Burnham's big idea is levelling DOWN. His party despises the aspirational, patronises the poor and indulges the feckless: SARAH VINE

For all their faults, the last Conservative administration did at least have one core ambition: levelling up. The overarching idea was to bring the whole of the country in line with the most prosperous and successful parts, to foster ambition and give people the tools and opportunities to build their best lives.Under Boris Johnson, the Levelling Up White Paper put forward proposals to raise standards across a variety of sectors, including education, public services, skills training, housing, living standards and so on.It sounded great, but quickly turned out to be an almost impossible task, hamstrung by a combination of bureaucratic bottlenecks, seemingly insurmountable delivery delays, economic shocks and the Tory party's own internal political faultlines.Ultimately it was deemed a failure, despite the hard work and dedication of the politicians and civil servants involved, who included my ex-husband, Michael Gove. Poor Michael. If ever there were a poisoned chalice in the dying days of that Conservative government, that was it.But while the Tories may not have succeeded in their desire to level up, it was nevertheless a noble and clear-sighted ambition, one which perhaps under different circumstances and in different political times might have at least partially succeeded.That core principle, to take what is best about this country, to learn from Britain's success stories and build on them, remains a cornerstone of conservatism.By contrast, Labour has precisely the opposite objective – or appears to, based on its actions in government. So far, in every key political move, there seems to have been less a drive to level up and more a determination to level down: to drag everyone to a place of mediocrity rather than allow those with drive to succeed.The notion that personal ambition and freedom of choice are the enemies of society is a common socialist concept. An ideology driven, of course, by the politics of envy. But rarely have we seen it so nakedly expressed in modern-day British politics. It runs through Andy Burnham's administration, like Starmer's before it, like letters in a stick of rock – and plays out in almost every major policy area. Andy Burnham made his despatch box debut yesterday, watched by First Secretary of State Louise Haigh and Chancellor John HealeyWe see it in our new Prime Minister's fixation with pre-Thatcherite Britain – re-iterated yesterday in his first real speech to Parliament. It's a credo in which the over-educated and privileged intellectual classes fetishise the working classes, completely failing to understand that one man's socialist fantasy is another man's bone-crushing toil.So they despise the aspirational, patronise the poor and indulge the feckless.In education, for example, Labour has instigated a bitter class war against independent schooling, undermining one of the country's most successful sectors and forcing parents and children to level down purely to satisfy their own chippiness.Oxford and Cambridge are all very well for them – 54 per cent of the current Cabinet are Oxbridge graduates, compared to 45 per cent under Johnson. (Even if several of these ultra-ambitious ministers now unconvincingly claim they always felt too working-class for the dreaming spires.)But when it comes to the prospects of young people today, a striking lack of ambition dominates. Andy Burnham seems more worried about working to lower people's expectations than in helping young people achieve their full potential. Stay small, don't reach for the stars: that's the message.It's the same in business. Punish job creators, don't reward them. Mock those who understand wealth creation and growth. Make it harder for those entrepreneurs to employ people by ramping up both the tax burden and regulation. Push workers into redundancy (and welfare), make them dependent on handouts rather than giving them the tools to stand on their own two feet. Take away the dignity of work and career, replace it with a depressing culture of state dependency.Look also at immigration. Burnham seems to have all but abandoned the notion of 'stopping the boats'. The principal aim now seems to be making sure that every area in Britain, and especially aspirational middle-class ones, 'take their fair share' of new arrivals.This inevitably means that many towns and villages in Britain could risk the prospect of their own supply of predatory young men hanging around on street corners leering at the local schoolgirls.Why tackle the problem when you can simply spread it around? Why destroy one community when you can ruin them all? And what about law and order?The only people who stand to benefit from the Government's early release scheme are the criminals themselves, many of them violent. Forget the victims, forget the law-abiding majority. We must all dance to the tune of the criminal underclasses.At every turn, it seems that this Government despises anything that smacks even slightly of ambition and hard work, and even more the fruits of such labour. Just look at the latest plans to tax people's homes, deploying HMRC 'valuation agents' to target those with 'nice views' or home improvements like extensions and conservatories. It seems Labour won't be content until we are all living in mean little boxes next to fields of solar panels or giant, humming data centres.Of course, none of this appears in Burnham's rhetoric. Our cheeky-chappy PM is full of positive vibes. Yesterday he was relentlessly upbeat, despite a spitefully timed announcement from his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, that the latter was standing down as an MP. Under Boris Johnson, the Levelling Up White Paper put forward proposals to raise standards across a variety of sectors, including education, housing and living standards, writes Sarah Vine Burnham seems to have all but abandoned the notion of 'stopping the boats', says Sarah Vine. Pictured: Migrants attempt to cross the Channel from Gravelines, France, this yearBurnham burbled on about all sorts of super-sounding things, used the word 'growth' like it was going out of fashion, talked about re-nationalisation and re-industrialisation and bigged up his pet project, No10 North, as the solution to the nation's woes.It was a confident performance, peppered with words like 'positive' and 'prospects' – even if I could think of another word and other convenient words beginning with 'p'. But for all his bullishness, it was just more mood music. Kemi Badenoch certainly made short work of it.Ultimately, politics is about show, not tell. You can make as many fine speeches as you like, pose for as many photo opportunities as you want, film as many touchy-feely TikToks as your social media manager asks you to. But if your actions don't match your words, you're finished.Voters will see through you. That's what happened to the Tories – and that is what will happen to Labour if they continue to say one thing but do another.Voters don't want fine words; they want definitive action. By which I mean, a country where opportunities exist for all young people, where law and order prevails, where the taxpayer is not exploited, where people who have no right to be here are removed, where investors and wealth creators feel welcome, where people are free to choose how they spend their hard-earned money and, above all, where doing the right thing is rewarded, not punished.Can it really be that hard?