Brace yourself – Andy Burnham’s speech will drag Britain back to the 70s

Brace yourself, because Andy Burnham may be about to deliver the worst conference speech in history.

It will be his first time at the podium in Liverpool, where he has not been scheming to upstage the man of the hour – this time, the man of the hour is him.

For years, Mr Burnham has been waiting for this moment, desperate to attain what he views as the ideal vision for the country.

Unfortunately for all of us at home, his ideal is one that runs roughshod over our democracy, punishes pensioners, forgets the countryside, and nationalises everything with a vowel in it.

Andy Burnham has spent most of his career scaling the greasy pole to get his time in the sun, to complete a ruinously socialist blueprint that will leave our country poorer, fractured and diminished.

First, he is expected to signal that he will unpick the EU referendum, in the chiefest and grandest of his betrayals.

Mr Burnham has never hidden his contempt for the democratic will of the British people exercised in the largest vote of its kind in our history.

He – like many in Labour – campaigned for Remain, shackled to Brussels and bent to Eurocrat rules. And again like many at his Cabinet table, when his side lost, he immediately commenced a rearguard action to undo the result.

Now he has his chance, and you can bet he will take it. Returning to the continent, cap in hand, will be a grotesque act of self-harm, wedding us to a bloc that will seek to extract its pound of flesh.

Likewise, rumours abound that he will end the state pension triple lock in its current form to pay for an as-yet-unstructured national care plan.

The electoral foolishness of this move aside, Sharon Graham of the Unite union is right to call such a slap in the face to pensioners “morally wrong”.

Many pensioners depend on the state pension to keep the lights on. Snatching it away from them now will cost Labour dear.

He will likewise continue the perilously foolish policy of taxing farms, leaving those who steward the land fearing for their futures.

Finally, he will seek to attain that triumph long desired by the Left: the nationalisation of energy, water, housing and much more.

Socialist politicians have long struggled with the idea of profit, or the economic reality that private ownership drives prosperity and growth.

Andy Burnham’s speech will lay out a series of reforms, for which he has no mandate, that will drag this country back to the 70s.

And we shall all be poorer for it.