Will Burnham beat the OBR?

Can Andy Burnham really change Britain if he accepts the economic rules that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects every government to follow?

In this video, I argue that this is the defining economic question facing the next Labour government. The issue is not Andy Burnham’s leadership style, personality or political instincts. It is whether any government can rebuild Britain while accepting a fiscal framework built on assumptions created during the George Osborne era.

The OBR says Britain faces rising debt, higher spending pressures, increasing interest costs and the need for tighter public finances. But are those conclusions inevitable, or do they depend on economic assumptions that deserve to be challenged?

I explain why I believe the real constraints on the British economy are not government borrowing, but unused people, unused skills, unused knowledge and unused productive capacity.

I also explain why the cost of government debt matters far more than the amount of debt itself, and why government has considerably more control over those costs than is usually acknowledged.

Ultimately this is a debate about who governs Britain. Do elected politicians shape economic policy, or do fiscal rules become more important than democracy itself?

If Labour wants to rebuild Britain, it must first change the country’s economic framework. But has it got the courage to do so?