Alex Burghart is ready for his close-up: a new face at (Deputy) PMQs

With Angela Rayner standing in for the Prime Minister, Kemi Badenoch stood aside for the Shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart—and he showed promise

At Prime Minister’s Questions last week, Sir Keir Starmer was absent, attending the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, so his place was taken at the despatch box by the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner. According to custom, the Leader of the Opposition also steps back, but Kemi Badenoch has chosen—perfectly reasonably and sustainably—not to appoint a formal deputy leader and will instead nominate colleagues as appropriate to represent her in various functions (The Times reported that she had offered the post of Deputy Leader of the party to Lord Houchen of High Leven, Metro Mayor of the Tees Valley). Speaking for the Conservatives, therefore, was Alex Burghart, who has the joy of two shadow cabinet roles, as Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (leading on Cabinet Office responsibilities) and Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary.

Alex who?

It is fair to say Burghart is not a well known figure. He was elected MP for Brentwood and Ongar in 2017, the parliamentary neighbour of fellow newcomer Kemi Badenoch, returned for Saffron Walden (now redrawn as North West Essex). He was educated at Millfield School in Somerset then read history at Christ Church, Oxford. Burghart went on to teach history at Warwick School before completing a doctorate at King’s College London, his thesis entitled The Mercian polity, 716–918. (He later published it as an academic monograph.) He also tutored at King’s and was the lead researcher for ASChart, a project to digitise Anglo-Saxon charters. He advised Shadow Minister for Children Tim Loughton from 2008 to 2010, then worked on the Munro Review of Child Protection. He served as Director of Policy at the Centre for Social Justice 2012-16, Director of Strategy and Advocacy for the Children’s Commissioner for England from February to September 2016, then advised on social justice in the Number 10 Policy Unit under Theresa May.

After his election in 2017, Burghart’s career progression was steady: he served on the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and acted as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Northern Ireland Secretary, Karen Bradley, and the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox. In July 2019, however, the new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, chose him as his own PPS, then in September 2021 he moved to the Department for Education as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Apprenticeships and Skills.

As Johnson’s ministry was imploding in July 2022, Burghart resigned, signing a joint statement with Badenoch, Julia Lopez (now Badenoch’s PPS), Lee Rowley (now Badenoch’s Chief of Staff) and Neil O’Brien (Shadow Minister of Education). Lopez’s constituency of Hornchurch and Upminster, in north-east London, borders Burghart’s Brentwood and Ongar seat. He served fleetingly under Liz Truss as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Pensions and Growth, before Rishi Sunak moved him to be Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office in October 2022; here he was responsible for the public inquiries into the Grenfell Tower fire and the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government Digital Service and the Central Digital and Data Office.

Burghart has enjoyed—and I mean this quite without disparagement—a rather wonkish, backroom career, dealing with interesting and important issues which at the same time rarely top the news agenda. That hardly seemed destined to change when Rishi Sunak appointed him Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary in his interim shadow cabinet after July’s general election. He had no strong connection to the province save his brief stint as PPS to Karen Bradley when she was Northern Ireland Secretary, but in a parliamentary party of 121, Sunak hardly had a long list from which to choose: Simon Hoare? Andrew Murrison? Julian Smith? Desmond Swayne? Earlier this month, Burghart had to defend the fact he had not visited Northern Ireland since taking up his post in July, protesting that “getting the funding for trips” had “not been as easy” as he would have liked. His insistence that “I am very much engaged in this job”, while no doubt true, is an unfortunate defence to be forced to mount.

The Cabinet Office is gonna make you a star

It was not immediately obvious earlier this month that Burghart’s additional responsibilities as Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster would transform his profile. But leading for the Opposition on the Cabinet Office places a number of important policy areas within his bailiwick. Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, is an influential figure in Whitehall, regarded as Sir Keir Starmer’s “fixer”. He chairs two cabinet committees, sits on a further five and acts as deputy chair of all five “mission boards”; and his ministerial responsibilities include national security, resilience and civil contingencies; propriety and ethics in government; and intergovernmental relations with the devolved administrations. Also in the Cabinet Office is Nick Thomas-Symonds, Paymaster General and Minister for the Constitution and EU Relations, who is responsible for policy on the European Union, constitutional reform including the House of Lords and overall legislation.

