Avoiding the obvious - except when not in office

PM vows to help households through 'really hard' times as inflation jumps higher

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has pledged to do what he can to help Britons through “really hard” times as cost pressures mount after figures showed inflation surging to a four-month high and forecasts for more pain ahead.

Tories say households could save £540 a year by scrapping net zero

The Conservatives have said that households could save about £540 a year after 2030 if net zero regulations are scrapped with a commitment to make energy as cheap as possible.

Unlocking the Blockages

Andy Burnham to lead UK growth from No 10 North in major power shift

Andy Burnham has outlined plans for the new No 10 North to assume control over economic growth from the Treasury, framing the shift as a move to divest power from Whitehall.

According to the Prime minister, the Treasury will maintain its focus on overseeing public finances, whereas the regional 10 Downing Street office in Manchester will lead economic expansion.

Speaking in an interview with The Times, he stated that chancellor John Healey completely backs the decision, characterising it as part of a "huge transfer of power".

“And particularly having No 10 leading on that growth mission means you’ve got maximum power to unlock the blockages where they exist in the wider Whitehall system.”

There is a whiff of something unpleasant when Burnham speaks of "maximum power to unlock the blockages." Maybe it's the whiff of responsibility being flushed away. 

Manchester says it's our responsibility.

No it isn't it's No.10.

Not us mate, that's Treasury. 

Growth will of course be the the Labour version of growth, government "investment" which turns out to be spending on projects best forgotten before the photo ops, not after. The unpleasant whiff this time is our money being flushed away, but we're familiar with that one.

Divide and rule - there's a whiff of that too.

Fear of reprisal

Scottish Labour must be able to disagree with UK party without fear of reprisal

The two candidates running to become the next leader of Scottish Labour have been urged to demand answers on whether Anas Sarwar's split with Keir Starmer damaged the party's Holyrood election campaign.

Just For Scotland has written to Joe Fagan and Michael Marra to seek clarity from the UK party following reports it tried to scupper Sarwar's campaign to become first minister after he called for Starmer to quit in February.


As reprisal is a fundamental political tactic and always has been, this request is delightfully ironic. Good grief, without reprisal directed at political enemies simply for being political enemies, the Labour Party as we know it would disappear into the mephitic mists of history. 

Governments also promote fear of reprisal as a general behavioural manipulation tool within the voting population. Censorship too, this unlovely feature of life has its reprisal aspect. Anything from vocal political dissent on sensitive issues to ridicule or parody may be caught in the reprisal net. 

"Politically correct" has come to mean safe from official reprisal.

A series of “everyday fixes”

Burnham must live up to Labour promise and slash energy bills by £300 – SNP

Andy Burnham must live up to Labour’s promise to slash energy bills by £300, the SNP has said, as the Prime Minister begins his cost-of-living tour of the UK.

Downing Street said Mr Burnham will be in “listening mode” as he visits Britain’s nations and regions.

No 10 said he will announce a series of “everyday fixes” to reduce household costs, promising to “pull every single lever we can to provide people with some room to breathe on the cost of living”.

A series of “everyday fixes” eh? Strange choice of words.

It would be interesting if we could find out if anyone ever believed the claim about a £300 reduction in energy bills. Apart from the voices in Ed Miliband's head, were they the same type of people who apparently believed in the startling abilities of Jason Arday as he climbed the academic ladder? 

It doesn't really matter though, Team Burnham is treating us to political twaddle of an even lower grade than Keir Starmer's turbocharged, laser-focussed Plan for Change. 

The bar is low, but so far it still seems too high for Team Burnham.

Burnham in 'distancing himself from Starmer mode'

Burnham in ‘listening mode’ as he launches month-long tour of UK

• Andy Burnham is embarking on a national tour throughout August to engage with the public on the cost of living crisis and gather input for his 10-year plan.
• The prime minister aims to be in “listening mode” to understand how the government can improve people's lives and address everyday financial pressures.
• Mr Burnham has already introduced measures such as cutting VAT on energy bills, reducing business rates for venues, and capping bus fares at £2.
• He is expected to unveil further cost-of-living measures to provide “breathing space” for families.
• Opposition parties, including the Conservatives and Reform UK, have challenged Burnham on the funding for his pledges and criticised his announcements as “tinkering”.

Again Burnham is busy distancing himself from Keir Starmer who was notorious for not being a 'listener' so Team Burnham decides their man has to become a 'listener'. 

Opposition parties call it 'tinkering', which it is, but something has to carry the 'listening' narrative and at the moment tinkering with little effect does that.

There will be lots of 'listening' photo ops too, they are the main point of it. 

