Emma Burnell, playwright

I want a Neil Kinnock who'd win an election.

Hello and welcome to What’s Left? Weekly interviews with interesting people on the left side of the political spectrum.

Today’s interview is with Emma Burnell. Paid subscribers can watch/listen to the full version of our conversation here!

Emma Burnell is a journalist, communications and campaigns consultant, as well as a playwright and director. You can read her thoughts on all things politics on her Substack Hard Thinking on the Soft Left. Her monthly podcast, The Zeitgeist Tapes, discusses the way politics is interpreted through popular culture.

Welcome Emma. The first question I always ask everyone is if there was a version of the political spectrum where zero means you're a total centrist, -100 a fascist, and +100 really radically left, where would you put yourself?

I would probably be somewhere around +40. I'm quite economically radical, but I've always been pragmatic about what's possible within a democracy.

I'm a democratic lefty. I don't believe that revolution works. I think human beings aren't actually very good at that kind of thing.

Do you think that human beings aren’t good at the revolution itself or the bit after?

The bit after, because of all the best and worst parts of human nature. The best parts might drive the revolution, but the worst parts run what comes next.

That’s a good way of putting it. So you're at the centre of the left then?

Yeah, there's an awful term within the Labour Party called “soft left”, which is definitely what I am. But “soft left” is so undefinable.

Shame, because I was going to ask you to define it next.

I would say it’s economically radical, but democratic. Possibly the Fabian approach, which is a gradualist approach to political change. It's not revolutionary, it's evolutionary socialism.

Is there a leader or a political figure anywhere who you think is “soft left”?

If you get more than two or three soft left people together and get them drunk, they will start quoting Neil Kinnock's 1985 conference speech at each other: ‘you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services’.

I interviewed Kinnock actually. He was so lovely.

He's an absolute hero.

But what I find tricky with Kinnock is that he's never won. And I feel like that’s always our problem on the left: we always find reasons to explain why we haven’t won. But it’s not enough. We do actually need to win.

You're absolutely right. I want a Neil Kinnock who'd win an election. There's no point to politics without power. You cannot change a single life until you get elected.

Even if you have the perfect views while not winning…

Right. What good is that? Go sit in your bedroom having your perfect views. I'm going to go and get into government and compromise.

So what was your background politically then?

My parents met at a sit-in at university.

Oh wow.

My dad's parents were Tory activists. And during the 1967 election, he was helping the Conservatives out as an 18-year-old lad, and there was someone being racist in the committee room. He marched out of that committee room into the Labour committee room and joined the Labour Party. And he's been a member ever since.

When I was born, he was an organiser for the local Labour Party and clearly very good at it because he managed to get me in the press case as Labour's newest member, aged about a week old.

Both of my parents are left-wing. My mum was an anarchist before she met my dad, but then she joined the Labour Party. I grew up in the 1980s and was never not on a demo. My mum took me to Greenham Common when I was eight, which is a hugely formative experience.

Sorry, I’m embarrassed but I don't know what that is.

Greenham Common was a women-only radical feminist base that was set up to oppose the American military base at Greenham Common. There was an encampment of women there for years who stayed there all the time, opposing it. And then people like my mum—who couldn't do that because she had young children and responsibilities—would come along to various demonstrations and things, and I got taken on one of them.

That sounds amazing. I’ll have to read more about it. Ok, this is a really tricky question, but would you be able to summarise your views in a sentence?

Electable socialism.

That's the most concise answer I've had yet!

You have to compromise with the electorate, but you also have to bring them with you. So, it's about finding ways to persuade people of your ideas rather than imposing your ideas upon them.

So it's about communication.

Exactly.

And what do you think of the current government in the UK now, bearing that in mind?

Some of the stuff they're doing, I'm fully behind. But why am I the only person in the country who knows this is happening?

Right. You really have to dig to find it out.

They really do need to sort the comms out. They have no narrative and they need a narrative.

In the video version of our chat, Emma really stuns me with her analysis of Dirty Dancing as the most political film of the 1990s.

Do you worry about the next election?

I'm Labour. We're never not worrying about and next election.

We do not have that conservative instinct that we just should be in power and that the silly electorate gets it wrong occasionally, but not that often. Labour never respects power and, in some ways, we aren't confident enough about it.

But how can you not worry about the next election when Reform [Britain’s major far-right party] are six points ahead of you in the polls?

Labour have a really tricky job because it's very, very easy to be in opposition and say nothing works. And they're not wrong. But turning around a country where nothing works immediately is impossible.

So, how do they tell a story that things are starting to work? How do they make people think, Okay, of course we're not there yet, but we're going in the right direction. Things are starting to work.

Do you ever see Britain ever recovering? I can be a very short-term thinker because I'm extremely impatient. Do you imagine we’ll ever be able to look back at this as a bad period we’ve come out of?

I think you have to. If you spend as much time caring about politics as I do, you can't not be an optimist because otherwise, what are you struggling for?

Will things get better? Yes. Will things also get worse? Probably. It's an incredibly dangerous time in the world right now, and we don't know which way it's going to go. But you have to believe in progress. You have to believe that things are going to go generally in the right direction with a lot of wobbly points.

And I am just about old enough to remember the early 80s, and things are better now than they were then in general.

In what way?

Most people do have a slightly better lifestyle than they did in the early 80s.

However, we are also getting more unequal. We have people who are doing very, very well, and people who are doing very, very badly. And the people who are doing badly— they’re essentially who decides elections. They either feel like they're doing slightly better and want to stick with what they have, or they feel like nothing works and think, Let’s get the next lot in.