Ellie Reeves, Minister without Portfolio, supports delivery of government policy and handles the GREAT campaign, the UK’s international communications strategy. Newly elected MP for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, Georgia Gould, is Parliamentary Secretary with responsibility for public sector reform and policy on public bodies. Abena Oppong-Asare, the other Parliamentary Secretary, supports her colleagues in national security, resilience and civil contingencies, transparency and freedom of information, public inquiries and the constitution.

To provide scrutiny and challenge in all of these areas, Burghart only has the assistance of Richard Holden, Shadow Paymaster General, and Mike Wood, Shadow Cabinet Office Minister.

In addition to all of this, Burghart has been informally cast as Badenoch’s “deputy” (I looked at the Conservative Party’s history of deputy leaders in this essay last month). I’m not sure how accurate or helpful this narrative is: on his appointment, The Guardian described him as Badenoch’s “de-facto deputy”, and as Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster having “a de-facto deputy role” (which seem to me subtly different things); Channel 4 News similarly reported he was to “become her de facto deputy”; The Times was more circumspect, noting only that Burghart’s role was “likely to involve… shadowing Angela Rayner as deputy prime minister, including stepping in for weekly prime minister’s questions when Sir Keir Starmer is away”.

Into combat

At any rate, Burghart duly did step up for Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday last week. And, while many commentators have taken a different view, I thought he was quite good. (You can judge for yourself by watching PMQs here or reading the Official Report here.) I won’t rehearse the encounter at great length, but there are a few things worth marking. He began with a straightforward question: “What are the government doing to bring down inflation?”

Angela Rayner, whose direct and uncomplicated manner is often but not unfailingly effective at the despatch box, blustered confidently.

I think it is astonishing that—first, may I welcome the hon. Member to his place? Many people might not know that he was the Minister with responsibility for growth when, under Liz Truss, inflation was at 11.1% and growth flatlined, so we are doing much better than he did.

That is not, of course, an answer. It is not the worst parry but it is not the best either. It may be that she was caught off-guard but the brevity of his question; very few MPs truly absorb the lesson that a short, economical, punchy interrogation can make ministers very uncomfortable. It is not even wholly accurate: Burghart’s title for the 38 days he held the office was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Pensions and Growth), but his responsibility for “growth” in this context was circumscribed. He was a very junior minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, and only one of his eight named policy areas was “cross-cutting role on economic growth, supporting MoS on the labour market”, MoS being the Minister of State (Minister for Work and Welfare), Victoria Prentis.

(I am also quite aware that none of that matters: it was a quick, cheap but understandable shot which was well within the normal rules of engagement.)

Burghart’s second question stayed on the subject of inflation.

First, we had above-inflation pay rises for the unions. Then we had a Budget that the OBR said was going to push up inflation. This morning, we had City economists—real economists—saying that next year inflation will hit 3%. Does the right hon. Lady agree that this Government’s decisions mean higher inflation for working people?

The “real economists”, a reference to the minor row over the exact roles held in her early career by Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was brisk and snappy, and cheered up the Opposition benches. In defence of the previous government’s record on inflation, which is a weak point, he pleaded external factors.

It was Ukraine and covid that drove up inflation, but this Government are doing it to the British people. High tax, high inflation, low growth, low reform—there is a word for that: it is Starmerism.

As ripostes go, this had promise. “Starmerism” could stick if developed consistently. Amid the noise of the House of Commons, however, Burghart leaned too close to the microphone, which meant that those listening in the chamber could not make him out clearly, while those hearing it broadcast heard his words muted and unclear. Perhaps it was inexperience or nerves. He then moved on to the protest by farmers against proposed changes to inheritance tax, which is undoubtedly a vulnerability for the government.

Elderly men in tears, children worried about their parents and all of them worried that their way of life is about to be destroyed. What would the right hon. Lady like to say to them?

This sort of question needs careful handling. To respond too confidently or aggressively can seem uncaring or dismissive, while accepting the depth of feeling of those who are protesting can seem to legitimise their arguments. Rayner went in hard.

First of all, we are absolutely committed to our British farmers, and—[Interruption.] That is why we have committed £5 billion to the farming budget over the next two years. That is the largest ever amount for sustainable food production in the UK, and it is alongside £60 million to support those affected by extreme wet weather and over £200 million to tackle disease outbreaks. The hon. Gentleman’s party could not even get the money out the door for farmers, failing to spend over £300 million on farming budgets. The farmers know that they were in it for themselves, and that is why we are in government and they are not.