  

The Fabian Society's Goal

 

The mess we're in

Carers should be best paid in society, not the worst, says Burnham

Carers should be the best paid people in society, not the worst, Andy Burnham has said as he set out plans for sweeping reform of the social care system.

The prime minister said that social care in England was as unfair as American healthcare as he reflected on the many people forced to whittle down their pensions and savings to care for family members due to the current system...

The prime minister - who teared up as he spoke about his father who is currently receiving care for Alzheimer’s - said it was a “major dereliction of public duty” that politicians had failed for decades to resolve the crisis in social care.


By gum, Burnham is certainly distancing himself from Starmer the uncaring automaton. Taking it too far in my view, bringing in his unfortunate father and talking about a "major dereliction of public duty”. Somewhat distasteful I reckon, but he is a politician.

We may go on to ask what a "public duty" is, but it would be unwise to expect a coherent response other than more words embedded in an economically and socially incoherent ideology.

The mess we're in runs deeper than this.

Burnham calls the Uniparty together

Burnham to hold cross-party talks on fixing crisis in adult social care

Andy Burnham will hold a cross-party meeting to discuss tackling the crisis in adult social care, as he pledged to “put everything I’ve got” into fixing the system.

Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats accepted the Prime Minister’s invitation “to build that spirit of collaboration from the start”, however, Nigel Farage hit out at Mr Burnham for ignoring Reform UK.

Mr Burnham said governments have, for decades, failed to tackle reform of social care in England, seeing it as “too risky, too difficult, and too complicated”.

Not only has Burnham called the Uniparty together, he has defined it - as Nigel Farage points out. Farage is probably right about a plan to increase taxes too, Burnham is trying to share responsibility with the rest of the Uniparty. 


Mr Farage criticised the Prime Minister for not extending an invite to his party, which “led over 300 national opinion polls and represents thousands of councillors and millions of Britons across the country”.

He claimed it is “uniparty in action”, adding: “It’s now clear that Burnham is conspiring behind closed doors with the failed political establishment to foist further tax rises on the country.”

Something to do with leopards and spots

Ed Miliband indicates development and climate will be at heart of UK foreign policy

Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, is to indicate he will put the climate crisis and overseas development at the heart of UK international relations by taking up the country’s seat on the board at the World Bank.

The position, which is usually delegated to a junior minister, means Miliband will play an active role in shaping the changes to the World Bank that developing countries have called for, and ensuring the climate remains a core focus for overseas aid.

Miliband, who was energy and net zero secretary under Keir Starmer, will say: “International development is not an add-on to British foreign policy – it is central to it. By taking on the role of UK governor to the World Bank, I want to send an unambiguous signal that this government is serious about its global leadership on development and climate.”

The position is usually delegated to a junior minister? Didn't take Ed long to spot the opportunity and hop into the new role and the headlines. We may assume that he will have known about this move before accepting the role of Foreign Secretary and presumably hopes to pull Miatta Fahnbulleh's sustainability strings too, from a globalist position.

Maybe Burnham doesn't care about Ed's machinations and sees this move as a lone voice from a mysterious global outfit most voters don't understand. 

Yet in spite of his heavy focus on Manchester and repeated guff about the cost of living, Burnham is likely to be another globalist Prime Minister. No doubt we'll soon see how things pan out for Mad Ed.

Removed from the ballot paper

Klaus Bastian has an interesting Blackout News piece on political exclusion in Germany.

Exclusion from voting: Political opponents have AfD candidates removed from the ballot paper

Lower Saxony, July 2026: The exclusion of Bundestag member Martin Sichert from the election shows how political competition can be eliminated even before a vote. Reinhild Goes initially did not receive approval despite a recommendation for admission by the local election officer. The AfD district administrator candidate Stephan Bothe is also threatened with exclusion according to a recommendation of the Ministry of the Interior. On the other hand, the election committees admitted Jessica Schülke in Hanover and Robert Preuß in Gifhorn. The red-green local electoral law allows the evaluation of material from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and political statements. Subsequently, party-political election committees decide on competing candidates. A full judicial review often only follows after the election. At the same time, UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan criticizes such vague extremism assessments as "incompatible with international standards."

Ludwigshafen provided the blueprint for the exclusion from the election

Joachim Paul was not allowed to run in the mayoral election in Ludwigshafen in 2025. The election committee relied on material from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. But the administrative courts did not fully examine the allegations before the vote. Instead, they referred Paul to the later election scrutiny procedure. Therefore, the election took place without the candidate of a party that was not banned.

The Politics Cartel

The word ‘Uniparty’ has been around for decades, especially in the US, but it’s a useful word here in the UK too. As any political sceptic knows, there is much to be said for viewing UK politics as a cartel which fixes the financial and political cost of being a supine voter– the Uniparty.

