Andy Burnham will blame Margaret Thatcher for the country’s problems today and vow to take Britain back to the 1970s – before the Iron Lady’s “wrong turns” – as he is officially installed as Labour leader. The Mail has more.
The Makerfield MP will hark back to a time before the “wrong turns” of the 1980s as his “coronation” at the top of the party concludes.
He will hint at nationalisations and more public control at an event in London – and later a speech in the South East.
However, Burnham – who will officially replace Keir Starmer as PM on Monday – is still not expected to take any questions from the media.
Instead he has been posting soft-soap social media clips, including him chatting about how he likes his tea, whether he wears socks with sandals, and his disapproval of Yorkshire puddings with Christmas dinner.
Burnham is becoming Labour leader after a token process that saw him nominated by nearly 95% of MPs, weeks after he returned to the Commons in a by-election.
One of the few backbenchers who did not endorse him, Graham Stringer, said he did not want to sign a “blank cheque” – warning the former Greater Manchester mayor needs to be more up front about his intentions.
On another dramatic day in UK politics:
- Burnham hinted he will expend “quite a lot of political capital” on social care reforms – after previously backing a ‘death tax’ charge on inheritance;
- Close ally Steve Rotheram, the Liverpool Metro Mayor, has given another strong hint at a “wealth tax”, arguing that it should be targeted at raising spending for a “sector or area”;
- Sir Keir will not attend his successor’s official confirmation, after spending yesterday on a farewell visit to Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv;
- Wes Streeting has denied a bizarre claim that he was spotted in tears near Burnham’s Parliamentary office.
In his address this lunchtime he will promise to be “unashamedly Labour in our priorities and in the decisions we take”.
He will say in a speech that his government will have the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected” and the “conviction to argue for our plans”.
Burnham will insist Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralised and economic power privatised”.
Making the economy work for people across the UK will require “a new path to the one we’ve been on for the last 40 years”, he is set to say.
He will pay a limited tribute to Sir Keir – who is not attending the event – for returning Labour to government, praising achievements on workers’ rights, the NHS and the passing of the Hillsborough Law.
Burnham was backed by 369 of the party’s 403 MPs, far surpassing the 81 needed, and secured the support of eight of the 11 unions affiliated with the party.
He steps into the job at a time when his party has trailed Reform UK in opinion polls for nearly 18 months and Labour will be hoping his presence will spark a bounce and turn around its fortunes.
Sir Keir has said he would have won the next General Election if he had not been ousted, but is “proud to hand over the party in good shape” to his successor.
But there is no clarity about Burnham’s policies, or how they might differ from Sir Keir’s agenda.
Business and unions have been alarmed at the idea of ‘Red’ Ed Miliband being made Chancellor – a prospect that seems to have receded.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is now being tipped for the crucial job.
Worth reading in full.
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If he’s trashing the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, does that also apply to Tony Blair, who took the Labour Party from the left to the centre?
Reminds me of the advert the Conservatives put on billboards all round the country just before Maggie got into power. Underneath a picture of a vast queue of people waiting outside the employment centre and disappearing into the distance were the words
LABOUR ISN’T WORKING!
I was around in the 1970s – teenager – and I vividly recall that, apart from the music, everything was crap.
In 1978/79, Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Party unveiled a poster showing the dole queue and stating – correctly – that Labour Isn’t Working.
Millions agreed with her and she entered No.10 and set about getting the country working again.
Burnham wants to return the country to the grim reality of the 1970’s ….. minus the good music.
Like the wonderful Government owned British Rail and British Layland
and Post Office Telephones.
Politically, Thatcher wasn’t conservative. Douglas Hurd described her as a Whig radical. How ‘Labour’ will Burnham’s politics be?
I look forward to the banning of moble phones, social media, green nonsense et al.
As long as it is pre EU times then we will also have achance to avoid that mistake altogether.
I’ve had my fill of things being banned. If you don’t like mobile phones or social media, feel free to avoid them but don’t be telling me how to live my life.
The thick, Keynesian/Fabians still don’t understand it. The country in 1979 was not only at an economic low, the Government had no money to drive the growth needed as JMK demands in his economics. At the same time, all Government owned industries needed massive capital investment to drag them from their dire 50/60s state. BR did a bit with the advent of the 125 and the woeful BL tried to with models like the Metro, but both did not have the capital to truly modernise. Equally the water, gas and electricity industries needed to improve to meet the demand of the country, especially water which needed millions if not billions to replace Victorian sewerage systems. Only private money could do this by raising capital that would not further bankrupt the country. The mistake was not keeping the golden shares but that was not Thatcher, it was Major first and then Blair, dictated to by the EU. Also, at the time, British PLC’s were dominating the globe with businesses such as Hanson buying up America, so the Thatcher government probably never foresaw UK plc being so weak that it could be bought up by French, Spanish and other countries that at… Read more »
1970s – I lived through it…
Inflation 22%
Mortgage rates 16%
Average pay inflation 14%
Income tax 35% going up in increments to 83% then 15% super tax in unearned income to give marginal rate of 98%
Corporation tax 52%
Brain drain – professional leaving in droves
Capital flight
National debt so high in 1976 IMF were called in
All industry State-run and inefficient, huge expense to taxpayers, heavily unionised daily strikes
Unemployment rising
Everybody depressed, general feeling of doom and gloom
Oh how I yearn for a return to the 1970s – and it seems the incoming Plonker Moron is just the one to do it.
