Why Do Today What Can Be Promised for Tomorrow?

The Great Burnham Deferred Promise Sale has arrived — and there’s something for everyone.

A National Care Service?

Absolutely.

A new “double lock” for pensioners?

Of course.

A new relationship with Europe?

Certainly.

Electoral reform?

Why not?

Cheaper transport?

Naturally.

There was just one small detail.

Most of it isn’t happening now.

The National Care Service is for the next Parliament.

The pension changes come in 2030.

Electoral reform is for the next manifesto.

The new relationship with Europe is something to be developed over time.

And so on.

It rather gives a new meaning to Labour’s promise of hope again.

Hope today. Delivery tomorrow.

And tomorrow, as we know in politics, is a very convenient place to put things.

To be fair to Andy Burnham, he was unusually frank about the political pain involved. He knows difficult choices have to be made and says he is prepared to pay a political price.

But there is something rather curious about a government telling the country that difficult choices must be made — while so many of the promised benefits are safely parked in the future.

Social care is not a new problem.

Burnham himself says he has wanted to reform it for 25 years.

Twenty-five years.

So perhaps the question is not whether politicians understand the problem.

It is why we keep being asked to applaud the promise to solve it later.

Conference speeches are supposed to set out a direction.

But governing requires something rather less glamorous:

Money. Priorities. Trade-offs. Delivery.

Britain does not need another political brochure marked Coming Soon.

We need government to tell us:

What will you do?

What will it cost?

Who will pay?

And when will it actually happen?

Until then, perhaps we should enjoy this new political innovation:

The Deferred Promise.

Available now in all good conference halls.

Delivery date: TBC.