Andy Burnham promised Liverpool “a real speech”. Real, it turns out, means the difficult bits arrive after everyone has gone home.
Take the two great beasts of public finance: the triple lock and social care. Burnham tackled both with the courage of a man defusing a bomb by leaving the room. The triple lock stays untouched this Parliament, then gets “adjusted” in April 2030. A National Care Service arrives “in the next Parliament”, pending a review. He admitted he may “pay a political price”, which is easy to say when the invoice goes to a future prime minister. With seven different holders of his job in the last decade, the odds are against him lasting that long.
Meanwhile, voters get breathing space: £2 bus fares from January and VAT off electricity bills this Thursday. It’s like being told the roof will be fixed in 2030, but here’s a nice umbrella. As the speech failed to identify matching savings, the VAT cut implies more borrowing or tax rises, an awkward companion to the pledge to “stick to our fiscal rules”, when bond yields are at their highest level since 2007.
Then energy. Burnham wants bills in line with our neighbours within ten years. Ten years! Consider one neighbour. Norway expects around $79 billion of oil and gas revenue this year, some $18 billion more than first forecast, thanks to higher prices. This is the famously green Norway, governed by a Labour party, which squeezes its North Sea for all it’s worth and banks the windfall in the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. Our Labour government declines to commit. Offering “pragmatism”, which in Westminster translates as “no and please stop asking”. Same sea, different outcome: they get a sovereign wealth fund, we get a bus pass. Drilling more at home would add to our own supply and cut our reliance on imports, at a time when Iran, Russia and the gas market can rattle our bills at will.
The speech was also long on new commitments and short on savings. Defence earned a passing nod to NATO obligations, but no figures, no timetable and no plan to pay for it. Apparently, energy subsidies, are more important than national defence. Ironic when putting a jumper on will protect against the cold but do little against a drone or missile.
Finally, the calendar. The speech implies no election before 2029, with the hard decisions parked in the “next Parliament”. Burnham says he’ll honour the manifesto pledge on the triple lock. But if a manifesto is a straitjacket on needed reform, a real leader puts the national interest first, goes to the country and asks for a fresh mandate. Unsurprisingly, he did not.
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