His “experience” of the 1970s is extremely limited seeing as he was only born in 1970.
He won’t have experienced his parents getting up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night every night to redecorate the family home when the lights came back on.
I remember it all too well.
Don’t forget the other crazy shortages: loo rolls, sugar, petrol…
Looking forward to him being reminded regularly of his tweets demanding an election when the Tories changed leader whenever he deviates from their manifesto.
Funny how Burnham doesn’t like taking questions from the media. It’s almost as though he’s frightened of scrutiny. Or “frit”, as someone famous once said.
He is trying to stir up the North/South, poor/rich, Left/Right divide that we had in the 1970s.
It won’t work because it is Labour, the Greens and the Unions who turned their backs on the working people and have enriched themselves in the process.
In his actual speech today, he used the term “40 years”. I guess it sounded good as a spoken term, but you are looking at the fag end of the Major administration; 39 years might have been better, but it’s an odd number. Not a good idea to go back to 1996.
But that’s a political speech, not real planning.
If his desire is to take the country back to 1996 then he is wearing the wrong football shirt as that one is from the 80s.
If we are going back to the 1970s there were no migrants comming across the channel and we were just starting drilling in the North Sea for oil & gas. So Burnham has to stop all the migrants completely and start ‘Drill, Baby Drill’. If he fails to do these two things by the end of July he has to resign as PM.
Also there was no DEI in those days so that has to be abolished in all Government Departments, the Military, the Police, Education the NHS.
Here’s a radical thought: maybe he’s reducing the country’s wealth so we can’t be hit so hard for slavery or climate change ‘reparations’? After all, where’s the incentive to earn more if the organised crime mob won’t let you keep it?
It heads off the ‘nice country you got there… shame if something happened to it.‘.
Also, if we rejoin the EU, we won’t be able to pay a fee, but will be net takers instead.
Specifically 1976, when the UK went cap in hand to the IMF to borrow £3.9bn – just to tide us over until payday, of course.
The year it was just hot and weather, and not global boiling, doom and gloom.
Does this mean we will be going back to coal,oil and gas production again? Drop net zero,there was no such thing at the time, back to proper policing, back to shipbuilding, back to a productive steel industry, back to low immigration?
Think on, it’s not all bad!
And no woke bollocks either
Your the man? Women/trans/lgbtq+?
Thanks for putting a positive slant on it.
And six month waits for a phone, dirty trains and beer and sandwiches at No.10. These days union leaders would expect the best wine and chef cooked meals.
Believe me I know all the disadvantages too, but the morals and values were better, all politicians feared scandals, all politicians at least tried to be patriotic, our own flags weren’t treated as disgusting and workers knew they had to work for a living (the miners fought for their very livelihoods, not for luxury agendas) or be looked down upon as grifters of the state. People weren’t proud to be on benefits, and the safety of all women and children was revered and not arbitrary!
I for one am starting to wish Thatcher hadn’t gone to war with the miners, and shut all the pits, we could certainly do with a few pits now!
Im no big unionist either, they had way too much power and forced far too much suffering with stupid wage demands and strikes
Forgot to mention, you didnt have to be ashamed of being English or British!
Wasn’t the “war with the miners” more to do with the economic viability of working dwindling seams?
That and the miners demanding a four-day week….
Resources Resources Resources!
We are stupid enough not to use them!
The rest of the sensible world does!
MORE FOOL US!
No! At least 300 years of coal below your feet!? China and India still make good on their resources !
You believe that government agenda slop? Importing COAL from Poland and Australia is cheaper then?
There are at least 300 years of coal beneath our feet
You know very little sir!
Well he would, he’s to young to remember how F** up the country was.
Time for the Thatcher derangement syndrome sufferers to see the newsreel footage of the three-day weeks, the power cuts, strikes, fuel rationing and uncollected rubbish lining the streets. And the sheer utter hopelessness until she came into power. I was trying to run businesses then, and write from experience.
It’s deja vu all over again right now.
He and we will all be reminded of the time before 1979 as the Tory and Labour mismanagement become so acute the issues can no longer be rushed under the carpet.