today. He is charismatic, telegenic, unashamedly progressive and has a thought-through programme for structural reform. Yet much of the reaction has been one of cynicism and despondency.

Many insist Andy Burnham will be continuity Starmer or that he will dissolve under the glare of the media spotlight. And it’s true that his challenges are legion. The economy is stagnant, the bond markets are vigilant, the far right is resurgent, the media is hostile, geopolitics is in turmoil. But Burnham recognises the possibility of change.

“Growth in every postcode and hope in every heart” is what he has promised – simple, meaningful, uplifting. Expect to hear it many more times before the next general election. Burnham refuses to let the conversation get dragged into decline and inertia.

In most elections, the candidate who promises you a good time wins. Think of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” victory in 1984 or Boris Johnson’s triumph over Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. The left too rarely grasps this tonal principle, though there are signs this is changing.

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, who like Burnham has built his political career through a local support base, shares many of the same principles as Corbyn, but never comes across as a scold or a killjoy. He seems to be in a state of permanent delight; it’s almost impossible to find a photo of him not smiling. He projects joy, not self-denial. Burnham gets this too: he smiles, he cracks jokes, he pledges short-term relief and long-term improvement.

And yet much of the progressive response has been funereal. Something unhealthy has happened to the emotional mood of the left in recent years. It’s the result of an unbroken string of defeats. During austerity, we were forced to watch an act of economic vandalism. During Brexit, we were forced to witness the rupture of the European dream and the triumph of right-wing culture war techniques.

We lost over and over again. Even when we won, it turned out that we had simply lost in a new way. Progressive voters combined to throw the Tories out, only for Labour to alienate its own supporters in a doomed attempt to win the backing of people who would never vote for it.

Something broke at that point, in the emotional mindset of British progressives. After the long wilderness years of Conservative rule, it was acutely painful to finally get a Labour government and then see it stumble in ways that mirrored what came before. This created an unspoken worldview – rarely stated outright, but deeply internalised – that optimism is somehow naive. That all events point inevitably towards doom, that decline is embedded as a physical rule of the British political universe.

This is misplaced. It is wrong both as a strategic instinct and as a statement of fact. Burnham has weaknesses, of course – he is less ambitious than he should be on immigration and Europe. He is unproven on making painful decisions. But any objective assessment must make these concessions: he has been unusually clear about what he wants. He is more radical than any prime minister for decades on devolution, public ownership, social care and electoral reform. He has appointed serious people with proven track records and complementary skills – such as James Purnell and Greater Manchester CEO Caroline Simpson – to senior positions in the new No 10 hierarchy. He is charismatic, has real emotional presence, and a proven appeal to voters. Why wouldn’t a progressive be excited?

Pessimism, cynicism and despair are not just emotional states. They can become political weapons. Since 2016, right-wing populists have presented their movement as unstoppable. Many political reporters have accepted this narrative in its entirety.

Whenever populists win, it is treated as a confirmation of destiny. Whenever they are defeated – as they have been in Canada, Australia and Norway since 2025 – it is soon forgotten. How often were we told that victory for Reform, now falling in the polls and wilting under media scrutiny, was inevitable? After a while you realise: there’s nothing inevitable about it. This is simply the message put out to try and extinguish the promise of an alternative.

One of the core aims of this populist narrative is the demoralisation of progressives. It is to get them to give up the fight. And that ultimately is what the current mood of ennui provides, a generalised political malaise which undermines determined action.

But it’s OK to feel hope again, even if it is underpinned by caution. It’s OK to embrace optimism rather than hide it under a pretence of mock-realism. In fact it is more than that. It is necessary to do so. Because hope is the precondition of political change.