Poverty isn’t just a Northern issue Andy.

[SummerSummerSummertime]

Caught the Prime Minister on a podcast this week and he’s really stuck on a constant, hyper-focus on the North. Ok we get it, things are bad up there (former industrial heartlands etc) but as PM for the whole country, he needs to remember that hardship doesn't stop at a regional border if he wants to maintain national support.
Severe deprivation is happening right across the country, not just in northern heartlands:

London: The capital holds some of the highest actual poverty rates once astronomical housing costs are factored in.

Coastal Communities: Southern seaside towns face deep, hidden deprivation, low wages, and crumbling infrastructure.

The South & Midlands: High living expenses, struggling high streets, and insecure work hit low-income families everywhere.

He also claimed on the podcast that past governments just saw the North as "different" and forgot about it. But by constantly banging on about the North, isn't he just fuelling that exact same fire?
If he keeps treating the North as a special case, he's actively reinforcing a regional divide. Moving focus or power from Whitehall to Manchester might sound great on a podcast, but it does absolutely nothing for a struggling family in a southern coastal town who feel just as invisible to this new government as they did to the last one.
Poverty is a national crisis, not a regional identity.

If Andy wants to keep broad support, his messaging needs to acknowledge and support struggling communities everywhere.

This is just hilarious. You genuinely think the PM of the UK is rocking up to busy train stations and getting trains from London to Manchester and back? Do you have any idea about the security risks that would involve? His self-indulgent little project to create a home office in Manchester has already cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds unnecessarily and this will only increase with his private jet flights back and forth continuing, as well as the security required for various ministers and civil servants to travel back and forth pointlessly. That was his priority, getting his home office set up. Not putting forward a credible industrial strategy, tax reform, trade policies, reallignment of existing spending to productive areas like infrastructure and education to generate growth. Nope. Reduced bus fares for the plebs and private jet flights for Andy so he has a quick commute back home for the weekend, that’s what the country desperately needs. It’s laughable and insulting to us all and those lapping it up are deluded.

You do know all MPs spend Fridays in their constituencies? It’s not a special Burnham thing. So one minute you’re saying he can’t use the train because security and the next you’re decrying him for flying. Make up your mind.

As I said in my own post, you can of course point to key policy failures. But none of that adds up to an abysmal record.

Greater Manchester has grown its productivity at six times the national average. The money for the Clean Air Zone wasn’t wasted, it was legally re-purposed to pay for other things and Greater Manchester is still on track to reach carbon-neutrality over a decade ahead of the rest of the UK. Greater Manchester police came out of special measures in record time. There have been major regeneration projects in multiple boroughs beyond the city centre. People in Greater Manchester are not stupid, and a Mayor who was abysmal simply would not be re-elected 3 times on over 60 percent of the vote each time.

I am not going to carry on arguing with you, because you clearly have a strong, personal antipathy to Andy Burnham but thankfully most people in the country don’t share that view and are open minded and prepared to judge him on what he actually does rather than slightly hysterical pre-conceived ideas.

Yes, he’s only flown there once so far (at a cost to us all of £30k) because he only got appointed two weeks before he decided to take a holiday from the job, and it took him a couple of weeks to get his home office in Manchester set up so he could fly up by private jet and open it. Your contention that he’ll be travelling back and forth by train is ludicrous for obvious security reasons.

More whataboutery. We haven’t had a decent PM in many decades.

That doesn’t mean that this one is a credible leader: someone who has a track record of failure in every role he has occupied and no achievements in any of them to speak of; who is already creating more social division, has put forward no credible economic prospectus; who is already wasting enormous amounts of taxpayer money on personal vanity projects; who has demonstrated economic illiteracy already as well as a fundamental disrespect for democratic process.

Simultaneously he’s told us that he will “stick to the Labour manifesto” - you remember the one where we were promised no tax rises on working people yet apparently freezing tax thresholds for the entire Parliament which is by definition a very significant tax rise doesn’t count; the one that promised no rise in national insurance but apparently raising employer NI depressing wages and therefore increasing unemployment doesn’t count, or applying NI to pension contributions - who do they think is making those if not “working people”?; the one that promised a Labour Government would “tread lightly on our lives yet has done quite the opposite…

…and yet, Mr Burnham is also claiming that he will implement a “reset” and “fundamental change of direction” (with no mandate from the UK electorate for such a change, and apparently no intention to seek one).

