{"id":93420,"date":"2026-06-30T07:03:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T06:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=93420"},"modified":"2026-06-30T07:03:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T06:03:37","slug":"does-burnham-understand-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/06\/30\/does-burnham-understand-economics\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Burnham understand economics?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Andy Burnham has positioned himself as a future Prime Minister and delivered what was billed as a serious economic speech.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It was not.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He promised more council housing, cheaper utilities, lower transport costs, greater devolution, more investment, and a full industrial strategy. Then he committed to keeping Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules, proposed no new tax powers, and made GDP growth the centrepiece of his entire programme, without appearing to notice that cheaper housing, cheaper energy, and cheaper transport all reduce GDP, because GDP rises when prices rise and falls when they fall. That is not a minor inconsistency. It is a fundamental failure to understand the metric he has chosen as his measure of success.<\/div>\n<p>The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that around 14 million people in the UK currently live in poverty. Burnham acknowledged this reality and built his entire pitch around improving lives for ordinary people across the North and Midlands. But he cannot do that while accepting fiscal rules that prevent investment, refusing to raise taxes, and targeting a GDP figure that goes up when people's bills go up. The arithmetic does not work, the logic does not hold, and the speech answered none of the questions a serious alternative economic programme must answer.<\/p>\n<p>The fact is that growth is the wrong target. Wellbeing, full employment, and the elimination of poverty are the right ones, but Burnham is not there yet, and Britain cannot afford a Prime Minister-in-waiting who is still this confused about economics.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-MzOeonYfxY?si=r0j4oTZV-oqZRu5P\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the audio version:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px); height: 150px;\" title=\"Burnham misses the point\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=gku63-1afe178-pb&amp;from=pb6admin&amp;share=1&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Arial&amp;skin=f6f6f6&amp;font-color=auto&amp;logo_link=episode_page&amp;btn-skin=c73a3a\" width=\"100%\" height=\"150\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>There is no Debate Ammunition for this video: I ran out of energy. Sorry.<\/p>\n<p>This is the transcript:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>So, Andy Burnham has spoken. Our Prime Minister-in-waiting has told us all that we need to know about the economy and what he intends to do about it. Or has he? That is my point.<\/p>\n<p>Andy Burnham did ask some good questions.<\/p>\n<p>He did make some good points.<\/p>\n<p>He said Britain is far too centralised.<\/p>\n<p>He said that Whitehall is blocking progress at local levels right across the UK as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>And he says that local government needs far more power, but he made his argument about England alone and ignored Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which is very odd for a man who wants to be Prime Minister of the UK as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>And he said we need investment, housing and industrial strategy, and I\u2019ve got nothing to object to in any of that.<\/p>\n<p>But all that being said, I have some fundamental questions for Andy Burnham because this was not a speech that rose to the moment.<\/p>\n<p>Burnham promised to transform Britain.<\/p>\n<p>He promised more council housing.<\/p>\n<p>He promised more devolution.<\/p>\n<p>He promised more investment.<\/p>\n<p>He promised more industrial strategy, but he also promised to keep today\u2019s fiscal rules.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, all the constraints that Rachel Reeves has put in place will, apparently, continue.<\/p>\n<p>And he\u2019s not going to take any new powers to apparently change the rules with regard to the operation of monetary policy by the Bank of England.<\/p>\n<p>Nor did he say anything about changing taxation of any significance.<\/p>\n<p>So, how is he going to hang all this together? Fiscal rules deliberately exist to limit what governments can spend, and yet Burnham wants the biggest programme of reform in decades, including a devolution of power from Whitehall to a new \u2018Number 10 in the North\u2019, which is apparently going to rewire Britain, whatever that means.<\/p>\n<p>Well, where is the capacity for this spending within the existing fiscal rules?<\/p>\n<p>Is he going to raise taxes?<\/p>\n<p>Is he, in fact, going to cut instead?<\/p>\n<p>Are the fiscal rules really going to change?<\/p>\n<p>Is he thinking of a wealth tax or something like it?<\/p>\n<p>We just don\u2019t know. This speech left more questions than answers. And he didn\u2019t even take questions about it.<\/p>\n<p>Burnham, in the meantime, created an enormous paradox. Kept talking about growth. Or rather, he redefined it as \u2018good growth.\u2019 Good growth is that which improves well-being - I\u2019ve got nothing against that, by the way; that\u2019s okay. I do want people\u2019s well-being to grow. I do want people to realise their potential, and I\u2019m glad he used that word.<\/p>\n<p>But what he didn\u2019t talk about was what \u2018good growth\u2019 really was, except that it didn\u2019t happen in London and the Southeast. Apparently, good growth is growth that happens everywhere else. But he still, in essence, kept growth at the centre of his economic agenda, and that deeply worries me.<\/p>\n<p>Growth is the wrong target.<\/p>\n<p>Growth should not be our measure of success.<\/p>\n<p>GDP rises when prices rise.<\/p>\n<p>GDP rises when rents rise.<\/p>\n<p>GDP rises when energy bills rise.<\/p>\n<p>None of those things makes us better off. GDP is not a measure of success.