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11:11 26.07.2026 •
Andy Burnham will become Britain’s latest prime minister. What do we know about him? It is true that he did not have a lot of time to prepare his agenda, UnHerd notes. The time between a US presidential election to the inauguration is a little over two months — with a Christmas and New Year’s break in between. This is a little, but not much more, than the time between Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election and his arrival at No. 10. Certainly, it does not take years to formulate an economic strategy.
It is the implementation that takes longer. Burnham has expressed a lot of ideas about British society. He has policies — but I’d struggle to identify an overarching strategic objective beyond the usual platitudes of social justice.
Burnham inherits a problem that his predecessors failed to address. Productivity growth in the UK collapsed directly after the global financial crisis in 2008 and never recovered. Until then, the City of London was the gift that kept on giving. In Germany, it was the car industry. One European country after another lost its business model. What happened in all of these countries, including the UK, is that more and more people become dependent on welfare. It became normal. Germany renamed its welfare program a “citizen’s income”, as though it were a basic human right. But the shift from welfare as an insurance policy to a welfare as a personal choice has trapped European societies in a vicious circle. The greater their welfare dependency became, the more they fell behind in investment and innovation.
Burnham has not given us any plan to fix this problem, let alone one I could disagree with. There are socialist ways of raising productivity growth, and libertarian ways. But let’s not get hung up on ideology. The fall in productivity growth is not about who gets what. It’s about investment, and most investment comes from the private sector. Companies invest to become more productive and innovative.
What does Burnham think about private-sector investment? I haven’t the foggiest, and nor does anyone else. I don’t get a sense that this is a question that keeps him up at night.
He has, however, thought a lot about public-sector investment. But the two are not the same. About 80% of all investment in the UK is from the private sector. So if Burnham pushes ahead with his public investment plans by raising taxes, what I’d expect to see is a fall in private investment that exceeds the rise in public investment. It’s basic math.
As for Starmer, he clearly was not a reformer, but at least Rachel Reeves imposed fiscal rules that kept the show on the road. But, again, have no clear idea where Burnham really stands on those rules. He said he would follow them, but this is easier said than done unless you have a clear idea of what to do when the numbers no longer add up.
So rather than leaking the names of Cabinet ministers, maybe Burnham should have told us about how he intends to fix the productivity problem while keeping the country solvent. At this point, we don’t need details. We need direction.
“It borders on delusion to think that you can draw lessons from the governance of Manchester for the UK.”
Burnham has lots of policies, for example on devolution. I am not against this. It is possible that local governments spend money more wisely than central government. The other way around is also possible. Either way, there is no link between the degree of decentralization and innovation.
Burnham knows local politics better than most politicians do: and maybe it is easier to fix some problems locally. But it borders on delusional to think that you can draw lessons from the governance of Manchester for the UK as a whole. Cities don’t have bond markets, nor currencies that can devalue. And the mayor of Manchester does not have to put up with Donald Trump. The idea of a Northern No. 10 is a nice publicity stunt; but it is about appearances, not substance. I therefore make one specific and confident prediction: Burnham will not solve the UK’s underlying economic issues.
Electoral success and problem-solving are not the same thing, of course. Margaret Thatcher would probably have lost the 1983 elections had it not been for the Falklands War. Angela Merkel managed to win four elections in a row and yet failed to address her country’s economic problems.
But the importance of problem-solving (or lack thereof) does not mean that you should keep ignoring the economy. The persistent failure of the previous generation to address the problems of a permanent decline in productivity has made European countries harder to govern. And the longer people are trapped in the welfare system, the harder it will be to get them out again. If you fail to solve a problem for long enough, eventually it catches up with you.
The odds of a successful Burnham premiership are shortening precisely because previous prime ministers have prioritized short-term expediency over long-term strategic action — and because it looks like he will do exactly the same. But we are already living in the long-term. The fact that politicians like Cameron or Johnson succeeded politically without solving the country’s deep-seated problems does not mean that the current generation of politicians will enjoy the same luxury.
In politics, as in football, outsiders can win, and favorites can lose. But we should not fool ourselves about Burnham. He does not have a strategy to fix the British economy. Those who are hoping he will do it by chance will be disappointed.
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