Our new PM is going flat out to ruin his honeymoon with voters.
Andy Burnham just made his biggest U-turn yet. More could follow (Image: Getty)
Andy Burnham may be a big upgrade on predecessor Keir Starmer in front of the cameras. Behind the scenes, he’s proving just as useless. Ultimately, it’s his decision-making that matters and so far, it’s looking second rate. Especially on prison releases. Going on holiday after just 15 days in the job was bad enough. Telling a furious nation as he packed his bags that he’d done everything possible to keep murderers, rapists and police killers inside was a disaster. Because he hadn’t.
Perhaps his foreign jolly was time well spent. It gave Burnham a chance to reflect. And remember that he was actually the prime minister. Now he’s discovered there’s a lot more he can do to keep the most serious offenders in prison, including the killers of PC Harper. That’s after after previously claiming he had “pushed the very limits”. Better late than never. But if his empathy with voters was as good as we’ve been told, he’d have got a grip much earlier.
Any PM who allows two men convicted of the manslaughter of PC Andrew Harper to be released early doesn’t get voters. The nation’s hearts have gone out to betrayed widow Lissie Harper. Yet Burnham has been hiding behind dry legal arguments, like Keir Starmer after too many porky scratchings.
Burnham is PM. With a massive majority. He can change the law if he likes. Prison spaces can be found if he puts his weight behind it. People on remand could be electronically monitored. There are ways. If Burnham caves every time civil servants tell him something is a bit tricky, he won’t do a thing. He has to start banging tables.
Now he’s done a screeching U-turn. His first biggie. There’ll be a lot more if he doesn’t assert himself.
Keir Starmer quickly became famed for his U-turns. His hapless chancellor Rachel Reeves even more so. I called her the Queen of the U-turn. Burnham should stick to being King of the North.
But he’s sending mixed messages on compensation for WASPI women, who were caught out by increases to the state pension age. He may have raised hopes too high with his “everyday fixes” programme to ease the cost-of-living crisis. If the Iran war drags on and energy prices climb, he’ll be helpless.
On the boats, he claims his “plan is working” but so far all he’s done is throw cash at idle French cops while ordering the middle classes to share the burden of housing asylum seekers. Which will only remind more people that the government has lost control of our borders.
Burnham has now explicitly committed to higher defence spending, but defence secretary Wes Streeting has refused to promise hit a target of spending 3% of GDP by 2030. The PM also burnished his economic credentials by revealing the brilliant minds he’d lined up to guide his policy. Unfortunately, they’re so brilliant they don’t seem to want to be publicly associated with him.
He also needs to do a few U-turns on tax ahead of the Budget. Months of speculation about a land tax, 50% income tax and new wealth tax will crush investment and confidence.
If Burnham’s weak handling of the PC Harper case is a sign of things to come, he’ll soon be bounced around even more than Starmer and Reeves. And his honeymoon will last about as long as theirs did.