When I woke up on Monday morning, I was not expecting to see Keir Starmer resigning from office before I’d had my first cup of tea, but such is the world.
I’ll be honest, I was a Labour supporter. I was even with Keir Starmer on the night before the election, but like so many others I have been underwhelmed by the last two years. Whilst the economy hasn’t exactly been going gangbusters, and appointing a famously untrustworthy man to a key ambassador role was a mistake, I have been most disappointed with this government’s actions around active travel. They talked a good game, but ultimately were all bark and no bite with spending cuts and a lack of any real progress on any big active travel initiatives.
We know that the next prime minister is likely to be Andy Burnham, with the Labour party currently deciding whether or not to have a contest, or to just give him the job. This should excite cyclists, because whilst we may not know the positions he takes on huge national subjects like AI, Trump and the US, or national infrastructure, one thing we have seen – almost above any other – is his support for cycling and active travel.
He has a track record of successfully implementing active travel policies in Manchester, with the Bee network being one of the most impressive modern active travel networks in Europe. In fact, his team had a genuine joined-up thought process for their active travel strategy, rather than just throwing out soundbites like the current government.
Burnham also understands and communicates that there are trade-offs when you move from a car-centric transport network to one with more of a blend, and has taken people with him on the vision of it.
This is where I think things get really interesting for the national conversation, because he not only has a history of working with Chris Boardman in a positive way, but has promoted him time and again due to the success of his projects and the diligence of his work.
Boardman began working with Burnham in 2017, and it was only upon being appointed the National Active Travel Commissioner for England that saw him move away from Manchester only.
Having interviewed Boardman early in his tenure, I can vouch for the very exciting work that he had planned, but he’s had to deal first with a Conservative party who were either anti-cycling or obsessed with self destruction, then a Labour party where the health secretary criticised the government for funding active travel rather than defence.
The Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy was unveiled over a year later than it legally should have been released. In that kind of administration where priorities so clearly lay elsewhere, and the leadership felt like sideshow bob constantly smacking themselves in the face with rakes they themselves had thrown on the floor.
Under a Burnham administration, Chris Boardman does not need to prove the power of active travel, because he has already done so multiple times to the man who ultimately holds the purse strings. We may find that Wes Streeting under an Andy Burnham government – whatever role he might have – remarkably changes his mind on active travel and advocates for even more funding, because multiple studies have shown that it increases economic activity. Who knows, maybe he never believed what he said at all because he’s a shallow opportunist who is willing to throw cyclists under a bus for his own personal ambitions…
However, regardless of the goings-on between men with planet-sized egos and ambition balancing on a tiny pinhead of morality, this could be a huge boon for cycling. In a perfect world we would see Chris Boardman as transport minister, but short of that, just having a trusted voice in the room with our interests in mind could make the country a better place for cyclists.