So which is it? Is he implementing what people voted for in the general election that he didn’t stand in, or is he “changing direction” and “reseting” things, without any democratic mandate to do so?

The gaslighting of the public in only two weeks in office, and devisive rhetoric doesn’t bode well at all. When he actually has to behave like an adult and decide with his chancellor what he will fund and how for the budget in the autumn, some birds may come home to roost and the slow of thinking may stop their sycophantic love in about “Andy”.

I don’t care how useless the previous PMs were, we all know that already: the evidence is all around us. The priority now has to be finding somebody competent to lead the country before the economic decline is irreversible and unfortunately there is no evidence at all the Mr Burnham is capable of fulfilling such a role and, sadly, there is plenty of available evidence that he isn’t.

If they want to judge him on what he does they can look at his record over his career.

Answer: not much of any use, and often a lot of harm.

Jesus Christ: he’s not just an MP anymore. He’s the PM! No, that doesn’t mean he can set up an office near his home costing the taxpayer billions of unnecessary cost so that he can work from home on Fridays. PMs are often required to be outside their constituencies, often in other countries entirely if they are doing their job properly.

I stand corrected. But hard to keep up with who is who. Partly I think because the whole concept has been written on the back of a crisp packet, targets and outcomes are not clearly articulated, success criteria are therefore non existent and senior roles so loosely defined that there is likely to be an overlap of responsibility and a consequent lack of accountability.

I think the only certainty is that the entire circus will cost far more financially than predicted and the outcomes will fall short of the expectations that are being raised.

It won't have been a crisp packet. The only thing Burnham has given clarity on is his preference for pork scratchings.

And dismissal of anything or anyone who happens to be to the south of Stoke-on-Trent.

This is madness. You go for the childish nickname - I can’t bring myself to type it - because he has flown once and you THINK he might do it again. Posters tell you lots of MPs travel by train, loads of minsters travel by train to the NW, NE and SW - all over the country in fact. But you don’t believe this cos security.
As with much of what you type a tiny bit of research would stop you looking like a tit. Gordon Brown frequently travelled by train as PM, as does Angel Rayner. There is a very long list of MPs and minsters who travel by train. In fact train from central London to Manchester is probably easier than flying.
Your inability to get basic factual information correct devalues all your posts, because you keep getting things wrong.

Incidentally, the PM who didn’t travel by train was Rishi Sunak.

Again, a totally irrelevant rant about me pointing out that he has spent £30k on a completely unnecessary private jet flight to an office near his house that didn’t need to exist so that he could have what he said was “the best day of his life” 🙄 with much more of these unnecessary expenses that add zero value for the country to come as a result of this vanity project and that - according to the Government itself - having a separate “home office” for the PM in Manchester will cost the UK taxpayer billions of pounds in unnecessary expenses which will do nothing whatsoever to raise growth or living standards for UK citizens.

These are facts.

of course PMs sometimes have to take private jets to places. They don’t need to take completely unnecessary flights to an outpost they created for no discernable benefit to anybody but themselves and charge the taxpayer for it.

Why don’t you try engaging with any of the other points I’ve made about his horrendous track record, disingenuousness, stated intention to implement policies without any mandate, pretence simultaneously that he’ll stick to the mandate of the election in which he didn’t stand when this is incompatible with his other pledges that aren’t part of that mandate, the fundamentally undemocratic nature of what he has proposed regarding his fake idea of devolution which is nothing of the sort and yet more redistribution in disguise which will reduce tax revenue and growth and is fundamentally undemocratic as well (quite an achievement!), the lack of any credible economic or fiscal plan or industrial strategy that will actually raise living standards and his deliberate avoidance of any scrutiny and refusal to answer questions from the press or the electorate on his intentions, his record of dishonesty and changing what he is saying depending on the audience at the time, his lack of any articulated tax or trade or industrial policy (I suppose, in a democracy, it’s none of our business until he feels like telling us?), his total ignorance of economics demonstrated many times over already, his hypocrisy over issues which he had a hand in creating/ perpetuating, the fact he has managed to alienate large swathes of the country with his “professional northerner” act after only two weeks of allegedly doing the job (mainly spent setting up his ruinously expensive home working arrangements) before swanning off on holiday… etc.?

