Andy Burnham is days away from becoming prime minister. According to economist Andrew Lilico, he’s inheriting an economy with almost no room left to manoeuvre – and a sense of personal virtue is no substitute for a plan, as the fate of his predecessor shows.
In this week’s episode of The Capitalist, Lilico joins Marc Sidwell to dissect the fiscal trap awaiting the new government. He argues Keir Starmer never had a theory of growth – and that Labour, having spent a decade assuming the Tories underspent, had no answer once they discovered the opposite was true.
On Burnham himself, Lilico is sceptical of the PM-to-be’s promised devolution agenda, which looks set to hand local leaders more control over spending but not the power to raise revenue. As for Burnham’s plan to bring water, energy and transport under ‘public control’, the idea that state ownership can conjure lower bills without paying the going rate of return is, in Lilico’s words, ‘very confused economically’.
Plus: why Burnham’s pick for Chancellor will be critical, and can Burnham survive to the next election?
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