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 […]
The ‘Burnham effect’ that propelled Labour to victory in Makerfield is only the latest example of regional and devolved democratic leaders who are miles more popular than their opposite numbers in Westminster. Political talents as diverse as Boris Johnson and Alex Salmond prospered after being sprinkled with devolved political fairy dust. So do these roles […]
The numbers are not in dispute, whatever the spin. Andy Burnham took Makerfield with 54.8% of the vote and a majority of 9,231, on a turnout of 58.7%, the highest at any parliamentary by-election in almost seven years. Labour’s lead over Reform, 13 points at the general election, widened to 20. A seat Reform UK […]
Looking For Growth has launched the Emergency Energy Bill – a ready-made piece of legislation that the Government should pass tomorrow. But it won’t. Labour won’t take the radical action necessary to get bills down unless we force them to. This Government, just like many of its predecessors over the last thirty years, has prioritised […]
When John Healey resigned as Defence Secretary last week, there was widespread praise for his principled stand. The financial settlement contained in the final draft of the Defence Investment Plan, believed to offer the Ministry of Defence an additional £10 billion or so over the next four years, was not even close to the resources […]
Can you imagine anything worse than a foreign company whose software saved lives, cut NHS waiting lists, put more police on the beat and reduced crime? It’s appalling, isn’t it? No British government or public sector body should have any dealings with such a company. Obviously. Much better to let patients die, cut police jobs […]
Britain’s national debt is on course for £3 trillion this year. Servicing it costs £30 billion a year at 1% interest and £150 billion at 5%, near where long-dated gilts have recently been trading. That’s a number so big it almost becomes meaningless. So, let’s try another way: it’s about the yearly gross pay of […]
Andy Burnham has one prescription, and he means to fill it, whatever the patient walks in with. The man with the broken arm, the woman with chest pains, the child with a fever: each leaves the surgery with the same pad of repeat scripts, which call for higher taxes on the rich, more generous benefits […]
Keir Starmer says he is fighting to stay. The problem is that is all he is doing. Last week’s King’s Speech was written to save his skin, not to fix anything. Take the spiralling welfare bill, which even his own Chancellor recently admitted desperately needs gripping. But there was no Welfare Bill in the King’s […]