You appear to have nothing of substance to say about any of that, predictably. All that has been posted from his luvvies is predictable whataboutery about previous failed PMs rather than any credible positives about Burnham. Quelle surprise.

I’m not engaging with your facts because many posters have and you reply with spurious nonsense about PMs not being able to travel by train because of security - it’s ludicrous.
A brief read of your post, and you are saying an office in Manchester will cost “billions”. This. Is. Not.True.
I can’t engage with level of stupidity. That quote about arguing with pidgins springs to mind.

Hilarious. Since he came to office the Government and civil service has confirmed publicly that his vanity project to have an office in Manchester will cost taxpayers billions of pounds. It’s hardly something I have invented: they confirmed this themselves.

Yes, everyone can see you’re unwilling to engage with the facts. However, I’m not sure how you expect anybody to attribute any credibility to your views when you admit that you refuse to do so.

If you’d like to answer any of the points raised in my previous post highlighting the serious issues to you, go ahead. I expect, however, there will be tumbleweed.

Where did you see billions -I saw something around it being anywhere from 15m - 100m.
I mean lots of initiatives cost money and it’s no shock that the civil service don’t want to change - it’s not in their interest to do things differently

He’s still a constituency MP. That’s an intrinsic part of doing his job properly. Major was my MP, he held surgeries on Fridays when he was foreign secretary, chancellor and PM.

I’m also not sure what a “pidgin” is. Presumably it’s something you find “oooop narth”.

He didn’t take £30k flights to get there and set up a separate office pretending it was Downing Street at a cost of billions to the taxpayer though, did he? He was actually one of the few PMs we’ve had who was a decent human being with some integrity.

The costs of No 10 north are not yet known, there’s an outstanding FoI request at the Treasury. If it’s billions, I’ll eat my hat.

People in Manchester judged him on what he achieved, and that judgement was resounding support - 3 election victories, with over 60 percent of the vote each time - no mean feat in such a large, diverse city region.

Things Mancunians judged to be “of use”include: driving economic growth that outpaced the national average; major regeneration projects in towns like Stockport, Oldham and Wigan; launching the Mbacc to improve vocational and skills based training in the region; bringing the buses back into public control and capping fares; leading the city with dignity and compassion following the Manchester arena bombing.

There is a legitimate, interesting discussion to be had about whether he can build on that record for the country as a whole. My personal opinion is that he is a politician of extraordinary oratory skill, with a fairly unique ability to communicate with the electorate, and so I think he has at least a fighting chance. And all the polling suggests the majority of the electorate want to see him succeed.

None of your posts suggest you’re actually interested in engaging in a constructive discussion though, so I’ll leave it there.

Ok then.

I suppose the Civil Service lied about the cost of setting up a separate site with security (physical and cyber) and the monitoring of that which now has to take place around data transfers and of moving Civil Servants and Ministers up and down with security, setting up separate security staff and new protocols and paying for all the unnecessary accommodation there for as long as this pointless vanity project continues. He spent £500m on

One would think the PM of a country in freefall evonomically would have better things to do than splurge taxpayer money on totally unnecessary wastes of money like a “Number 10 North” logo. Number 10 of what? North of what?

It’s pathetic, as is the fact that all his luvvies want to do is defend this totally pointless was of our tax money rather than answer any of the questions about why - against all evidence - they believe he is capable of being a decent PM.

And there it is. You can cherry pick and inflate statistics in order to pretend you’re engaging in a debate all you like, but this is what it boils down to: pure old fashioned, classist resentment at someone who speaks with a regional accent daring to put forward their vision for a more equal country.

Where did you get that figure from? I’ve searched high and low for one - there’s nothing apart from the pending FoI request. Please could you link to your source?

There is a lot of poverty and deprivation in London and as a PP stated, horrendous housing costs. This thread reminds me that I was once visiting family in Liverpool and their neighbour refused to believe that there are council estates in London. (I grew up on one of the most notorious).
The streets are not paved with gold.

It can't possibly cost billions. All they have done is put up a hastily printed sign in a corner of a rented office. They'll lose interest in the whole idea before the desks arrive.