Andy Burnham rode his luck all the way to Number 10. Now it’s turned with a vengeance.
Andy Burnham’s dream came true. At the worst possible time. (Image: Getty)
We’ve all heard the saying ‘Be careful what you wish for’. Andy Burnham dreamed of becoming PM for decades. He had two shots at the Labour leadership and fell short both times. This year, the Labour Party was so desperate to ditch Keir Starmer it chose to overlook shortcomings it had spotted before. Burnham finally got his chance. Turns out getting the job was the easy part. Now comes the nightmare.
Our new PM unleashed his affable charm over the summer. He toured the country, posted jolly videos and basked in victory. In return, we basked in him not being Keir Starmer. Now the hard bit begins. Britain appears to be stumbling towards a financial crisis. Yes, another one. To get through it, we need a leader prepared to make tough and unpopular decisions. In other words, anyone but Andy Burnham.
We’ve already spotted his fundamental character flaw. He wants to be liked. As character flaws go, it’s pretty harmless. But it’s just about the worst one a British Prime Minister could have right now. Because Burnham is going to have to do an awful lot of things that people won’t like. And he’s going to hate every single minute of it.
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We know what Burnham wants to do. He wants to make life better for ordinary people, ease the cost-of-living crisis, cut bus fares and electricity bills, get rough sleepers off the streets and sort out the social care fiasco so people can live their final years in dignity.
There’s a problem though. Fixing them will take the one thing we haven’t got. Money. Everything Burnham wants to do will cost billions, and he wants to do it at exactly the point when Britain is running out of cash. He wants to hike taxes too, but that risks killing what little growth we have left.
Instead, he may be forced to cut government spending, and that’s the very last thing that Burnham came into politics to do. The left will hate him for it, and the right won’t thank him.
The problem has been building for decades. Politicians of every stripe have ducked the need to rein in government spending. Even Tory George Osborne, the one chancellor who made a serious attempt, failed to balance the books. Britain has only managed that once this millennium, in 2000/01 when Gordon Brown was still following spending plans inherited from the Conservatives. Back then, our national debt then was less than 32% of GDP. Then Brown let rip. Today, it’s almost 95%.
Finally, it’s coming to a head. UK borrowing costs have just surged to a 30-year high as Donald Trump’s Iran war drives up oil and inflation, and soon interest rates too. This is a global crisis. Bond markets want evidence that governments are serious about controlling their debts – but especially ours (they’ve given up on the French). Yet all Burnham wants to do is spend more.
Things will turn nasty. Enemies of the state pension triple lock are taking advantage of the turmoil, and demanding the mechanism is scrapped. If Burnham listens, millions of pensioners will never forgive him. He can forget embarking on another jolly national walkabout. It won’t end well. There will be plenty more tough decisions like that.
In all those years of dreaming about becoming PM, this surely wasn’t how Burnham imagined his first few weeks. I have some sympathy for him. But I’ll reserve most of it for the rest of the country. Unless he gets a grip, reality will bite us all.