It’s two weeks in. The sun is still shining, all those early expressions of hope haven’t yet evaporated in the heat, and Burnham’s summer charm offensive rolls on.
Communicating with care about care has been the main focus this week.
Confetti Season
Since becoming PM, he’s been courting the British public with blanket social media posts in hard hats, on ladders, pulling pints and sprinkling announcements around like confetti – well, it is wedding season.
No. 10 has been busy stacking up that media grid of daily announcements, from policy action on helping NEETS to fixing social care and bus fare caps.
We might still be in the honeymoon period, but voters seem to be warming to the new man in the hot seat, with polls, for the first time in ages, consistently showing Labour ahead of Reform. The so-called ‘Burnham Bounce’ has also seen his own leader approval numbers way up, and easily outscoring all his main rivals.
Communicating With Care
And while Week 1 was all the small things, Week 2 has been all about putting meat on the bones with big plays and bold moves.
None bigger than adult social care, a can that has been kicked down the road by so many administrations over the years, it must itself be around retirement age.
Just a few years ago, we watched the then-new PM, Boris Johnson, stand outside No. 10, saying he had an “oven-ready plan” for care. Unsurprisingly, the oven never pinged.
“I am announcing […] that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all, with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve”.
Boris Johnson
And while so many other past leaders, not just Johnson, have paid lip service to social care – 22 major reviews at last count – and achieved nothing, this time it feels a little different.
In Burnham’s first major broadcast interview this week with Laura Kuenssberg, there was one clarion call, one key message, that came across: a personal commitment to fix the social care crisis. And a willingness to expend valuable political capital to get it across the line.
Burnham came out of the gate fast with a big policy speech on Wednesday. He injected urgency into the debate, brought the Casey review forward to 2027, imposed a very tight timeline ahead of the next election, and sought political consensus on an issue that’s very personal to him. The everyday terrible impacts of dementia affect millions of families in the UK, including mine.
Casey Makes the Case
Leading the race to the finish line is Baroness Louise Casey, who’s in charge of the long-running government review into social care. With a hard-won reputation for getting tough things done, she’s a gifted communicator; always no-nonsense, direct, and fearless, yet affable.
Communicating the challenges and solutions will be key to getting public buy-in, and who better than Casey to make the case.
She was on the Today programme on the day of Burnham’s big policy speech, nimbly and confidently answering questions about the baffling complexities of the often labyrinthine system.
It was an expert framing of the debate, centred on the devastating toll dementia takes on too many families and the NHS, and on communicating the vision without the technical jargon.
The vision we must have for this country when it comes to a national care service is that the public does not have to face these constant battlelines between who does what and how. The idea that a member of the public has to navigate their way through that system tells us all you need to know about public services.
Baroness Louise Casey
I remember a masterful interview Casey gave a few years ago on Channel 4 News about her damning report into standards at the Met Police, when she quite plainly stated: “It’s a combination of incompetence and institutional racism”. A simple line that struck home.
With passion, conviction, and laser focus, she effectively communicated the Met’s shortcomings through the public’s lens. Always human in her delivery, she’s highly skilled in connecting with audiences and telling real-world stories about people’s lived experiences that go well beyond the numbers.
Agreement Across the Aisle
Building cross-party consensus will be central to success on the divisive issue.
It’s highly likely that Burnham will have to make tough choices on tax rises to pay for it. Loaded with risk, it’s a huge gamble. Theresa May nearly lost an election over what was dubbed the “dementia tax”.
That’s why he’s been a man on a mission this week, trying to find a workable, sellable consensus.
“We need a different kind of politics: problem-solving, not point-scoring. Nowhere is that more urgent than social care. For decades, governments have kicked this issue down the road because they’ve seen it as too risky, too difficult and too complicated. Politicians might have different views, but I’m serious about fixing this issue, and to do that we have to find common ground and listen to others to find a way forward.”
Andy Burnham
Ed Davey immediately signed up; Kemi Badenoch complained about the “short notice” but dispatched someone; and Nigel Farage wasn’t invited because he has to attend to some urgent summer business with a wayward bin.
Love him or loathe him, in his first two weeks as PM, Burnham has created political momentum on substantive issues that simply wasn’t there before. The visibility of a leader matters. People are starting to have real political conversations again, and his ability to communicate and connect with a broader base of voters is very much driving that.
Hope is trending. Time will tell whether it’s a fleeting summer fling for voters or the start of a healthy, long-term relationship, rooted in good communication, that sparks a more mindful public discourse in these fractious times.
This is the final instalment of a three-part series of posts on Team Burnham’s new communications strategy. You can read the first here and the second here.
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Katherine Porter is a former TV journalist with extensive PR experience. She has worked in senior public sector roles, including as PR manager for the London Olympics and as a Director of Communications in the US. Most recently, she worked in charity sector comms before setting up her own PR agency. She also writes regularly on Substack.
