When Martin Freeman endorsed Labour ahead of the election, his credentials were called into question after Steerpike reported that Freeman was a former supporter of Arthur Scargill’s far-left Socialist party. So Mr S was curious to hear Burnham last night reveal his own admiration for Scargill – who formed the Socialist party because he was so angry that Labour had ‘abandoned any pretence of being a socialist party’.
As the Tories raised a glass to Lynton Crosby at the election strategist’s bash in Kensington, the Labour leadership hopeful was across town setting out his brand of self-titled ‘aspirational socialism’ over at Soho House, the £1400 private members’ club. During the talk, Burnham – who has been accused of leaning more to the left this week, in an attempt to win the second preference of Jeremy Corbyn backers – took questions from the audience about his favourite authors from his time studying English at Cambridge:
‘I read some Dickens, there’s an understated humour. My three passions were Shakespeare, 20th century poetry and Chaucer.’
When asked what literary greats he was channelling or being inspired by as he progressed in the Labour leadership race, Burnham said Scargill.
‘See I would normally say Shakespeare but I mentioned V [the poem by Tony Harrison] and there’s a quote before the poem, if you look it up it is by none other than Arthur Scargill.’
Burnham said the quote, along with the controversial poem – which was written in the midst of the miners’ strike – had stuck with him from a young age. ‘In my early days it really stuck with me at that age when I was 18 and I’ve never forgotten as I read it and I re-read it,’ he said. ‘Arthur Scargill’s quote was “My father still reads the dictionary every day. He says your life depends on your power to master words.’”
Indeed the influence of the two pieces appeared to come through when Burnham discussed his own brand of socialism which failed to take off in 2010:
‘I learnt a lot when I stood in the last Labour leadership election. I stood in 2010 for the job I’m going for now and I was thinking then that my philosophy of aspirational socialism would sweep the land, but it didn’t quite happen then, maybe now, who knows.’
The comments came after Burnham read aloud Charles Dickens’s Election for a Beadle. Burnham said that the story about an election in Dickensian times was ‘timeless’. So timeless in fact that one character in particular has caught Burnham’s eye:
‘The leader of the official party – the steady advocate of the churchwardens, and the unflinching supporter of the overseers – is an old gentleman who lives in our row. He owns some half a dozen houses in it, and always walks on the opposite side of the way, so that he may be able to take in a view of the whole of his property at once. He is a tall, thin, bony man, with an interrogative nose, and little restless perking eyes…’
At this point Burnham paused reading to interject: ‘sounds like Jeremy Hunt, but I’ll carry on.’
Meanwhile, Burnham admitted that he has pondered life outside of Westminster:
‘One day I feel that when politics has run its course with me as I’m certain it will at some point because I don’t imagine it will be all of my life, I’m not one of those kind of politicians. I will give it my all while I’m in it but then eventually do something else, I have entertained the idea that I might write something. Perhaps I’ll ghostwrite a Roy Keane biography, I don’t think I’ll ever write my political memoirs though, I’m not sure I approve of that.’
Given that Ed Miliband’s links to socialism were in part blamed for the party not appealing to a wide enough range of voters in the election, Burnham may find himself picking up the pen sooner rather than later.
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