Burnham misses the point

Andy Burnham has positioned himself as a future Prime Minister and delivered what was billed as a serious economic speech.

 

It was not.

 

He promised more council housing, cheaper utilities, lower transport costs, greater devolution, more investment, and a full industrial strategy. Then he committed to keeping Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules, proposed no new tax powers, and made GDP growth the centrepiece of his entire programme, without appearing to notice that cheaper housing, cheaper energy, and cheaper transport all reduce GDP, because GDP rises when prices rise and falls when they fall. That is not a minor inconsistency. It is a fundamental failure to understand the metric he has chosen as his measure of success.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that around 14 million people in the UK currently live in poverty. Burnham acknowledged this reality and built his entire pitch around improving lives for ordinary people across the North and Midlands. But he cannot do that while accepting fiscal rules that prevent investment, refusing to raise taxes, and targeting a GDP figure that goes up when people's bills go up. The arithmetic does not work, the logic does not hold, and the speech answered none of the questions a serious alternative economic programme must answer.

The fact is that growth is the wrong target. Wellbeing, full employment, and the elimination of poverty are the right ones, but Burnham is not there yet, and Britain cannot afford a Prime Minister-in-waiting who is still this confused about economics.