A few UK political parties offer only limited competition within cartel boundaries which are not explicit within their debates, manifestos or policies. Parties promote their particular political brand, but only within Uniparty boundaries and in so doing they fix the cost of being a supine voter - the cartel aspect.

This much is obvious enough, “they are all the same” is far from being an uncommon public comment at election time. Yet only a minority of voters seem to treat their frustration as being due a permanent political cartel where close party alignment is a feature, not a fault. Only a minority of voters seem to view the main political parties as one party and refer to it by a single name such as the Uniparty.

It is also clear, but clearly not clear enough, that the entire Establishment is a social and political cartel called rather vaguely the Elite, the Blob, the Swamp, the Kleptocracy or one of a number of other names. Or just the Establishment.

Unfortunately we are held back by language. The Establishment, the Uniparty, the mainstream media all have a tight grip on popular language, on how we articulate what goes on in the world of politics, how we articulate it to others and even to ourselves.

For example, within the boundaries of the Uniparty cartel, our current UK Prime Minister is described as a member of the Labour Party, which he is in a formal sense, but this means less than is usually assumed. He promotes himself and his party within constrained narratives formulated as typically Labour Party narratives, but always within Uniparty boundaries. What is not allowed is to change the way things are done in any radical way.

In other words, Andrew Burnham is the Uniparty Prime Minister from what we might call the Labour branch, but that is not what we hear from mainstream media. Neither do we usually hear it said that he represents the Establishment, the Blob, Davos, globalism, the Kleptocracy or whatever.

Powerfully useful words such as Uniparty are successfully relegated to the fringes of UK political discourse. The political cartel is successfully disguised because the main political parties do have different agendas, but within ill-defined but quite definite Uniparty and therefore Establishment boundaries.

Hence a major UK political question - where does Reform stand in all this?

 

When 'Harder' means 'Impossible'

Angela Rayner rules out rent controls as she admits 1.5million home pledge getting harder to meet

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It certainly got more challenging, and we’ve seen things like construction costs go up etc, which has had a real negative impact on that.

“But I’m not dropping it. I’m just saying that it is a really difficult stretched target.”

Pressed again, she said: “Yeah, I’m going to keep the target, but it’s like me saying I’m going to run the London Marathon in under five hours.

“That would be a real challenge for me, but I’d do it… Look, I am straight talking.

As Angela accepted this thoroughly poisoned chalice we may as well assume that she doesn't expect to be the one holding it when the next general election descends on us.  

Maybe she doesn't expect Burnham to be the one dishing out ministerial jobs by then either.

  

It's going to be stunts and buses all the way down

Andy Burnham says £2 bus fare cap 'will put money in people's pockets'

 

Source

Prompted by casual interest, I had a quick gander at the number of photo op images showing Burnham with a bus - there are loads of them. 

I bet he collects them.

He waxes desperate with imagination

Starmer: I’ve left Britain better than I found it

Sir Keir Starmer has claimed he is leaving Britain in a better state than when he became Prime Minister.

During his final Prime Minister’s Questions today, the outgoing Labour leader said his Government had stabilised the economy, strengthened national security and enhanced the country’s global reputation.

Since winning a landslide victory in the 2024 general election, Sir Keir’s premiership has been blighted by a series of policy about-turns and scandals.

A man who is playing a part is always ultra-anxious and he often overdoes it, because he can never quite release himself from the fear that the person to be deluded must somehow notice what he, the deceiver, so plainly sees, i.e., the deceit.

J.M.W. van der Poorten Schwartz – The Black Box Murder (1889)

I don’t care a fig one way or t’other

Andy Burnham urged to change UK’s voting system before it’s 'too late'

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey is poised to urge Andy Burnham to introduce proportional representation before the next general election, warning that failure to act could render it "too late".

Speaking at the Institute for Government on Tuesday, Sir Ed is expected to caution that Labour may find itself "powerless to do anything" to alter the voting system once the election has ended.

He will appeal directly to Mr Burnham to collaborate, asserting that if Mr Burnham is "serious about changing the way we do politics", then his "door is open" for discussions.


“Oh, I’m entirely with you there,” said Dalloway. “Nobody can condemn the utter folly and futility of such behaviour more than I do; and as for the whole agitation, well! may I be in my grave before a woman has the right to vote in England! That’s all I say.”

The solemnity of her husband’s assertion made Clarissa grave. “It’s unthinkable,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re a suffragist?” she turned to Ridley.

“I don’t care a fig one way or t’other,” said Ambrose. “If any creature is so deluded as to think that a vote does him or her any good, let him have it. He’ll soon learn better.”

Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out (1915)

Politics - it's just a game

Count Binface given major boost in upcoming clash with Nigel Farage

Defence secretary wishes Count Binface ‘good luck’ in by-election showdown with Farage

Farage vs Count Binface? Parties rule out standing against Nigel in Clacton by-election 'circus'

Count Binface speaks out as he becomes Nigel Farage's sole Clacton by-election challenger

Only Count Binface willing to take on Farage’s ‘fake and pathetic’ by-election

Who is Count Binface? Odds slashed on comedian beating Farage in Clacton

Could Farage lose his seat to Count Binface? By-election descends into farce as everyone except comedy candidate pulls out

Burnham’s shameful role in the David Kelly affair

Thanks to dearieme for passing this on - Kathy Gyngell has a TCW piece on Burnham's role in the David Kelly affair.


Burnham’s shameful role in the David Kelly affair

AS WE enter July, my thoughts have been straying back to the shadows of corrupt and cover-up government, evident well before covid and lockdown, and to an anniversary – the unresolved death of Dr David Kelly, the highly respected British weapons expert and former UN inspector whose body was found in an Oxfordshire wood 23 years ago.

It's not a long piece and well worth reading the whole thing.

Because of my work

Labour 'should win next election' with Burnham because of my work - PM

Labour “should go on to win the next election” under Andy Burnham, Sir Keir Starmer has said, because of the work he has done in power.

In his first sit down interview since he announced he will quit as Prime Minister, Sir Keir also insisted he held no “personal animosity” for Mr Burnham, who is all but guaranteed to succeed him.

Speaking to the BBC, the Prime Minister was asked what he thought his achievements were in power and as leader of the Labour Party.

He pointed to efforts to tackle antisemitism in the party in opposition, the 2024 general election victory and said his Government had “stabilised the economy” over the last two years.


Starmer is a strange man, one of the strangest we've seen in recent years and it's a tough field for anyone to stand out as strange. If he has “stabilised the economy”, then even a few Labour voters might wonder what an unstable economy looks like.

Naturally enough Starmer is still pushing the line that Burnham is a serious party choice for Labour and not a stand-in for someone willing to take the party all the way to the next general election. Burnham won't see himself as a stand-in and maybe he's right if nobody plausible wants the job.

Apart from the economy he claims to have "stabilised", Starmer hasn't even stabilised his party politically - they don't know what they are doing. Dud ideologies, dud MPs, habitual mendacity, furtive malice and pervasive stupidity don't help, but Starmer didn't do much about that, still seems to see it as part of the job. Perhaps many voters do too.

On Being Burnham

It’s an odd thing to do, but I’ve been wondering what it is like being Andrew Murray Burnham. Not really possible of course, but there are some obvious aspects which would apply to almost any prominent political figure.

For example we have personality, intelligence, upbringing, education, career and so on, all the usual factors which make us what we are. We have a deep personal experience of these. Anyone on the political stage is also subject to personal constraints and influences which we understand but most of us don’t experience directly, but in different contexts we get to know it via working life.

Apart from family and friends, we know that Burnham will have been moulded by the Labour Party, its history, structure and baggage, plus political colleagues and their aspirations. Then there are charlatan colleagues who won’t be colleagues if things go wrong or other opportunities beckon. Add in media contacts ranging from barely trustworthy to wholly untrustworthy. Then we have advisors, pressure groups, a range of officials plus a fringe of shouty obsessives who wave placards in public places.

A list of political constraints and influences would be enormous, but where is the space for an individual with an individual personality? The only available spaces are away from the political theatre, but they will still include a few political cronies who never quite leave the theatre.

What does the ambitious political actor have to offer apart from a willingness to play a role, and preferably a major one? In the case of Burnham, this seems nothing but his ambition and his fortuitous situation as a known and very ambitious Westminster outsider promoting himself with the chummy diminutive ‘Andy’.

Voters need more than personal ambition from political leaders, but so far Burnham seems to be offering nothing else. “I want to be Prime Minister” seems to be it.

Plan for Change II

Andy Burnham tells Scots he offers 'change' from 'broken' Westminster politics

Labour’s Andy Burnham has said he will bring “change” to Scotland as he told people north of the border that Westminster is “broken”.


Presumably this is changed change, a complete change from the other change Keir Starmer promised.

At the moment and whatever the rhetoric, it may be worth assuming that parachuting Burnham into this rather odd political situation was merely a way to remove Starmer while other potential challengers keep their powder dry. 

If so, then Labour MPs don't necessarily expect Burnham to have much chance of steering their party towards a worthwhile political position for the next General Election. Get rid of him once his approval rating falls through the floor seems more likely. A third time lucky approach perhaps.

Either way, let us hope we make it to the next General Election.