Oliver Dean
Having enjoyed the backing of close to the entirety of the PLP, Burnham appears to have fallen at the first hurdle after entering Number 10. To justify these types of actions – these ideological purges and unfunded commitments – one requires some type of Great Leap Forward.
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‘A new day has dawned, has it not?’ And now we’ll go ‘forward’ to the past with vague and Haigh
Giles Dilnot
If Andy Burnham and Louise Haigh really do think Britain’s current problems started because of the Thatcher years, I’m very much afraid he will try to borrow solutions from the past which will not tackle our profound and monumental challenges as a country but make our future a darned sight worse.
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Getting the blame game wrong – you purge if you want to but it’s lazy who they are purging
David Gauke
Look at the drivers of the decline of the Conservatives’ popularity: there was always likely to be a moment when Johnson’s lack of integrity was likely to cause a political crisis; there was always likely to be a moment when Liz Truss’s recklessness was likely to cause an economic crisis. The party’s liberal wing was not to blame.
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Badenoch’s positioning on Net Zero is brave – because the numbers are not really in her favour
Patrick English
It can be argued that the Net Zero positioning is less against climate change action itself, but one rooted in economics. The prospective danger is that Badenoch and the Conservatives get bogged down constantly making complex arguments and outlining such connections while other parties jump straight to the central issues.
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Luke Graham
Reform are going to find themselves agreeing with a lot of Burnham’s policies. On nationalisation they’ll argue that Labour is following their lead, on welfare, they will be avoiding the same tough choices. Two parties of the economic left aligned in their populism and joined in a new state-led consensus.
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Fiscal conservatism should be at the heart of the Tory Party
David Willetts
The Coalition’s tough spending savings could have got us to a balanced budget without that expensive offset. Fiscal conservatism should be at the heart of Conservatism. You can’t get more dry than that.
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Labour’s new planning law could take a wrecking ball to local democracy
Josh Mastin-Lee
I fear for the stability of a planning system which, like Sir Keir, sees the people who wish to discuss bad planning as bothersome “blockers”.
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What e-bikes tell us about broken Britain
Marc Goldfinger
The world is changing quickly, and new technology meant to improve our lives will keep on coming. All it takes is a few bad actors to derail what can be a force for good. In order to keep living in a civilised society, we need to fix those window panes as they break. We need to set clear rules and enforce them from the start.
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Another new prime minister. But is the UK ungovernable?
Lord Ashcroft
Starmer’s defenders sometimes argue that he is the victim of voters’ unwillingness to show any patience or accept tough choices. Yet his political downfall is attributable to neither of those, but to avoidable mistakes. In the end, his premiership was a demonstration of bad governance, not of an ungovernable country.
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No, Prime Minister – ‘not being Starmer’ is not enough because the problems are the same
Helen Whately
Burnham can take the familiar Labour path of higher taxes, higher spending and ever higher levels of dependency on the state. Or he can confront the problem: reform welfare, back businesses and create the conditions for more people to earn a living through work.
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