Andy Burnham has announced that he will axe the triple lock in 2030 to pay for free social care as well as unveiling an elections shake-up to shut out the Right from power. The Mail has more.
Andy Burnham declared he will hit pensioners to help fund a huge Labour lurch to the Left today, vowing to put Britain on a “new path”.
In an unashamedly Socialist first leader’s speech to conference, the PM said the party’s next manifesto will commit to scrapping the “triple lock” on state pensions.
The curbs on payments to the elderly will generate “savings” that will go towards funding a giant NHS-style social care system – which could cost £18 billion a year.
A highly emotional Burnham told activists he would think of his father Roy, who died recently, as he “makes the case” for the “new settlement” – becoming tearful at times during the speech.
The idea was applauded in the hall, but has already caused a storm among unions and even unrest in the Cabinet. Critics have warned it is “electoral suicide”.
The premier made clear he wants a 1970s-style big-state Government controlling key parts of the economy. He urged a switch to a proportional representation system to help the Left stay in power and drive his vision through.
Labour will fight the next election on a platform of abolishing first past the post, fuelling fears that chaotic ‘rainbow coalitions’ of parties could end up dominating.
Burnham insisted Britain had been “on the wrong path for a long time”, pointing to “deindustrialisation, deregulation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit”.
He said he wanted to give people “hope again”, comparing his Government to Attlee’s that introduced the NHS in 1945. He committed to a new wave of council housing – without saying where the money will come from – and declared that Thatcherite Right to Buy rules will be ditched for new builds.
“We built the common good. Or at least we did until the 1980s,” Burnham said. “Suddenly, the common wealth we had created for the many was seen as an opportunity for the few.
“Homes. Water. Energy. Transport. Care. Broken up and sold off.”
Burnham said the Right had given up “control”. “Economic control weakened by selling off essentials,” he said.
“Political control corroded by the hollowing out of councils. Immigration control weakened by Brexit.
“Later this year, we will publish our plan for Britain. It will set out how, over 10 years, we will make this country work for you again.
“More control of the basics so that we can make it more functional. More power in the hands of people and places to set their own ambitions.”
Worth reading in full.
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Good luck, all.
A Fabian inspired speech to control but implying compassion throughout. More far left but manipulating a Labour Party through emotion. The people of Makersfield were well and truly duped by Burnham to elect him as their MP. Now a danger to our nation as PM.
“… but implying compassion throughout.”
Mousetraps work because mice never wonder why the cheese is free.
I am not certain that the people of Makerfield were duped as the likelihood is that they were voting against Starmer and not for Football Shirt Boy. Much like many that voted for Labour in 2024 were voting anti-Tory.
The wrong path we have been on for the past 80 years was set in motion by the Communist Labour Party when they gained power after WWII. It’s been death by a thousand cuts.
This commie thinks scrapping first past the post is a good plan to stop the right wing. How’s that working out in his beloved Europe?
The idea, I imagine, is to let PR do its thing when it returns a socialist coalition, and to use the courts to slap down any party on the right that gains too much traction with the electorate.
Time for the right to get serious.
So we carry on as before then? Communism is now a thing of the past as our government is spending more GDP then they ever did.
Socialism – the hard left version we are being hammered by now – is seen by its fanatical exponents as an end in itself, regardless of the consequences it will bring.
Unfortunately there is a large percentage of the electorate who are still too dim and lazy to see where we’re heading and that this time there will be no good old British muddling through – it will be irreversible.
Socialism – the versions of it are: Marxism, Communism, Fascism, National Socialism. We have been enjoying, on and off, some amalgam of the first three since 1945 with a brief Thatcherite interlude. Now we are at full-on Pol Pot stage.
Anyone using Hard left, Soft Left are just working themselves.
What’s new? Lord Harcourt declared in 1889 “We are all socialists now”
I gather that abolishing the triple lock saves £600 million. And the social care plan costs £18 billion?
Why does nobody point this out?
Farage has.
State pensions: the current generation pays out of taxes for current retirees, then when they retire the younger generation will pay for them – rinse, repeat. A system now in dire straits.
National Care: the current generation pays out of taxes for current elders in care, then when they retire the younger generation will pay for them in care – rinse, repeat.
Anyone spot the similarity?
Because of increase longevity, inflation, population increase, each new generation has to be taxed more than the last to foot the bill.
Policies from the Madhouse.
Actually the state pension scheme is not in dire straits – the fund is expected to remain in surplus for at least the next decade.
Although there have been increases in NI contributions the proportion of them allocated to the fund is now, I think, only about 75%, the excess being creamed off by the Treasury.
There are (very) much more more significant ‘costs’ which we must address! (And if you want the word ‘pensions’ included, just think of the public sector!