<\/p>\n<p>But here\u2019s the paradox: Burnham wants cheaper housing.<\/p>\n<p>He wants cheaper utilities.<\/p>\n<p>He wants cheaper transport.<\/p>\n<p>He wants lower living costs.<\/p>\n<p>He wants success that could reduce GDP.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, and at the same time, he is making GDP the epicentre of his goal.<\/p>\n<p>None of this makes any sense at all. It shows that we have a new Prime Minister-in-waiting who quite simply does not understand economics. He believes he wants to increase well-being, but he does so using existing tools and measures, and the outcome is going to be a complete and utter mess. He needs to think again.<\/p>\n<p>The real purpose of the economy, as I keep arguing, is not to deliver growth. Growth almost always provides benefit to those who already have much.<\/p>\n<p>The problem we have in the UK, and I think Andy Burnham knows this, is that we have large numbers of people who are in need. Around 14 million people in the UK live in need, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. They are the people he should be talking about. But the strategy he has put forward is one that will not really affect their well-being at all.<\/p>\n<p>If the purpose of government is to help people realise their potential, and Burnham hinted that he agrees with me on this issue, then what is he talking about? Growth by itself cannot help people who do not have the means to participate in the economy in the way that they wish; that is the problem that we face, and that is the issue he did not talk about.<\/p>\n<p>Burnham has put out a word salad, to be blunt, a word salad on economics. All the right buzzwords were there.<\/p>\n<p>The fiscal rules are going to stay in place.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s going to deliver growth.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s going to devolve power.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s going to build more things that people want.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s going to reduce the cost of living.<\/p>\n<p>Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.<\/p>\n<p>It looks as though somebody went down the line and said, yes, we\u2019ve covered all the angles here.<\/p>\n<p>But, and this is critical, although I do not think that a budget, or an outline of a proposal, which is what he put here, is necessarily one that has to balance in the sense of money in has to equal money out - that\u2019s absolutely untrue, as we know - he did not explain what he will be doing, but did put impediments in the path to progress into his programme, including in the commitment to the fiscal rules.<\/p>\n<p>As a start, this was pretty lousy.<\/p>\n<p>He has to work out what he\u2019s really doing.<\/p>\n<p>He has to understand economics, and he has to pick up on the difficult questions or else he\u2019s going to fail as Prime Minister.<\/p>\n<p>At this moment, he\u2019s told me nothing I need to know about what Andy Burnham wants to do.<\/p>\n<p>All I know is he\u2019s very confused, and that\u2019s not who I want in Downing Street. I don\u2019t want a person who\u2019s confused about economics there. I want a person who knows about economics there and knows what he\u2019s trying to achieve, and I\u2019m sorry to say it, but on this basis, Andy Burnham does none of those things.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Poll<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"polls-439\" class=\"wp-polls\">\n\t<form id=\"polls_form_439\" class=\"wp-polls-form\" action=\"\/Blog\/index.php\" method=\"post\">\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" id=\"poll_439_nonce\" name=\"wp-polls-nonce\" value=\"841c7712b7\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"poll_id\" value=\"439\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Did Andy Burnham\u2019s speech include a credible economic plan for Britain?<\/strong><\/p><div id=\"polls-439-ans\" class=\"wp-polls-ans\"><ul class=\"wp-polls-ul\">\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1932\" name=\"poll_439\" value=\"1932\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1932\">Yes \u2014 it was a strong and convincing vision<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1933\" name=\"poll_439\" value=\"1933\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1933\">Some good ideas, but far too many questions remain<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1934\" name=\"poll_439\" value=\"1934\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1934\">No \u2014 the fiscal rules undermine his programme<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1935\" name=\"poll_439\" value=\"1935\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1935\">No \u2014 it was mostly rhetoric without a clear economic strategy<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<\/ul><p style=\"text-align: center\"><input type=\"button\" name=\"vote\" value=\"   Vote   \" class=\"Buttons\" data-poll-id=\"439\" data-poll-action=\"vote\" \/><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"#ViewPollResults\" data-poll-id=\"439\" data-poll-action=\"result\" title=\"View Results Of This Poll\">View Results<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\t<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"polls-439-loading\" class=\"wp-polls wp-polls-loading\"><span class=\"wp-polls-spinner\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span> Loading ...<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andy Burnham has positioned himself as a future Prime Minister and delivered what was billed as a serious economic speech. It was not. He promised<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/06\/30\/does-burnham-understand-economics\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,35,122,147,118,224,106,223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-election","category-inequality","category-labour","category-neoliberalism","category-politics","category-politics-of-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93420"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93431,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93420\/revisions\/93431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}