Has Andy Burnham ended up as PM somewhat under false pretences?

[Imdunfer]

Please note that this is from a left wing Labour supporting paper.

It turns out that the marvellous redevelopment of Manchester that was the central plank of his credibility to become PM was triggered by the fall of Mubarak in Egypt in 2011 and what were effectively, or previously close to, bribes set up by the then Tory government to retain our massive defence contracts with the Middle East.

The owners of Man City, recently found guilty of breaking well over 100 financial football rules, are heavily involved. UK developers were excluded from access to large development contracts. Man City was sold a deal including the naming rights to the stadium, owned by the council, for £750k a year when professional rights brokers estimate the market value to be between £10m and £15m a year for the name alone.

The question is, did a local Mayor with no experience outside politics and only a tiny amount of experience of cabinet roles, (3 jobs in 3 years), get to be Prime Minister without a challenge on the strength of the development of the centre of his city that he actually only had a small part in creating?

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/25/thats-the-way-the-city-works-how-the-uae-changed-the-face-of-andy-burnhams-manchester

Hi all

This is turning into a bit of a bunfight. Can we draw a line now, and allow the discussion to get back on track?

Wow!

I was deleted for pointing out a TAAT post?

My post had nothing controversial in it.

It was just pointing out some hypocrisy.

…And, back to the thread…

We do not need any more spending, the UK has £145 billion of completely unproductive working age welfare which could be largely redirected into desperately needed productive investment on R&D, infrastructure and modernising our overwhelmed public services.

We need to look elsewhere to understand what can be done:

• Australia provides welfare via heavily restricted debt cards that can only be spent on necessities and cannot purchase alcohol or cigarettes. Australia also immediately suspends various welfare payments if it detects you leaving the country
• Denmark mandates up to 37 hours per week of civic contribution or public work in exchange for cash benefits (particularly for those not meeting their stringent residency thresholds)
• New Zealand diverts 50% of cash benefits onto restricted payment cards for failing job-search rules and automatically cuts payments upon unnotified overseas travel

At the moment welfare is a lifestyle choice and the system is so widely abused by a population who have no incentive to not abuse it. There are no real consequences for fraud and you are rewarded for gaming the system.

How many prime ministers do you know of with business experience?
I know Jeremy Clarkson would go down a storm as prime minister amongst a couple of demographics but successful business men make far too much money to ever want to be bothered with running the country.

Rishi Sunak worked in investment banking for 10 years with 3 different companies. He was very successful. It's the sector responsible for a huge amount of the tax that goes into the treasury.

I hate it when people go into politics after studying PPE and have absolutely zero experience of anything outside politics. I would ban it if I could.

Denmark mandates up to 37 hours per week of civic contribution or public work in exchange for cash benefits (particularly for those not meeting their stringent residency thresholds)

Not just 'particularly', but only for immigrants, and then only those who have been unemployed for 3 to 4 years and don't meet language criteria. Not for the general population.

The Australian scheme was abolished and replaced with a voluntary scheme; most claimants get payments into their banks. So clearly the scheme didn't work.

The New Zealand card scheme only applies to those failing jobseeking requirements, not to everyone.

Accuracy matters.

Complicated card schemes imposing restrictions have been shown not to work - all they do is encourage the black market.

If you want people back in work (and we do) then going back to the tried and failed methods isn't the way. You need to look at countries which have had success - like the NEET scheme used in the Netherlands, and even that is now under pressure, which shows just how complex it is to reduce worklessness.

The main problem I have with the right is that they always propose the same tired old failed punitive solutions.

I'm not convinced investment bankers are the shining pinnacle of business acumen - they did give us the global banking crisis. I'd like to see more people who have held a wide range of jobs - people who have run small and medium enterprises, people from the professions, so doctors, teachers and the like, and also scientists. We need people who know the value of things as well as the cost.

In a previous role, we would immediately bin CV’s of PPE candidates…

For goodness sake.

Have you ever been in IB?

No. Are you going to explain to me that investment banks were NOT the drivers of the 2008 crisis? I'd be really interested to hear how you reach that conclusion.

