𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

We now know exactly what kind of government Andy Burnham is running: a classic Labour government that wants to spend more, tax more, and send the bill to working people.

It’s not just me saying it. On Monday evening, Burnham’s adviser Andy Haldane, former chief economist of the Bank of England and now President of the British Chambers of Commerce said that Burnham was running ‘a traditional tax and spend socialist government with better TikTok videos.’

Express readers know a country cannot TikTok its way out of bond market crisis. But that is where we are. In the past few weeks, government borrowing costs have surged to their highest levels in decades.

And the result? Inflation is up, unemployment is up, and the impact will land on working people and businesses.

Meanwhile Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey are gearing up to raise taxes again at the budget.

When the sums do not add up, it is always taxpayers who are expected to make up the difference. Businesses are asked for more. Families are asked for more. Mortgage rates are climbing. And still the Government cannot bring spending under control.

Hard-working taxpayers are not an endlessly rechargeable credit card for politicians who cannot say no.

The worst part of this is that we have been here before.

Andy Burnham seems strangely nostalgic for an economic era that many Express readers will remember rather less fondly.

In his return to the Commons, Burnham moaned that Britain had been going down the wrong path since the late 1970s.

For any reader too young to remember that era: it was the time of the Winter of Discontent, rubbish piled high in the streets, public services on strike. Even the gravediggers walked out.

Hardly a golden age worth reviving.

Not every economic problem begins in Downing Street. But governments do control how resilient they make their own finances.

They choose how much they spend, whether they reform welfare, and whether every problem requires another programme, another subsidy or another raid on the taxpayer.

Haldane described the Government’s fiscal ‘Achilles’ heel’ as its unwillingness or inability to reduce public spending.

His prescription was not another tax rise, but getting serious about spending, welfare and public-sector productivity.

And somebody always has to pay.

Labour talks about ‘government money’ as though Whitehall has discovered a magical cash machine beneath the Treasury.

Taxpayers know better – mainly because it is their money being spent.

It is the money earned by the person getting up at six in the morning, by the family wondering why every month feels tighter, and by businesses trying to hire, invest or keep the lights on.

That is what fiscal responsibility means.

It is not just saying the right words while producing another slick social media clip. It means taking difficult decisions – rewarding work, controlling spending and creating the conditions for the people and businesses who grow our economy to succeed.

And Conservatives should be prepared to make those decisions.

We will get spending under control. We will reform welfare. We will back the people who work, save, build businesses and create jobs.

We will not pretend that every difficult choice can be avoided by asking taxpayers for a little bit more.

Because eventually there is no more.

Andy Burnham needs to stop trying to please everyone with somebody else’s money and start taking some of those decisions himself.

It might make him less popular with some of those demanding ever more from the state.

But governing is about making tough decisions.

History has an unfortunate habit of repeating itself when politicians refuse to learn from it.

The last Labour Winter of Discontent came to symbolise a government that had lost control of events.

Nobody should want to recreate that.

So on this, Mr Haldane has identified something important.

Old-fashioned tax-and-spend socialism risks becoming an old-fashioned Labour Winter of Discontent but with an algorithm.

And if Andy Burnham chooses to call an early election, the British public will get to make their judgement in a spring reckoning for Labour.

Let’s see how well TikTok captures that.