Burnham’s First Week: The Price of Breathing Space

A man who becomes the seventh prime minister in a decade does not inherit a country; he inherits a fatigue. When Andy Burnham promises “breathing space” to average Britons, he is not indulging in poetry but answering a survival question: how long can a people endure high living costs before they turn their anger on the regime itself? I have seen this rhythm before. First comes economic strain, then comes the search for culprits, and finally some ambitious soul steps forward promising to lift the weight. The effectual truth is simple: if salaries shrink while prices rise, no speech, however polished, preserves a government. Hunger listens more closely than any opposition.

Burnham moves quickly, cutting an electricity tax to confront the high cost of living. That swiftness is not kindness; it is prudence. In The Prince I compared fortune to a river that floods the plains and drowns the unprepared, and I said, in W. K. Marriott’s translation, that she overwhelms where “barriers and defences have not been raised.” Here the flood is economic. By lowering a visible tax on a basic necessity, Burnham is trying to throw up a dyke before the waters reach the windows. A people who open their bills each month are not fooled by rhetoric, but they do notice a smaller number.

Yet every relief has its enemies. We are told his opponents are already doling out criticism. Of what sort, I am not told, and that absence itself is instructive: when the substance is thin, men attack the appearance. They will say the measure is cosmetic, or reckless, or both. In a free state this contest is healthy if the quarrel is over how to help the many, not whether to help them. But I learned in Florence that those who grew fat under the old burdens rarely accept new modes and orders without a fight. Whoever touches established interests, I once wrote, must expect them to become his enemies.

Across the ocean, another prince chooses a different weapon. The White House invokes an old Tariff Act to justify 50 percent levies on Canadian goods—wine, cement, hockey sticks—declaring it a retaliation for discrimination against American products. This is not mere bookkeeping. Tariffs of that size are economic artillery. Here is the same principle I once applied to mercenaries and auxiliaries: power you wield directly is power you truly possess. By using national law as the ground for these tariffs, the American president fights with arms of his own, not by begging foreign tribunals. Whether the shot is well-aimed is another matter; what interests me is that he fires it himself.

Notice also the theatre. After speaking with Burnham, the same American president wishes him well. One hand imposes 50 percent duties on a neighbor; the other offers cordial words to a new ally. Many would call this hypocrisy. I call it ordinary rule. In politics, iron decisions wear velvet gloves because most people judge by the eyes rather than the hands. A friendly call reassures Britons that their new leader is respected abroad; the tariffs reassure Americans that their own leader is fierce at home. Appearances are a currency: you spend them to buy time while the real balance sheet—jobs, bills, growth—catches up or collapses.

The danger for Burnham is not that he moves too fast, but that he stops halfway. An electricity tax cut signals intent; it is not yet a regime. If he truly means to give “breathing space,” he must ask what arms defend this policy. Are there coalitions ready to back further relief, revenues to sustain it, administrators to enforce it fairly against the inevitable evasions? In my day unarmed prophets ended badly because, when the miracles stopped, only steel remained. In a modern republic the steel is votes, institutions, and the quiet power to say no to those who profited from the old order. Compassion that cannot coerce is a petition, not government.

Still, I do not dismiss these first moves. Fortuna has given Burnham a hard hand: high costs at home, a weary electorate, and great powers brandishing tariff weapons near his markets. He answers with speed and with a gesture that plainly touches daily life. That shows virtù. Whether it is enough will depend on what follows: if he builds dykes while the weather is merely bad, he may yet keep the flood from tearing up the whole countryside. If he lets criticism drive him to the middle course—that cowardly road between boldness and retreat—he will drown like the six leaders before him, and Britain will continue to gasp for air. The people will know soon enough which it is.