Andy Burnham

[Hurrydash]

He has a plan. So great to know.
Be even better to know what it is.
Is it cunning?
Does it involve turnips?
Will he present time team when Labour is annihilated in 2029?
Wow the suspense😀

Lets just hope he promotes Mahmood to Chancellor to help keep some sense in the team.

Why not a national priority? It costs us all a fortune in emergency services.

I was glad he referenced high rent costs as being a primary driver of rising welfare costs.

No, not at all. I’m hoping we will get the change we need. I was just a bit surprised by it.

I am a bit of a (probably short term) fan of his. Given the way politics works, I suspect that I will be disillusioned by Christmas!

What I like about him is that he genuinely seems to want to do the job of a Prime Minister, not just be PM. The last few PMs appear to have run out of ideas and interest as soon as they were appointed.

I think he is right about nationalising some utilities, house building and making taxes more efficient. a housing tax to replace the dreadful combination of council taxes and stamp duty, CGT at your top rate of tax (as long as it is indexed) are both eminently sensible ideas and I doubt you will find many economists disagreeing with him on it.

I also like having a regional policy. The UK’s wealth does need to diversify from London and the SE.

He does seem to want to tax the truly wealthy more (which given how much less tax they pay now as a %) which is laudable in ambition but very hard to do without them either avoiding it or a genuine loss of wealth creators.

Of course, where he will fail as a left winger is in tackling the spending end of the equation. There are too many not contributing to society and the pension triple lock is absolutely crazy given our finances.

But he isn’t truly left wing like Corbyn was. He is still left of centre. He has no desire to bring back punitive taxation or to actually increase the total tax take by more than a percentage or two.

I wish him the best and hope he won’t be dragged into ineffectualness by trying to please all the people all the time. I also hope him tacking left will allow Badenoch to go more for the centre. We need to get back to having an effective opposition (not Reform).

PMs issue instructions on all sorts of things - then different departments come back with policy proposals.

Agree. His first instruction is something almost impossible to achieve, and heavily relied on local services and adult social care, which is the responsibility of local authorities. His first instruction isn't even something he can do. Reforming adult and elderly care, yes, even though that's difficult. What about reforming the tax system? He's done politics 101 and made a statement no one can disagree with with no substance behind how he is going to do it with no money. He's another Boris Johnson. His only ambition was to be PM. No thought to what he would do after that.

Obviously. But the Labour Party is aligned with my core beliefs, and the Reform Party isn’t. So I have no problem in agreeing that Labour’s plan is better.

It is almost impossible to achieve. But at least he seeks to try to do so. Better that than giving up because something is hard to do.

SPADs are the key. I wonder who is on his advisory team. The SPAD for Starmer had to leg it pdq. Hmm.

Perhaps he could do something about council housing being occupied by people that don’t work, rather than just build more houses. Tbh I don’t understand why we have a significant swathe of unemployed somalians living in free housing, in the UK. Could someone explain why they aren’t just sent home?

As soon as I heard that he’s closely aligned to Ed Milliband, it put me right off him. Apparently he has a plan to help us all with the cost of living. I just know it will be a load of bollocks and his plan will just involve taxing working people even more. It’s the Labour way.

If only

He makes me feel very optimistic. I’ve not felt like that about a politician for a very long time.

I am keeping an open mind for now.

I am worried about the weight of expectations that are on him. He isn't the Messiah, he doesn't have any magic wands and he will be inheriting an incredibly challenging in-tray. There is no money to spend either. It would be incredibly easy for anyone in his shoes to fail in this scenario. Indeed, it seems almost impossible for anyone to succeed at the pace and to the extent that the electorate may be expecting.

But I am an optimist and I hope that he can rise to the challenge and do enough to keep people on board/give them some hope that things will get better.

I believe that Burnham has the very best of intentions. He wants to drive radical change to make people's lives better. And I think he is at least as competent as any of the other PMs that we have had in recent years. But the job of governing isn't easy and I worry that people's expectations are unrealistic.

I remember hearing an elderly chap in a cafe about a week after Starmer's election victory, loudly bemoaning the fact that he had voted for change and yet nothing had actually changed. It made me realise that, to some extent, we may have become ungovernable.

Being PM is such a thankless task. I don't envy Burnham as he starts to realise the sheer enormity of the mountain that he has to climb and the lack of grace that will be afforded to him if he doesn't start delivering immediately.

I still haven’t quite got over the coup type method we’ve just seen. I am a former Labour voter and hope that he will bring me back through his policies.

I like the focus on housing as the link between that and the welfare cost of housing is clear. I agree with more state control on essential public services. I hope he will be pragmatic regarding oil and gas licensing as long as we USE oil and gas the emissions and contribution to climate change happen wherever it is e tracked from. I really hope that he will do as well as he hopes and especially that his parliamentary colleagues don’t turn against him at the first disagreement.

Also - will be disappointed if he changes Dan Jarvis and Shabana Mahmood. It’s ridiculous the ministerial turnarounds without time to actually achieve anything.

So many of Thatchers policies showing themselves up for how terrible many of us of that era knew at the time. Can’t turn the clock back but with such a huge majority, he had the opportunity to take decisive steps.

Quite grudgingly because of the way it was done, I do too.

Having a 10-year plan seems optimistic given how long recent Prime Ministers have been in office!

Winter is coming.

I’m interested to hear his approach to social care. He has first hand experience of this in his own family. Hoping for a sensible and fair approach to this issue.

Hmm

How was Burnham becoming leader any more of a coup than any other MP taking over?

You are seriously asking that!?

Looks like it. I am too.

A 10 year plan sounds sensible, realistic rather than everything will be brilliant tomorrow.

Starmers acceptance speech was based on a decade of renewal and changing politics blah blah blah.