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Reform will fight Burnham’s universal death tax

We must fix social care but the PM’s plan isn’t the answer Daily Telegraph 25/07/26 Few things matter more to people than their home and their savings. So millions of people will be in for a shock this week, as our new Prime Minister sets out his plan to raid what they’ve built up to “fund” his plans for social care. No one doubts the importance of social care reform. I certainly don’t. I’ve seen in my own family the toll that our broken social care system is taking on families. I know many Telegraph readers will have painful experiences too. We haven’t seen any sign of a plan to fix it from Mr Burnham, but in the past he’s supported a flat 10 per cent tax on everyone’s inheritance. In other words, a universal death tax. There would be no exemptions, no thresholds, just a catch-all raid. Inheritance tax is already one of the most hated taxes – even by the vast majority who do not expect to pay it. That’s why, in the past, parties like the Tories have promised to abolish it, only...

Reform has just called Andy Burnham’s bluff on our immigration crisis

The PM has promised to hand power back to local communities. So why not let them decide if they want to house asylum seekers in their areas? Daily Telegraph 22/07/26 Andy Burnham’s favourite poet, we’ve been repeatedly told, is Philip Larkin . Our new Prime Minister will be well aware, therefore, of a certain poem that Larkin wrote exactly 60 years ago, in 1966. Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel is a hauntingly vivid sonnet – and it happens to be about a real hotel in Hull. I’m sure Mr Burnham knows this. But does he know what that beautiful hotel is used for today? If not, I bet he can guess. For the past six years, it’s been used to house asylum seekers . Given that Larkin died in 1985, we cannot say for certain what he would have made of this development. But I think we can take a pretty good guess. Especially as, in a letter to his mother in 1970, Larkin wrote: “ Mr [Enoch] Powell is still saying we must keep out the immigrants – a pity he isn’t leading the Co...

Burnham is a financial arsonist who will torch the public purse

The Prime Minister’s Jekyll-and-Hyde personality masks a ruinous socialism that threatens to bankrupt us Daily Telegraph 22/0 Don’t be fooled by the strange case of Andy Burnham, a Jekyll-and-Hyde politician par excellence . There are two contradictory sides to his personality: one reassuringly conventional, affable rather than ideological, the other darkly terrifying, committed to persecuting the petite and haute bourgeoisies of southern England. The first facet, on prominent display for the benefit of the financial markets, is that of the inoffensive tinkerer, the Dr Jekyll of the North, the fake outsider, the establishment Leftist who speaks a good game, wears T-shirts but is ultimately a standard non-player character, an instant captive of the Blob, a rearranger of deckchairs who will damage but not ruin Britain. Ten-year gilt yields are up, but have yet to explode. Burnham’s “big” ideas, so far, have been strikingly underwhelming and unoriginal for a man committed to “e...

Struggling voters deserve better than Burnham’s con tricks

If our new PM really wanted to put more cash in our pockets, he’d cut the green levy on energy bills, not the VAT that saves just 86p a week Daily Telegraph 21/07/26 Sometimes it’s the small things that reveal how tough times are. On Saturday, I went to pick up a suit from the dry cleaner. I asked the owner, a charming smiley man, how business was and he gestured glumly towards a long rail of clean garments in their plastic sheaths. “They’ve been here for weeks. People aren’t coming to collect their stuff,” he said. “They haven’t got the money.” Ours is supposed to be a prosperous market town so it’s a pretty clear sign that all is not well with the economy when picking up the dry cleaning becomes a luxury rather than a necessity. Hard-up people used to default on the mortgage, now it’s a Phase Eight cocktail dress. Cutting the 5 per cent VAT on electricity (not gas) bills, as Prime Minister Burnham just announced , will save struggling consumers a grand total of 86p a week – not...

The fatal weakness that sank Starmer could undermine Burnham

Being a skilled communicator is not enough. The incoming prime minister needs a clearer political direction Daily Telegraph 19/07/26 There is something peculiar about the coronation of Andy Burnham. It is not just that his ascension is without historical parallel. Or that it has occurred against the backdrop of a prime minister falling within two years after winning the third-largest majority in over a century. It is that we are about to get a prime minister and yet know very little about what we are getting. To be fair to Burnham, he did give a speech early on returning to Westminster. He has talked about rolling back “40 years of Thatcherism”. We hear much about “Manchesterism”. There’s a promise for “growth in every postcode”. However, journalists didn’t get the chance to ask him questions. And there’s not much in the way of detail. Clive Lewis – one of his earliest public supporters – has criticised U-turns made by Burnham. Positions on Waspi, rejoining the EU, immigration ...