When your own adviser is calling you out in public as reckless and negligent, it’s time to listen. But Andy Burnham won’t. We’re heading for disaster.
Andy Burnham’s economic plan has been savaged by his own adviser (Image: Getty)
As PM, you expect the opposition to criticise you. You expect backbenchers to moan, newspaper critics to rant and the public to express their displeasure. What you don’t expect is the man you called in to give you economic advice turning round and warning that you’re about to give the nation an economic “heart attack”. But that is exactly what Burnham’s own adviser Andy Haldane has just said, in an article in The Independent. It follows a similar warning by the same man in the Financial Times a few weeks ago. Burnham must have driven him nuts
Haldane is a man to be respected. He was chief economist at the Bank of England, and the only one to break with the herd mentality that’s run riot under BoE governor Andrew Bailey. He’s now president of the British Chambers of Commerce and until recently, one of three wise men advising Burnham on his economic plans. He was offered a formal Number 10 role, but turned it down. Very wise. A second, Lord Jim O’Neill, formerly of Goldman Sachs, has also turned on the PM. The third is wisely keeping his head down.
It’s a terrible look, isn’t it? Burnham appoints three friendly experts to advise him on how to revive the UK economy, and two of them are savaging his plans in public. And today came the most savage attack of all. Haldane said the PM’s handling of the British economy is so “reckless” that he would be struck off for negligence if he were a medical doctor. Haldane warned that Burnham’s failure to reduce Britain’s borrowing costs in the Budget could trigger an economic “heart attack”. Not a bad cough, bout of flu or broken toenail, but a heart attack. Pretty extreme. But these are extreme times.
Haldane says Britain’s finances are “on a knife-edge”, with most of the lights on the fiscal dashboard flashing red. He also delivered the ultimate insult by comparing Burnham’s approach to Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget, warning that his policies could cause similar havoc and “swamp the poor”.
He dismissed the idea that the Government’s plans were somehow “prudent nor progressive”. Britain’s fiscal position, he warned, was more precarious than at any time in the past half-century.
Ahead of the Budget, Haldane urged Burnham and Chancellor John Healey to shun tax hikes and balance the books, but of course they didn’t listen. Instead, they took the easy option and ran down our fiscal reserves, rather than restoring them. The Government needed to find between £30billion and £40billion, he argued, but ducked all the difficult decisions in Healey’s so-called “do no harm” Budget.
Continuing the medical analogy, Haldane said Britain’s financial blood pressure was sky-high and requires serious intervention. Instead, Burnham’s Government had offered “homeopathic remedies”, including higher deficits, debts, taxes and spending. “A doctor prescribing this course of treatment would probably be struck off,” he concluded.
It’s absolutely brutal. And it’s everything I’ve been screaming about for the last two-and-a-half years, under both Rachel Reeves and now John Healey. But will Burnham listen? Of course not. He’s got to keep the backbenches happy and his poll ratings high by pretending we’re on the mend, when we’re not.
We’re on the sick list, and Burnham is administering all the wrong medicine. This can only end one way.