Let me give Andy Burnham his due. For the best part of a decade he was the most persuasive voice in the country for letting go – for the plain truth that a decision taken in Whitehall about a town no official has ever visited tends to be worse than the one the people who […]
In his first days as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham announced a series of populist pledges that purport to address the cost of living, but fail to address the deep structural issues afflicting the British economy. Burnham will soon discover – like the four short-lived predecessors who held office before him – that the voters of […]
I’m 23. Like many of my friends, I endured the British education system all the way to university: GCSEs, A levels and then an undergraduate degree. Now, with little opportunity to progress in the small town we grew up in, those same friends are now looking to move to a city for work. For some, […]
Last week, Andy Burnham inaugurated ‘No 10 North’, his signature project, by working for the first time from the government’s new Manchester base, a self-styled ‘situation room for growth’. The symbolism was clear: power would no longer be concentrated in Whitehall. But the rhetoric remains stronger than the detail. The detail we have is concerning. […]
When Waitrose suspended mackerel sales over fears of overfishing, it was a warning. Weeks later, M&S followed suit. And as stocks continue to plunge, retail giants like Sainsbury’s and Morrisons sit poised to take similar action. The crisis in our seas has finally hit the supermarket shelves, but in reality, it runs far deeper. Today, […]
As Andy Burnham stood outside Downing Street on Monday to launch his new regime, our new Prime Minister did his best to prove to his 349 parliamentary backers that they had made the right decision. Much of his speech was rhetorical filler. ‘I will put the care of people at the heart of everything I […]
John Healey is the eleventh chancellor since the 2008 global financial crisis. Some of his predecessors served only briefly, but the direction of travel has been clear, regardless of who occupied Number 11. Growth has been modest, living standards have stagnated and the public finances have deteriorated. The pandemic made matters worse, but the direction […]
In his first full day as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham has announced that VAT on household energy bills will be removed from October. While no doubt well intentioned, this would be a mistake. First, it is risky for the public finances. VAT on energy bills brings in a significant amount of revenue. The Government has […]
London is delivering the fewest number of homes since the Second World War. Over the past two financial years, London has started just 15,040 homes in total. Over the same two years, London’s housing target was 175,984. That means housing starts were only 8.5% of the target, a truly dreadful figure. London’s housing shortage stands […]
Almost lost between this week’s national mourning (in England anyway) over the World Cup, and the endless Westminster fantasy-football speculation about who’s going to be in or out of Andy Burnham’s first cabinet, was an oh-so-British announcement about Dartmoor ponies. The endangered breed had been put in further peril by Natural England’s plans to protect […]
Below is a speech incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham could give – one that would unite the country around a shared vision of prosperity. Prosperity for All My fellow citizens, Today, as I stand before you as your Prime Minister, I want to cut through the political noise and give you the unvarnished truth about […]
The way we as consumers engage with news, TV and online media is continually evolving. Traditional TV has been increasingly usurped by streaming services. Apps like YouTube are taking up a greater share of viewers’ time and are now successfully competing with the likes of Netflix. It is natural that in this environment competition is […]
For a nation of Nimbys, Britain – or at least London – is remarkably fond of its skyscrapers. We love them so much we give them cutesy diminutives like ‘The Gherkin’, ‘The Cheesegrater’ and the ‘Walkie Talkie’. We boast about vistas from which you can see them, marketing properties for their ‘stunning view of The […]
Barring some form of constitutional crisis, Andy Burnham will become Prime Minister. We do not even know who his new Chancellor will be, let alone what their policies and priorities are. However, whoever gets the top job at 1 Horse Guards Road, they should make tax reform their top priority if they want to bring […]
Schools do not exist in isolation from the economy. The number of young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) is, in large part, a function of the economic conditions in which they leave education. When growth is weak, entry-level opportunities are scarce, employers are cautious and the public finances that pay […]
Across the UK, millions of people rely on the railways to travel. From 2024 to 2025, there were 1.7 billion passenger rail journeys, of which 1.08 billion were completed within a single region. And yet all too often, local rail has been neglected, with funding prioritised for London and the South East. As a result […]
Andy Burnham is not a forward-looking man. His musical interests stop at around 1998, his approach to industry is straight out of the 1970s and his favourite football team hasn’t won a trophy for over thirty years. It’s little surprise then that he takes a dim view of the ongoing tech revolution. It was reported […]
Rachel Reeves has found another group of taxpayers to squeeze: graduates who still think they have a student loan rather than a second income tax. At the 2025 Budget, she froze the Plan 2 student loan repayment threshold at £29,385 for three years from April 2027, rather than uprating it with earnings. Freezing a threshold […]
The OBR’s latest Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report, published this week, gives a blunt assessment of the UK’s public finances: we can’t go on like this. If nothing changes, government debt will rise to an unsustainable 300% of GDP in 50 years’ time. How did things get so bad? Well, there’s one big demographic challenge […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in for a reckoning… Hey, you. Excuse me? Are you talking to me? Yes, you. I’ve got something you should read. Hang on a minute, shouldn’t you be asking me questions? Are you breaking the format? Damn right I am. Every fortnight, you take me somewhere in the UK, show […]
You don’t expect to hear national policy being made on Reddit, and yet last week Andy Burnham did just that in an Ask Me Anything. When asked what he will do to fix the housing crisis, he pledged to ‘launch the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period’ and that ‘nothing else will […]
Talk about reforming the machinery of government often sounds like a wine tasting. One expert raises the glass, considers the latest initiative and says: ‘An interesting effort, but not enough depth.’ Another detects ‘promising notes of delivery, rather spoiled by departmental silos’. A third finds ‘hints of innovation and accountability, but with a disappointingly familiar […]
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