None of his plans will work, as the fiscal drag caused by far higher taxes. escalating electricity prices destroying industry, Unions grabbing more power and wealth for less prodcutivity, will have our lenders running for cover.
The only hope is to scrap net zero, increase productivity ,drill therby increasing our country’s fortunes by solid, real growth, otherwise we face a Socialist ‘utopia’ of relative poverty, a clamp down on free speech and production of our version of the Trabant.
Even more frightening will be the rise of radical Islam.
2029 will be th emost crucial electtion in our country’s history, with no room for Hubris on any part of the Right-wing
As someone recently observed, the Marxists believe they can use political Islam to get into power, and vice versa.
But there will be only one winner.
Get a spelling and grammar checker.
Try as I might, including downloading the English dictionary again, it just defaults to US spelling.Even A.I nor support could get it to work.
Anyway, the content of my post, is far more imprtant that any typos, even though you do not think so.
The next election is in the hands of the Left-leaning Proletariat tending to vote Labour. Thatcher won in 1979 when this tendency leant Right. If this happens Reform UK can win without the Tory voters still clinging to Kemi.
Blair kept them on board by pretending New Labour was now a Party of the Centre-Right, faithful to what Thatcher had done.
There are real similarities between Andy Capp’s Old Labour and Old Labour of the 1970s, economic ruination, social degradation, people working more but ending up with less, no hope for the future.
Ironic that Chairman Capp pledges it’s a time of “Hope”.
And less people working to fund more people who won’t.
Hope again, eh. Straight out of the Obama playbook, another performative lightweight selling snake oil.
“How’s all that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?”
Emotion Quotient making up for deficit in Intelligence Quotient.
‘Hope again’ after the gross misrule of the last 30 years or so. I don’t think thats likely given the people doing the ‘hoping’.
When I first saw the “Hope again” slogan, it struck me as rather negative. I saw it more as “Better luck next time”.
Glad I live in the US
While you fret over railways and water ( Victorian innovation) we are launching rockets, ubiquitous internet, AI, technology you can’t get ( especially after the Caliphate takes over)
If you don’t think the US is under threat from radical Islam, think again. Who’d have thought 25 years after 9/11 New York City would have an anti-Semitic, Islamist mayor?
As yuse guys like to say, wake up and smell the coffee.
The 1945 Atlee, Fabian government set this country on its path to destruction. Burnham down is a communist. Fixing the electoral system will help usher in the civil war, sonny Jim. Keep up the good work.
Does Burnham realise that his electoral reform would signal the end of one party government. His would be the last Labour government. From then on it would be coalition government. It would do one other thing, it would unite the right in a way they couldn’t do themselves. No more split vote. Think it through Andy.
But he would enable an Islamo-leftist government like in the present national Socialist Germany. That’s his plan. Communists like him can never win fairly, so they lie, cheat and steal
Elections by jerrymandering. Evil human being. Evil party. Labour has always been a communists in disguise party.
Farage doesn’t do a united Right. It’s his way or the highway.
Churchhill didn’t kow tow either and he won a war. Politicians like Burnham are two a penny. Leaders are priceless
It depends on the voter not Farage or anyone else.
There is no such entity as “the Right” in any case.
A case of not considering “that which is not seen”. Blair’s big idea was by giving Wales and Scotland devolved power, these being entrenched Labour strongholds, their governments would always be Labour run. Wrong.
I actually do agree with ending the triple lock, but the money should be left in peopke’s pockets, not spunked up the wall on some fresh statist hell.
Burn’em is just as disastrously thick as we feared, and violent revolution virtually unavoidable. Sadly for them.
It seems that 80% of MPs are disasterously thick.
Waving Net Zero through with minimal debate was an act of the grossest dimwittery.
Only 80%?
I put it somewhere in the 90s.
You don’t have to like it but Burnham has made a rational decision. Oldies with money are the least likely to vote for Labour. Concentrate resources on those who you want to buy the votes for. Oh, and Shabbsy bringing in and fast tracking foreigners is also a core vote appeal.
His general approach and wider party scare me,
however he is right we do need to do better on social care / elderly care…
Based on that world-beating model, the NHS.
What you mean the one that is so good nobody has copied, or is so brilliant it just needs fixing.
Not sure what the solution is to be honest – however we need to face up to need for more care for an ever growing number of older people. It’s a little refreshing to see a politician calling for a cross party, long term view on a Long term issue we need to address as a nation. The whole short termism of modern politics makes me sick…
You forget that the younger generation doesn’t like to see their elders angry and upset.
Odd man, Burnham. I don’t believe that he’s ever won any seriously contested and hard fought election anywhere for any office, but now he’s sounding off as if he thinks himself the re-embodiment of FDR.
Nor has he, like so many MPs, ever had a proper job.