It was a curate’s egg of a response. To compare the government’s response with that of its predecessor seems sensible, and £5 billion is a sizeable amount of spending by anyone’s standards. There is a degree of truth in the advice given to Jim Hacker in Yes, Prime Minister by Godfrey (John Wells), directing his first ministerial broadcast:

Practically no one takes them in and those who do don’t believe them, but it makes people think you’ve got the facts at your fingertips. People don’t know you’re reading them off the teleprompter.

The disadvantage of reeling off large sums of money is that, while it may impress the wider audience, it is unlikely to reassure the farmers protesting, for whom the much more pressing reality is their own personal finances and the viability of their farms. Moreover, the last barb—“that is why we are in government and they are not”—has a short and diminishing shelf life. After such an emphatic victory (at least in parliamentary terms), the Labour Party is entitled to bask in its glow and twit the Opposition. Given the government’s poor showing in the opinion polls, however, it will very soon look complacent or evasive.

Overall I thought it was solid and combative performance. We should never underestimate the challenge of facing a well briefed Prime Minister with hundreds of supportive MPs behind him, when your own party is less than a third of the size of the government, and you have sniping from the left by the buoyant Liberal Democrats and the diminished but still acidic Scottish National Party. Burghart chose obvious topics—inflation and taxation on farmers—but he tied them together neatly into a narrative of a government acting as a brake on economic growth, adding in over-mighty trades unions and large public sector pay awards. There were one or two moments at which Rayner, who had inestimably the easier job, seemed wrong-footed and awkward.

As I say, many commentators did not agree. John Crace in The Guardian, whose assessment seems to be to be detaching itself further and further from reality as he thirstily knocks back the Starmer-supplied Flavor Aid, declared that Burghart had been “a wee bit crap”. He “was like a drama student cosplaying a Tory leader for an end of year sketch show. Just not as funny.” Worse, he was “shouty. Almost deranged.” If he thinks that Angela Rayner’s crack about Burghart once being ‘minister for growth’ amounted to her having “handed him his arse on a plate”, all I can say is, in the immortal words of Buckingham Palace, recollections may vary.

However, Sky News’s Jon Craig, who has been watching parliamentary performers for a long time, shared my overall assessment. “Have the Tories found a new rising star?” he asked, then paid tribute to “an impressive debut”. Burghart, he thought, had given “a direct and punchy performance at PMQs in which he accused Labour of broken promises and declaring war on farmers”, and was “clearly one to watch”. I part company with Jon when he suggested that Burghart had been more effective than Badenoch in her first two outings, and, with the best will in the world, his idea that the Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster might find himself ascending to the leadership “if Kemikaze, as her detractors unkindly call her, falters” is far-fetched.

Madeline Grant in The Daily Telegraph also gave Burghart a favourable review, calling his clash with Rayner an “evisceration”. Tom Peck for The Times described him as “articulate… energetic. The room was listening.” Josh Self in politics.co.uk noted how Burghart’s “surlier, sharper questions wrongfooted Rayner”, though qualified his conclusion: “the immediate challenge for this new Tory top team is to demonstrate political and intellectual leadership by saying something new… by this measure, Burghart did not succeed today”.

In July, I wrote an essay setting out some of the qualities a successful Leader of the Conservative Party would need to begin the process of recovery and rebuilding after the catastrophic general election defeat. The characteristics I identified were humanity, buoyancy, a sense of purpose and intelligence. As I say, I don’t for a moment think Burghart will become leader, and I suspect he doesn’t either. Nevertheless, to set him against that template for a moment, he certainly displayed buoyancy and a sense of purpose, and his background is evidence of his intelligence. It is a more impressive score card than anyone will have expected.

In essence, if I were a Conservative MP, taking into account the grim position on which the party finds itself electorally, reputationally and ideologically, I would have walked away from PMQs last week with a small but distinct spring in my step. Burghart had been punchy and confident, enough to raise the morale of the shrunken army for a little while. With four years and more till the likely date of the next general election, the Opposition will need the occasional pick-me-up like that. And the Deputy Prime Minister should not look back on the encounter with undiluted satisfaction. That, for Alex Burghart, is not a bad afternoon’s work.