Marc Stears, a UCL Professor of political science, founding director of the UCL policy lab, and pro-provost for Policy engagement was appointed as Andy Burnham’s special adviser on 7 September.
Notably, Stears was a founding member of the Blue Labour movement, a socially conservative wing of the labour party which arose in the late 2000s.
This will not be Stears first time in Westminster: from 2012 to 2015 he served as special adviser to Ed Miliband, former leader of the Labour Party.
Special advisers assist on “political matters where it would be inappropriate for permanent civil service to become involved,” serving as temporary civil servants, according to the House of Commons Library.
At UCL, Stears is a professor of Political Science and founding director of the UCL Policy Lab.
Founded in 2022, the lab is a research hub that connects people with “tools and resources required to bring about real social and policy change.” The website highlights a commitment to pushing “beyond the status quo” by bringing together expertise and everyday knowledge.
Fellow UCL professor Nick Witham explains the impact of the lab, stating that the “hard work of developing shared approaches to public policy is precisely what has made [UCL Policy Lab’s] work so groundbreaking.”
Witham emphasises Stears’ role in the lab declaring how “Marc has shown that ambitious interdisciplinary social science of the type exemplified by the lab is not just intellectually richer, but also more consequential.”
Stears held a similar role at the Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney in Australia. This background, as well as professing in political theory at the University of Oxford has propelled Stears to his current position advising Andy Burnham.
As a founding member of Blue Labour, a faction of the UK Labour party formed in 2009, Stears has since criticised the group's political views. Stears writes how an unconventional group of Labour leaders gathered to “lick their wounds and imagine a way forward” after the Labour government limped out of office” 16 years ago.
The Blue Labour of today has shifted its values according to Stears who last year criticised “the Maga-infected version” as “fundamentally misconceived."
Blue Labour describes its values as “conservative socialism” concerned with protecting “nature and human value from the commodification of capitalism and transactional culture of the market” according to their website.
Stears previous ties to the group may inform his selection to advise Andy Burnham who has declared his aim to “end 40 years of neoliberalism.”
The group was established after the 2008 financial crisis, with Stears explaining how Blue Labour sought to recapture the “joys of the ordinary” that had been lost in the ideas of New Labour.
Stears explains how amongst the political elite there is “a sense that ordinary people do not understand their own lives.”
Whether Stears can assist Burnham in his ambitious goals for the country is yet to be seen, but the professor's previous experience as special adviser, involvement in the UCL Policy lab and history with Blue Labour will contribute to his efforts to influence change in Downing Street.