I am not saying that I know what the solution to the cost of looking after someone in the later years of their living with dementia is, but I am still not comfortable with the concept that a taxpayer should be responsible for it or a pensioner should have a lower pension when that dementia sufferer is sitting on an asset, namely their home, that they will never return to. Everyone will scream about the horror of the family home being sold, as if the dementia sufferer has toddlers about to be thrown out onto the streets. No, their children if they have them, will be pensioners themselves or about to be pensioners.
The truth is that the taxpayer/pensioner will be asked to pick up the bill so that the elderly person can hand over a tax free house to their children. And please don’t argue that the house was bought and paid for out of tax paid income. Only a small part was, the rest was enhanced value, well above inflation, that was untaxed and also the elderly person’s untaxed inheritance from their parents or grandparents.
As I say I am not sure of the right solution but it… Read more »
Dementia is a disease. We don’t steal pensioners’ housing when they are being treated for cancer. No difference here.
Dealing as I do with a relative in their late eighties with dementia and having lost my mother to cancer, I am well aware of the impact of the illnesses. The difference, my mother lived with cancer for years, at home, travelling to hospital, normally for daycare, as needed, as many others do. My other relative is becoming increasingly confused, is frequently aggressive and very occasionally violent and beyond the ability of their spouse to care for them, even with multiple visits each day from carers. His need is for residential care, which Burnham is not offering, he is offering what is already being provided, putting his wife, also in her late eighties in daily risk. Residential care at over £75,000 per annum is outside of his reach, so needs to be funded somehow. As I said, I don’t know the answer for funding it. Burnham is not offering it, so is himself acknowledging even with his ‘new’ scheme it can’t be funded, so where does it come from?
It’s my money not someone else’s. Time we got back to the principle that I don’t owe my neighbour a living. I fevking earned it all and get forces to give it up to the party, comrade.
This country is collapsing because we are all socialists and think money should be managed and distributed by the Government. Total collapse is coming.
Most homeowners are ordinary people who have made financial sacrifices, especially in the early years, to buy their own property. Houses cost money in mortgage interest, maintenance and exorbitant council taxes to run. Little account is taken of this.
Why should those who have taken responsibility for their finances and never drawn benefits be treated unfavourably compared with those who have have decided to live largely off the state and spend every penny of income – regardless of source – on self-gratification?
And that is the $64 million question, with no easy answers. I think people should re-examine quality of life, not quantity of life.
I couldn’t agree more. Because I was taught to manage money, I managed to save up the deposit for my first house, bought when I was 22, by never going on holiday, and economising absolutely everywhere. Nobody gave me anything. Apparently, I am “lucky”.
Equally, perhaps you are ‘unlucky’ not to have been able to take a year off travelling the world.
Robert Jenrick just described Labour’s social care service as bo***cks on GB News. It just said it all, really.
Maybe he did he’s still a weasel.
Why exactly? Because he gave up on the socialist Tories. I think that’s brave and he has the scars to prove it.
The Blair/Brown brilliant (not) gerrymandering wheeze of devolution went hilariously wrong.
The thick as mince Andy Crapp and his cringingly awful maudlin emotes is well on the way to becoming a similar laughing stock.
No wonder he ruled out an early election…
Surely a change to the voting system should require a referendum?
It didn’t in Wales, where a hybrid system is used for the senedd elections.
I see your point but wasn’t that established in setting up the new Assembly – not changing elections to the Mother of Parliaments.
Ah well. We had the referendum to change to AV and I reckon too many people thought that was PR that the Lib Dems wanted.
With a two thirds majority.
They won’t hold any more Referendums. The lefty Establishment has realised it can’t absolutely guarantee the result.
Hopefully this has sealed Labour’s fate at the next GE.
You overestimate the electorate, I fear.
““We built the common good.”
There is no common good – just Socialist, collectivist claptrap. Only the individual knows what is good for themselves and their family.
And “we” built an over-staffed, underinvested, inefficient, uncompetitive, failing economy that was doing so well – inflation 22%, mortgage rates, 16% bottom tax rate 35%, top 83% + 15% supertax for the wealthy, enormous debt – so “good” the IMF had to come and bail us out in 1976.
Coal mines: how many closed pre-1980? 890. How many after 1980? 160.
It is hard to understand what kind of mind this fool has. He certainly is not living in the real World.
A ruling Party rigging the electoral system to keep its opponents out and cling on to power.. UK has become Zimbabwe.
Bring back State Control.
Get Brexit Undone.
Doesn’t thrill me.
Andy the imbecile.
Blairs plan is carrying on
The “new path” of socialist state expansion that we’ve been on since the beginning of the 20th century.
Since 1945.
Aided by the damage caused by WW1 and its effects on the country and its finances.
The world ended in 1914.