Despite the many accusations levelled against me of being a pessimist, a cynic, a realist, or even a misanthrope, I am — at my core — an eternal optimist.
This of course clashes with a profession that seemingly breeds cynics.
The reality is that most people in politics do want to do good. They are there for the right reasons — frankly if money is your objective politics is the wrong game.
As with everything in life politics is awash with opinions and in my eternal optimism I find it very hard to believe that so many of them can be so wrong.
Yet that is the problem I have with Andy Burnham.
I have never been one for optics frankly. I care very little about how someone presents — likely a personal flaw I should amend — I care far more about who someone is as a person and what they think than how they look or dress. Andy Burnham’s lack of a tie, his black shirts or his attempts to portray himself as ‘King of the North’ during COVID sway me very little towards the man. What does sway me is how he speaks about his father.
In a recent interview he spoke candidly about his father Roy’s experience battling with dementia. At his core, I am sure Andy Burnham is a kind-hearted man who wants the best for his country.
I am also not a person that would wish a politician would perform poorly just because we share different political opinions — I wanted Keir Starmer to succeed as much as the next person — to do so I think is foolish.
Yet I just can’t see how Andy Burnham will save the UK.
What often surprises people when they are brought into Parliament is quite how conciliatory the conversations are. Politicians do really want to solve the problems people have and they often have more similar views than you would expect. One such view is that the British Economy is in a poor state.
Now of course, how poor it is and how to fix it vary wildly. Some say it is ruled by the ‘billionaire capitalists’, some say it is strangled because of over regulation and so on.
But in my opinion, the British Economy has been fundamentally broken by the Great Financial Crisis and hasn’t recovered since.
The problems facing people every day are structural cracks in an economy wildly unsuited to the modern day.
Structurally the British Economy places too much emphasis on housing wealth and far too little on productive investment.
Since 1870, the UK has had one of the lowest investment rates amongst comparable countries.
We have for nearly 30 years propped up a bubble in the housing market through both supply restrictions and demand juicing. Extremely low interest rates during the post-2008 period, coupled with high levels of immigration and significantly below-required house building, have meant that house prices have skyrocketed.
Essentially, every trend post-2008, whether that is GDP per capita, median earnings, or productivity growth, has remained below the pre-2008 trend. Whilst debt is now significantly larger than it was in 2008.
Yet, the demands of the welfare state and the NHS, alongside an ageing population, mean that there will have to be significant tax rises or budget cuts if we want to maintain our standard of living.
If we do not contend with these problems, the reality is that voters will swing to extreme solutions — for example, in the recent French elections where voters turned to both the extreme left and the extreme right as they felt abandoned.
This is where Andy Burnham comes in.
It would be unfair to say that we don’t know what Andy Burnham stands for. His first two weeks as Prime Minister were marked by an announced policy every day. From scrapping VAT on household energy bills, to capping bus fares at £2, Number 10 North, ending rough sleeping, cutting business rates — yes, he does have a policy platform that will positively affect the lives of many.
However, when it truly comes to the biggest questions — Triple Lock, Planning Reform, Tax Reform, Defence Spending — Burnham has either been remarkably quiet or has done one of the worst practices in modern politics: ‘kite-flying’. Essentially, a SpAd or Minister will speak with a journalist to soft launch a policy to the newspapers, allowing them to gauge public opinion. Take for instance his recent proposal on replacing Council Tax with a Property Tax, that was rapidly thrown in the bin after public pushback.
Some would say that kite-flying is an essential part of managing Government, but fundamentally I think it misses out on an important aspect of politics which crudely I would define as having the cojones.
To quote the late Hans J. Morgenthau, “politics is an art and not a science.” The obsession with polling and public opinion by the political class in the last 30 years has, in my opinion, been in part responsible for our problems. It has led to politics being treated as simple rationality — if x policy is popular, proceed; if not, immediately dump it.
Yet the reality of politics is that policy always creates winners and losers. That is a simple fact of life. So tending towards the most popular policy inherently biases the most active voters — which in this case creates an inherent bias towards older generations sometimes to the detriment of the young.
Therefore, the role of the statesman should be to use their wisdom and moral strength to set out a path between the two.
Take, for instance, the Triple Lock.
The triple lock, for those unaware, is a ‘lock’ on the State Pension (a universal benefit paid as long as a minimum number of National Insurance qualifying years has been met) that increases by the highest of three metrics: inflation, wage growth, or 2.5%.
Currently, the State Pension is funded by National Insurance contributions — current taxpayers pay for today’s pensioners.
If pensions increase by more than wage growth (which has been the case in all but 3 of the last 12 years), working people need to contribute a larger share of their pay to keep the system in balance.
Moreover, if inflation is higher than wage growth (which has been the case in all but 4 of the last 12 years), working people’s income is squeezed by both inflation and higher taxation.
On top of all this, the UK has an ageing population, meaning the number of people claiming the State Pension will increase relative to the working population (known as the dependency ratio).
In the 2025/26 tax year, the Government spent £146.1 billion on the State Pension — more than education or defence.
The National Audit Office have said that the triple lock has cost three times as much as originally expected. The OBR has gone further, stating that the triple lock could put government finances on an ‘unsustainable path’.
Put frankly, if any private company offered a scheme similar to the State Pension, they would be shut down as a Ponzi scheme.
Here is the inconvenient truth — almost every single person in politics knows this, and thinks it should change. No one will do it.
This is where my optimism slightly falters. The State Pension isn’t the only cataclysmic state failure. It is simply one of many. From housing failure, infrastructure collapse, a failing military, a questionable education system, a healthcare system in a horrific state, overregulation strangling businesses. The list genuinely goes on and on.
I’m not one to ruminate on things I can’t control, but when I speak politics I struggle to see a way out of the malaise. There isn’t currently a politician that I think has the skillset to solve some of these challenges, and I am afraid to say I think Andy Burnham is another that simply lacks the cojones.
Great piece - the contents of which I can’t fail but to largely agree with