Burnham calls for honesty then sticks his head in the sand
Andy Burnham declared this week that “change begins with honesty.” My ears pricked up. Was our new Prime Minister about to deliver some hard truths? Of course he wasn’t. The honesty Burnham had in mind was very much “his truth” rather than “the truth.” We were told that all the country’s problems were down to Thatcher and Brexit. In Burnham’s mind the former haunts us while the latter shattered our future.
I suppose recollections – like opinions – may vary, but watching his first outing at PMQs yesterday it was hard not to notice a contradiction. In tone and approach, Burnham likes to come across as a reasonable guy, more interested in “problem solving than point scoring.” As Kemi Badenoch discovered, this makes it hard to land a blow. Every time she went in with her blade he simply danced out of the way and offered a courtly bow. How infuriating! Here is a man so deeply ideological that his sole purpose in taking power was to “end 40 years of neoliberalism” and he won’t even argue about it.
But no amount of charm can hide the fact that he isn’t being honest. He can talk about hope, optimism and good growth as much as he likes but it makes him look as if he hasn’t noticed the interest rate hike warnings, the size of our debt or the cost of servicing it. He pays lip service to fiscal credibility then tells his Chancellor to bend the fiscal rules to accommodate more borrowing.
The bond market can see what Burnham refuses to acknowledge
He is more interested in reorganising local government and hosting devolution summits in Number Ten North than he is in confronting core economic truths.
We cannot afford our current commitments – whether that’s the triple lock on the state pension, unfunded public sector pension liabilities or the current trajectory of NHS spending – and we certainly can’t afford to fund his ideological crusade for more “public control” of water, energy, transport and housing. He continued to tell MPs yesterday that his plan for growth was “credible” but the bond market can see what he refuses to acknowledge: that credibility requires more than rhetoric and ambition. It requires discipline, details and – most of all – honesty.
My real worry is that when he’s finally forced to level with the public his only answer will be tax hikes, and that way ruination lies.