British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, only in the role for a few months after replacing Keir Starmer, has told the Labour Party conference in his native Liverpool that his government wants to restore hope and end "politics as usual." But the UK's seventh prime minister in a decade is trying to balance a series of evidently conflicting fiscal goals: bolstering economic growth, reducing cost-of-living pressures, safeguarding pensions and making care costs more affordable, upgrading creaking infrastructure and significantly boosting military spending. That's all while battling a populist challenge from Reform UK and Restore Britain on the right and the Green Party on the left. This led Labour to severe local and regional election defeats in May and ultimately spelt his predecessor Starmer's demise.
Burnham, a Liverpool lad who was mayor of Manchester prior to moving to take up Britain's top political job, repeated his most common mantra since coming to power, namely that "more of the same" will not solve the various issues facing the UK. "We can't carry on as we are. Politics as usual has taken Britain backwards," Burnham said.
"More of the same isn't good enough and isn't going to get us where we need to be." The conference's banner headline "hope again" was not incompatible with a more honest conversation, Burnham said. "Hope comes from honesty ... and saying the things politicians usually avoid," he said. He cited Labour's post-war government under Clement Atlee, famed for achievements like setting up Britain's National Health Service, as an example of his party's past credentials, having "built the peace" in the public interest.
He said that since the 1980s and the Conservative-dominated Margaret Thatcher era of his youth, this direction was lost. "I will say it straight, Britain has been on the wrong path for a long time. Deindustrialization, deregulation, privatization, austerity, Brexit, and what has it given us?
A country run for vested interests, not in the public interest — with power held in too few hands, and too many places left to drift," Burnham said. Burnham told the audience he would take on "the difficult issues that have been ignored for too long," including social care, high levels of youth unemployment, and greater public control of once-nationalized core interests like energy, water and housing. "The British right talk about 'taking back control," Burnham said, evoking the slogan of the 2016 Brexit campaign.
"Never forget that they are the ones who gave it away in the first place!" Burnham said on coming to power that he wanted his premiership to be a "circuit-breaker for Britain" after years of rising prices and anemic growth. He hit the ground with a handful of new policies like a cap on bus fares, temporarily removing value added tax from electricity bills amid the Iran war, and announcing a bid to stamp out rough sleeping. But critics say his more grand stated strategy lacks detail and could prove economically unfeasible.
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