Kemi Badenoch: Britain is heading for a summer of chaos with Andy Burnham at the wheel | Politics | News
Britain is heading for a summer of chaos. There is war in Europe and the Middle East. Yet Keir Starmer is rushing out an underfunded Defence Investment Plan that the former Defence Secretary says will put our troops and our country at risk.
Our national debt is nearly 100% of GDP, and we are spending more on debt interest alone than we do on our defence. Yet there is no plan or political will in the Labour Party to cut spending.
Energy bills are forecast to spike in the autumn. Yet we are importing oil and gas from Norway – and even Russia! – while banning new drilling in the North Sea.
Difficult problems need solving, and difficult decisions must be made.
Yet the man who will be Prime Minister in a couple of weeks wants a 3-month summer holiday because he needs the time to work out what he thinks. Giving speeches in Manchester and refusing to take any questions is simply not good enough.
Andy Burnham clearly doesn’t have a plan, beyond telling Britain’s mayors to go and sort it out. But devolved mayors are not going to fund the Defence Investment Plan, cut welfare or bring down energy bills.
And moving No10 to the north isn’t going to fix the Government’s inability to get stuff done. Instead of treating the causes of our economic problems, Burnham is going to try to treat the symptoms.
Britain is in limbo, and our leader-in-waiting is allowing rumours to run riot. His closest advisers are openly pondering which taxes to hike. The car industry is in limbo again because they don’t know when petrol cars will be phased out.
Investors and businesses are terrified about what will happen if Ed Miliband becomes the Chancellor. Burnham has clearly learned nothing from the disastrous speculation before Rachel Reeves’s last Budget.
You remember the one – when she went on breakfast TV with an emergency press conference and frightening messages about Income Tax?
That speech, according to the former Chief Economist of the Bank of England, became “the single biggest reason growth flatlined” last year.
And, because Andy Burnham is not taking charge, it is happening again. The Conservatives do have a plan. We have done the hard work so we know we need to do five things to fix our economy – five things that will help every single person in this country.
- One, cut the cost of energy by scrapping the green taxes and backing drilling in the North Sea.
- Two, get people working, cut the welfare bill and scrap the job-destroying measures in Labour’s hated Employment’s Rights Act.
- Three, cut onerous taxes like stamp duty, business rates and the terrible Family Farm Tax.
- Four, slash burdensome red tape and regulation.
- And five, champion business – the risk takers, the job creators, the people who actually deliver economic growth.
If Burnham wants to avoid a summer of chaos, he should start by adopting our five-point plan himself. But he won’t. Instead, he’ll be named Prime Minister in two weeks’ time and avoid any scrutiny until September.
It’s not good enough. Andy Burnham needs to act like a leader, put an end to speculation, name his Cabinet, and come to Parliament and tell the country what he plans to do.
