Andy Burnham’s Manc-a-Lago plan to escape the Westminster bubble by shipping bits of No.10 to the North is fated to fizzle out: the wrong answer to a problem misdiagnosed. The idea seems to be that physical proximity will make people feel the heart of government better understands them, while the new office will be full […]
‘It is time for Whitehall to accept that growth cannot be ordered from the top down,’ Andy Burnham said in his first major speech since returning to Parliament. ‘Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up.’ He is right. The man about to enter Downing Street has seen what much of his party […]
It received less media attention than many of his more eye-catching announcements, but yesterday Andy Burnham stated that under his premiership, British firms would be favoured for government contracts. While this is well meaning, outside a narrow set of circumstances such as issues relating to national security, this would be a costly mistake. First, it […]
For those of us old enough to remember Andy Burnham as a not-especially-effective member of Gordon Brown’s Cabinet in the late 2000s, it is sometimes difficult to see what qualities have made some sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party speak of him as if he were a Merseyside Aragorn. To them, after a self-imposed exile, […]
Andy Burnham said this morning how seriously he takes Alan Milburn’s review of youth unemployment. If that’s true, he should pay close attention to one of its most important findings: the cost of employment is standing in the way of businesses hiring young people. Since Labour came to power they have put up the cost […]
In a recent speech, Andy Burnham, Makerfield’s new MP and likely our next PM, said he would end ‘trickle-down’ economics. What on earth was he talking about? The Left often accuses the Right – and particularly the last Conservative government – of practising this voodoo art form. Supposedly, right-wingers give tax breaks to the ‘rich’ […]
Since Andy Burnham became the Mayor of Manchester in 2017, the term Manchesterism has taken on a new meaning. To him, it stands for the expansion of the public sector and a managerial state. Now, with Keir Starmer on the brink of resignation and Burnham’s Makerfield by-election win clearing his path to Westminster, Britain may […]
‘I accept that over the last year, performance at South Western Railway has not been up to scratch…we will leave no stone unturned in making sure that his constituents have a better travel experience in future,’ pledged the Transport Secretary in a Commons answer earlier this month. Heidi Alexander had been asked by the Lib […]
Some are saying they don’t know what Andy Burnham’s big ideas are. They don’t know what he will try to achieve when he becomes prime minister. On GB News earlier this week, Boris Johnson described Burnham as a ‘mascaraed Mancunian mystery’. It is a peculiar concern. Burnham’s ideology seems to me no harder to identify […]
Keir Starmer is now an empty-vessel Prime Minister, nominally in office but visibly out of power. His fall from grace after Labour’s emphatic win almost two years ago brings an end to stage one of a government in collapse. Starmer has gone from weak leader to lame duck in a matter of days, and Andy […]
When Andy Burnham enters No10 in weeks the pressure to implement new policy will be massive. The advisers who hold his ear will try to act fast, thinking that they have learnt the lesson from Starmer’s processology. Labour MPs have made their desire for ‘big change’ known for months but have failed to articulate it […]
The UK has the lowest business investment of any G7 country. The last time its business investment stood above the G7 median as a proportion of GDP, John Major was Prime Minister. The Labour government’s instinct, both in its manifesto and in practice, reflects the old Keynesian mindset that “The duty of ordering the current […]
Putting support services such as cleaning, security, and building maintenance out to tender has been a significant success since the policy was first introduced in the 1980s. Starting in local government but extended to central government, such services have cost less and been delivered to a higher standard as a result of competition. Yet Labour, […]
Sir Keir Starmer has announced his resignation as Prime Minister – either from mid-July or from mid-September, depending on how the Labour leadership process goes (coronation vs contest). He will thus have been prime minister for somewhere between about 730 and 800 days, following his victory by a huge majority in the 2024 General Election. […]
The Greek poets understood that the cruellest fate is not the one a man brings upon himself, but the one that was waiting for him before he arrived. Oedipus did not choose his fate, indeed he walked into it with the very best of intentions. So too, in his quieter and more lawyerly fashion, did […]
The refusal of the Treasury to increase defence spending shouldn’t come as a surprise. This is exactly what HM Treasury is supposed to do: stop spending that it sees as unaffordable, unless the necessary trade-offs are made to unblock it. The point of cabinet government is for Secretaries of State to make their case for […]