That makes me feel like such a political wonk, because I would never vote like that.

You have to remember that you and I are really weird.

Ha yes. That's never very far from my mind.

If you care about winning elections, you want to make sure that you're talking not to people like us who are deeply weird, but reaching people who might listen to the news bulletin that comes in between the songs on Heart FM. That's your audience.

Normal people. And really, that's a good career idea: get a radio show, play Phil Collins and a bit of ABBA—I don’t actually listen to Heart FM so I’m guessing the genres—then slip in your message.

That's basically what a lot of these podcasters do, the Joe Rogans. Not the music part, but they have that bubbly background conversation that no one really listens to, and then they slip in, ‘Oh and by the way, vote for Donald Trump.’

It's funny because on the left now, and especially in America, there's so much conversation about capturing the Joe Rogan effect. But we’re way too serious about it. Instead of starting a left-wing podcast, you should start talking about seed oils or something and then get political.

Yeah, don't start yet another left-wing podcast. Have a podcast that talks about the real housewives of wherever like you’re just chit-chatting with your mates, and then say that you're going to go out to vote in some local election.

I just couldn’t personally do it because I don't watch Real Housewives.

I watch terrible television, I love reality TV. I could absolutely do a Below Deck podcast. Basically, I work a lot and I need a bit of chewing gum for the brain at the end of the day.

Absolutely. No judgement here! [I then ramble on at some length about the ‘90s nostalgia I’ve been watching and what TV I binged on while breastfeeding. If you’re not watching the full version of these interviews—think of what you’re missing]

We cannot be on 24 hours a day. And it's such a weird guilt thing on the left. Like, why am I not thinking about Palestine every second of every day? But you’re no good to anyone if you're like that.

I also think it's like a human resilience thing. I think about Palestine a huge amount, and then my brain tells me I’m hungry and I start thinking about what to have for dinner or wondering whether my toddler needs her raincoat on. And then I’m surprised by that, by the fact that I stopped thinking about genocide. But I do think it’s part of our human capacity to cope.

I always tell people that my favourite book is ‘The Woman's Room’, which is a fantastic book. But secretly, my favourite book is a thing called ‘Fortunes’, which is a dreadful potboiler about two stepsisters fighting over an auction house.

And the reason I say this is there's a character in it called Rollo Bellamy, who has a line which says, ‘Don't give me a martyr. Give me somebody who knows how to look after number one, so they've got the strength to look after whoever else comes along.’

And I think about that when I think about political resilience all the time.

That’s the idea of fitting your own oxygen mask first, isnt it?

Yeah. But also, I come back to that we're weird thing. You have to try and make yourself unweird to be persuasive.

If I'm just hanging out with people who have my politics, it's a narrow circle and all we're doing is fighting over the head of a pin rather than expanding out and going to talk to normal people.

The reason my last play was based on my Slimming World group is because I've got this amazing community there who are so interesting, and they’re interesting because they’re ordinary.

So you’ve managed to move out of your bubble?

Exactly. If you only ever talk to people in your bubble, two things will happen: first of all, you won’t understand where you sit in the reality of the world, how narrow your perspective is and how unpersuasive you are. And secondly, you won’t strengthen your arguments for the things you believe in because you will not be getting challenged properly.

If the Slimming World people talk to me about a political issue, it's not about the Labour Party doing this or that. One of my closest Slimming World friends has a disabled grandchild who lives with her, and they needed to get some adaptations and she asked me to help her with the council. That is politics. But it’s not whether the Labour Party is up or down in the polls.

That must be so interesting.

It really is.

A few quicker questions now. Have you ever knowingly dated or slept with a conservative?

I've never asked, and I've slept with a lot of people. Almost, I mean, statistically, almost certainly.

I thought you were going to say no, because of your background and your long history on the left.

I'm a happily single woman and I have needs. So, yeah.

No judgement here! Do you have any recommendations for any left-wing reading?

I would read ‘The Women's Room’ for feminism, ‘Catch-22’ for the futility of war, ‘1984’ for the importance of free thinking and free debate, ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ for a warning about totalitarianism, and ‘The Ragged Trouser Philanthropist’, which I haven't read for 20 years but which really touched me when I read it as a child.

And we should check out your podcast about films and politics!

You should also check out my podcast.

And what is some action that you can recommend for lefties?

For people who are already activist lefties, I would say go talk to ordinary people. Go to a non-political space and listen. Don't go into a non-political space and hand out leaflets.

Also, do something tangible: work in a food bank, volunteer at Crisis. Do something that's going to actually make somebody else's life different. Don't start with the highfalutin politics. Start small and build up rather than the other way around. Because if you start at the highfalutin level, you don't really ever go back down to the tangible.

That's perfect. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much for having me. I'm very flattered. You had Neil Kinnock and Richard Herring! Between the two of them, that's my absolute sweet spot.

Right, that’s definitely lots of similarity between all your positions, I can see that. Thank you so much, Emma.

Don’t miss out on all the fun segways we get into on the video of our chat.

Plus, for more of Emma’s writing, check out her own Substack!

On the pod this week!

And did you know I have a podcast with comedian Samantha Martin? In FeMANism, we play two terrible cis men mansplaining gender inequality. In our most recent episode, Sam has his first solo parenting weekend, whilst his ex-partner goes on a date with a man Jamie could possibly see himself podcasting with.

EPISODE 45: Divorced Dad weekend.