To ask if you watched Andy Burnham’s bloody good speech?

[Househunt2026]

As in actually watched it and didn’t just doom scroll the commentary? It was bold and honest and pragmatic and actually made me hopeful that we have someone at the helm with a vision for a better tomorrow who has Britain’s best interests at heart.

The National Care Service is a masterstroke, paid for out of scrapping the triple lock and the very real savings of reducing NHS bills on A&E and hospital beds for elderly who should be in care but have nowhere to go.

Scrapping right to buy and increasing council control of housing, boosting the technical education track for young people, pushing renewables, nuclear and energy sovereignty, public control of key utilities for water to get bills down and reduce pollution, investing in people & getting them back to work, leasehold reform by Christmas and everyone’s energy bill will be reduced by fast tracking decoupling energy prices from global gas pricing and by having no VAT on energy bills by TOMORROW!

You can watch the whole thing here and be directly informed instead of getting your perspective filtered through all the bots and misinformation peddlers online m.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjTT_55Gi0

This is a genuinely interesting question. I absolutely agree with you that there are policy areas where success would ultimately improve the quality of life for everyone.

But as PP points out, the problem is, how to achieve those without negatively impacting somebody else on the way. So, for example Sadiq Khan has improved air quality in central London - but that’s come at the cost of being able to drive whatever car you want without paying a charge, and (understandably) not everyone’s happy with that sacrifice.

Everyone can agree on wanting lower crime rates - but how do you actually get them? One way is increased police presence and harsher sentences. But maintaining large police forces and prison populations is incredibly expensive for taxpayers. Another way is focussing on rehabilitation but again - not cheap - and how do you weigh the perpetrators’ rehabilitation against the victims’ desire for justice?

And so on and so on. There are no easy policy fixes - it’s all trade offs, there’s always a cost somewhere for someone. If it was easy, we’d all be politicians.

Probably easiest to find five policies that have benefited the majority (rather than everyone).

So, for example Sadiq Khan has improved air quality in central London - but that’s come at the cost of being able to drive whatever car you want without paying a charge, and (understandably) not everyone’s happy with that sacrifice.

This is excellent example, thank you.
Sadiq introduced prohibitive congestion charge but he simultaneously improved public transport and introduced day bus hopper. I'm a Londoner and I don't hear any complaints about congestion charge really. We should aim for policies like this.

As to renters rights - the solution is state social housing building, flats, not houses, but designed in such way that families can live there. With sufficient supply renters can vote with their feet. Employment rights - fire and rehire should've been banned, but the rest - look, we had sufficient protections, our labour legislation was strong enough without this, we never had US style firing practices here.

Probably easiest to find five policies that have benefited the majority (rather than everyone).

Depends on what you consider to be majority and their influence. If you want majority of welfare recipients to benefit at the cost of minority net contributors then you in for a nasty surprise.

You need to ensure that everyone benefits, but if you are to make a choice, then "put your own oxygen mask first before helping others". You need to save those ones first who then can save the rest.

I think this really is key to the kind of politics I would love to see in our country: politicians being honest (as I think Sadiq Khan was, to his credit) and being brave enough to say, “yes, this is a trade off: we’re sacrificing X but it’ll be worth it to get to Y”. And then the public can decide if that trade off is worth it to them or not.

It was @5128gap up thread who said “No policy will make things objectively better for everyone. The aim is to make things better for the majority.” I was wondering if she could give some examples.

The increase in NMW (pushes wages up the chain)
Day one rights to SSP.
Investment in the NHS
Childcare subsidies (benefits the economy)

Yes and no.

Public in general is prone to believing in nice speeches and skipping analysis.

The most popular idea which public loves is "tax the rich". You start saying "they will leave" - "oh, shut the door behind them". We're having these debates here on MN on a regular basis and MN is perceived to be a forum for better educated, more intelligent audience. Public then can't formulate which rich to tax, and what it's going to do when said rich truly stops.

So explaining the consequences is key. But current Labour MPs don't understand them themselves, so I'm not sure we're on a path to success.

That’s not the gotcha you think it is. Not wanting cash payments increased, or even wanting them reduced, is not the same as not wanting to help those in poverty. That is the binary thinking I’m talking about. Nobody need to have all the answers to recognise weaknesses in an idea, its implementation or its execution.

I personally believe less money should go into direct cash payments and more towards improving children’s outcomes through earlier intervention, support for parents and other practical help well before children reach school. I’m talking about being smarter about how funding is split and more intentional about what it needs to achieve. Moving the needle on one measure of poverty - household income - is not, by itself, an good enough measure of success. We should also be asking what has improved in children’s lives and their longer term prospects.