Several Labour MPs from the Red Wall of constituencies in the north of England told The Telegraph that Mr Burnham must cut benefits or risk losing their seats to Reform UK at the next election.

‘The anger is among poorer people’
One senior MP said: “The anger is actually amongst poorer people on lower incomes. It’s a Red Wall seat situation rather than the leafy Surrey suburbs.
“People who are on relatively low incomes, who are struggling hard in the current circumstances, say: ‘I’ve worked hard all my life, I’ve never claimed a penny in benefits. They’re off down to the pub every night and they never go out to work.’”

David Smith, the Labour MP for North Northumberland, told The Telegraph: “We obviously need to reduce the overall total of the welfare bill, and that needs to begin during this parliament.

“We should be as ambitious as we can in reconfiguring our social security system. We need a Beveridge report for the 21st century.”

Denmark seems to have the best rate of success topping the charts for 15 years for EU for getting long-term unemployed back to work, not sure where it’s seen politically or punitive v good.

Because the weekly requirements, internship placements, and training courses are intense, strict, and mandatory, many jobseekers are highly motivated to aggressively search for and accept market-rate employment on their own just before the mandatory activation phase kicks in.

If a jobseeker refuses an activation offer or fails to show up to scheduled Job centre training sessions without a valid medical reason, their benefits are sanctioned or cut off entirely.

I'm in favour of getting people off benefits. But anyone, voter or politician, who thinks that just cutting is going to fix anything is naive at best.

If you want to get granular, it was over-leveraged and speculative US borrowers who were the root cause of the GFC.

Well, it seems you may want to tell some Labour MP’s that.

Thank you.

So, let’s replicate that in the UK. First, the government just need to get it past their back benches and their constituents….

Because the weekly requirements, internship placements, and training courses are intense, strict, and mandatory, many jobseekers are highly motivated to aggressively search for and accept market-rate employment on their own just before the mandatory activation phase kicks in.

If a jobseeker refuses an activation offer or fails to show up to scheduled Job centre training sessions without a valid medical reason, their benefits are sanctioned or cut off entirely.

High quality effective schemes like that are something I would love to see here in the UK. These are the sorts of schemes that worked to reduce the number of NEETs in the Netherlands. But that kind of support infrastructure costs money. You need carrot as well as stick - the UK is very bad at providing high quality support for long term unemployed people. And that provision cannot be done on the cheap. Again: just cutting benefits without providing support will fail and push people into crime.

My organisation runs a scheme for getting people who are long term unemployed and have serious mental ill health into work and keeping them there. It works. But it costs money.

There are no easy fixes.

I will, if I ever meet any. I'll tell any MP from any party who holds those kinds of convictions - because I want to see people getting into work and staying there. Which is going to take money, long term thinking and insight into the complexities of the labour market, the wider economy and the education system. It's going to take cross party working of the kind this country is bad at. People can shout and scream and stamp their feet and be angry at benefit claimants, but that is going to make no difference at all to the reality on the ground.

I don’t see any shouting, screaming and stamping.

I do however see a cold determination amongst an increasing number of tax-payers, that this government should redress the imbalance between those who actually go to work for a living, versus those who choose welfare as a lifestyle choice.

And no, we are not talking about the deserving, before we go down that road.

Exactly, Pointy.

How are we getting on with the AI-related job losses?

I see a lot of shouting et al - because what I see is people saying 'just cut benefits' without them taking a moment to think about how to accomplish that in a rational way that will not make things worse. Simplistic solutions won't work, and people need to understand that.

I have yet to hear a sensible definition of 'deserving' when it comes to benefits.

What I am also not hearing is anything about the role of employers who benefit from not offering the kinds of jobs that people can live on and plan their lives around - it's all zero hours with the flexibility all coming from one party. If you want people to work and stay in work, you have to offer work people can live on. The responsibility lies with everyone in society, so we need to stop scapegoating benefit claimants and letting all the other parties off the hook.

There will be a substantial number. And just leaeving people without any source of income is going to magnify the impact of those losses, quite possibly to the point where we have civil unrest. So once again - simplistic benefit slashing will not 'cut' it.