Andy Burnham proves he’s nothing more than Starmer 2.0 with £35billion bill

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said last week that government debt is on an “unsustainable and ever rising path”. Britain needs to cut spending by £120billion a year, and yet PM-in-waiting Andy Burnham is apparently happy to waste £35billion giving away our Chagos Islands base, according to senior foreign office sources. Talk about Starmer 2.0. The alarming OBR forecast came as Burnham and his team are drawing up their first budget for the autumn. The tax and spending watchdog made it clear the Labour government is on a dangerous path, committing itself to excessive public expenditure while our national debt pile is close to £3trillion – some 95% of our total gross domestic product.

This could be pushed to 300% of GDP within 50 years if government expenditure continues on its current trajectory with benefits, pensions and the NHS budget spiralling even more out of control. The public sector gravy train cannot go rattling on into oblivion. But to avoid the country going bust, any PM needs to impose spending cuts or tax rises of £120billion.

Just as this grim news was presented to the government, senior foreign office officials indicated that Burnham was happy to carry on with Starmer’s policy of giving away our Chagos Islands military base and paying through the nose for the privilege of doing so.

Not only did this irritate the hell out of Donald Trump, but it symbolised a weird anti-imperial project aimed at appeasing the most anti-British sentiments of Attorney General Lord Hermer and other left-wing lawyers.

As the project seemed to thankfully falter under the pressure of American disapproval, it would have been the simplest thing to shelve it under Burnham’s new regime, expressing a common sense wish to get beyond such costly, vainglorious gestures. It would certainly save billions of taxpayers’ pounds that could be redirected to more urgent concerns and win some early brownie points in the White House.

But, worryingly, the latest indications are that Burnham wants to press ahead with the whole unnecessary giveaway of British sovereign territory to Mauritius, an ally of China and Iran. If this proves to be so, it marks out Burnham as someone keen to shore up his support within Labour ranks at any cost. Talk about putting party before country.

Burnham has already strangely apologised for Starmer’s response to the Hamas-Israel war, saying he would have introduced tougher sanctions more quickly on the Jewish nation while paying lip service to October 7. Again, the purpose of this is to endear him to the hard-Left of the party, whatever the consequences for our relationship with Israel, our top security ally in the region.

It shows that despite having a huge majority in parliament, Burnham, like Starmer, fears his backbenchers. Yet again, we can expect the parliamentary tail to be wagging the Prime Ministerial dog. Not only does this infuriate key international players such as America and Israel, but it indicates a woeful misunderstanding of the economic peril we face.

We can ill afford to give away hard-earned taxpayers’ money to an unfriendly foreign regime when so many more demands face us closer to home.

And expecting taxpayers to dig us out of this hole is not advisable, says the OBR. “Using tax over the long term as your only lever to address the fiscal sustainability pressures that we identify is likely to create ever-increasing economic distortions and costs,” said OBR official Tom Josephs.

As Burnham’s favourite solution is taxing the rich, he was warned this could “negatively impact investment and because capital is generally much more internationally mobile than labour, the yield generated from higher capital taxes is more uncertain”.

In simple terms, tax the rich and they will leave. Just last year, some 16,500 millionaires departed our shores, taking an estimated £70billion that could have been invested in our nation and its businesses. This will only get worse if Burnham insists on sucking up to socialists within his party.

Burnham is too weak, too keen to ingratiate himself to his MPs, to make any of the hard choices needed to reverse our national decline. Even when presented with an easy win by ditching the calamitous Chagos deal, he fluffs it. If this is a sign of the direction of travel for Burnham as our PM, it’ll make the Starmer years seem like the calm before the storm.