Sadly, a proper politician who rides into power Brutus-style, uncontested, then thanks Caesar for the opportunity...
He brings “hope and unity”. Are we supposed to forget the very recent divisive North v South rhetoric, or the contempt shown for workers earning over £45k? Elderly homeowners? People who send their children to private school?
Then comes the absolutely extraordinary contradiction on aspiration.
The burden of student loans. A hopeful pause...a solution at last? Burnham acknowledges how unfair they are and that young people need help... His solution? Easier access to yet more cheap debt to buy a home (we all know how that will go when interest rates rise) because not everyone has the “Bank of Mum and Dad”.
Yet almost in the same breath, he tells the moving story of his grandmother: a woman who worked hard, bought her own home and wanted to leave it to her children. He thought it was wrong that she had to sell it to pay for her care.
So which is it?
Was his grandmother's desire to pass the fruits of her work to her children admirable working-class aspiration, or is the Bank of Mum and Dad an inequality government needs to correct? I would genuinely love to know. And if she were alive today, would the fruits of the much respected and appreciated work ethic that allowed her to buy that same house be dismissed as “unearned wealth” and potentially subjected to further property taxes?
You can't celebrate your own grandmother's attempt to pass something on to her children, then treat other parents succeeding in doing exactly that as part of the problem. But maybe this is where the growing sense of entitlement to other people's assets comes from. The welfare state was created to provide a safety net, not to guarantee equal inheritances and equal retirements. His father missed out on the Bank of Mum and Dad, so AB and Labour have decided that those who have worked and saved to have more than the minimum can be the "Bank of Mum and Dad" for random strangers who want to avail themselves of free social care and any other free stuff that the government should be providing through normal taxation and growing the economy.
Working-class aspiration apparently deserves celebrating until it succeeds. Then you tax it until it knows its place.
And, of course, the rot is all down to the Conservatives.
It was also so refreshing and unexpected to hear that crude cuts were not the answer.🙄
All aboard the gravy train...
Plus ça change.