I don’t entirely disagree with this - but I’d absolutely add the caveat that you also see the exact same phenomenon the other way around. I’ve definitely seen people say, “cut benefits to get the debt down” or some variation thereof, and someone will patiently explain the basic economic principle of cost-shifting, giving evidence of how particular cuts are shown to push up the amount the tax payer ends up paying for other services, and the response will be, “so, what why should I pay for other people’s kids” etc. etc.

So, that kind of simplistic thinking happens on all sides. And I think there are intelligent - and less intelligent - politicians in all parties.

I do think an end to FPTP would help lessen this kind of simplistic, blinkered ideological thinking (on all sides) and so was v glad to hear Andy Burnham talk about electoral reform in his speech.

It wasn't intended as a gotcha. I'm here to chat and hear views not score points. I was genuinely interested in your view and hoped I'd get more than 'cut welfare'. Which I have, thank you.
I actually agree with you about the need to invest in early years, support and prevention. Our disagreement would probably be in that I think this needs to happen before reducing the money in people's pockets. Because this work is to gain long term change and in the meantime people still need to live. So I'd be running this in tandem with current benefits not instead of. Meaning a heavier investment now to save money in the future.

I’m intrigued why AB is backing electoral reform when Labour has historical always fought against it. A switch to PR, or equivalent, will end any chance of Labour securing a significant majority again and likely mean that we end up with coalitions as the norm.

Should I be?

You have had multiple flowers from me have you? Really?

Are you the only person allowed be sarcastic?

I know you don’t like Andy Burnham - and I respect that - and so I don’t want to sound glib, or like I’m trying to change your mind, and I’m sure you’ll think I’m hideously naive but I personally do think it’s because he’s a conviction politician who believes morally that every vote should count (even if it comes at a party political cost)

Which is entirely logical because he believes in consensus politics and cross party working in order to stop the endless cycle of an incoming government wanting to undo the achievements of its predecessor.

No. That's why I asked.

Well my curiosity was easily answered online. It certainly has nothing to do with consensus politics! But I see the strategy and I’ll back it if works. Hell of a gamble.

It's a bit less idealistic though.

Please try to read it, it's FT.com

Burnham’s wake-up call for the right

" Alongside Burnham’s policy platform is a shrewd political strategy, calculated to rebuild the electoral coalition on the left and then drive through voting reform in the explicit belief it will keep the right out. He is planning this when, for the first time in modern politics, there is a clear split on the right which could gift him a return to Downing Street.

Consider his headline announcements of what he would do after the general election. He wants to reopen Brexit, tantalising pro-Europeans by not ruling out rejoining the EU. No doubt he is sincere, but this and his commitment to electoral reform are also calculated to tempt Lib Dems, Greens and others to lend Labour their votes.

Burnham has not committed to a specific voting system, so it is impossible to judge the impact of that intended reform. Anything close to a proportional model would mostly throw up European-style coalitions, potentially bringing left and right extremists into governing blocs.

He has spoken favourably of the supplementary vote system under which he was elected Manchester mayor. This gives voters a second preference and requires the winner to secure 50 per cent support; in many instances it will still benefit the front-running parties.

But we can be sure of two things, whatever version of electoral reform goes forward. It will not be designed to disadvantage the left and it will entrench multi-party politics, cementing the split on the right and permanently diminishing the Conservatives."

I have ties to Wigan so I'm all about the Burnham.

We had the referendum on AV and that was soundly defeated. But that was back when Lab and Con opposed anything other than FPTP. If he keeps it vague, then maybe people will be tempted. I reckon he’ll offer to set up some sort of commission to look into it. AB can’t take a piss without setting up a commission first.

Just the one bouquet from you.

Sarcasm is fine, but do it openly. Passive aggressive use of the reaction emojis ends up in them getting taken away from everyone.

If you want to be rude, at least have the courage to do it publicly.

Perhaps he thinks it's fairer.

No, he thinks it will favour Labour and maybe he’s correct. The difficult thing to overcome is that we’ve used FPTP for centuries and I remember how skeptical people were at the last referendum. It opens to door to allegations of manipulation similar to gerrymandering. British people do seem to expect fair play (or at least the appearance of it).

So it is about consensus politics.

but this and his commitment to electoral reform are also calculated to tempt Lib Dems, Greens and others to lend Labour their votes.

Sort of. It’s not really the cross party dream you alluded to earlier. It’s a shrewd strategy to close out the right.