𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Burnham has promised £442million to tackle rough sleeping, £60million for free 24-hour bus travel for disabled people and £2billion for zero-emission buses in the West Midlands. He’s also lined up a £39billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme. His proposed National Care Service could cost up to £18billion a year. Parliament hasn’t even reopened yet and he’s spending freely, in a way that’s worryingly similar to Starmer and Reeves.

Almost the first thing Starmer’s government did after winning power was hand public-sector workers a 5.5% pay rise costing £10billion. It also bought off rail strikes with an inflation-busting pay deal, backdated to April 2022. Under the “no-strings” package, Labour ditched Tory demands for an end to generous working practices. Train drivers retained the right to restart their lunch break if spoken to by a manager. Life in the public sector, eh?

No sooner had they banked that than militant unions started threatening more strikes. They know a soft touch when they see one. They’ll be rubbing their hands at the sight of Andy Burnham.

She also fought off pressure from the left to hike windfall taxes on banks. Healey is reportedly looking at this too. British banks already pay among the highest taxes in the world at nearly 47%, according to UK Finance. This could destroy jobs and investment in the key financial services sector.

It also sends a terrible signal to the private sector: make a profit and we will punish you for it. There’s talk of hiking windfall taxes on oil and gas firms too, even as explorers exit the North Sea faced with a staggering marginal tax rate of 78%.

Burnham says he doesn’t want to target “wealth creators”. Starmer and Reeves made similar promises before the election. Look how that ended. They also completely failed to cut a penny of welfare. So what’s Burnham doing? Pushing reform into next year. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. He’ll cost us even more.