Andy Burnham is destined to be a disappointment

You cannot endlessly tax and borrow your way to prosperity, no matter how worthy the spending sounds daily Telegraph 15/05/26 The King of the North is assembling his troops, preparing to march on Westminster. Andy Burnham has finally found a seat for his long-awaited chicken run, hoping Labour’s National Executive Committee selects him as the candidate for Makerfield after Josh Simons stepped aside in the Wigan constituency.

Simons was once touted as a Labour rising star before allegedly attempting to smear journalists investigating questionable accounting at Labour Together, the think tank he used to run. Simons says he is making way for a leader with the “radicalism, energy and immense courage to meet the moment”. Burnham certainly thinks he is the country’s saviour. He claims Labour has already “made changes to make life better” during its first two years in Government. Really? Voters appear unconvinced. At last week’s local elections, Reform secured 50 per cent of the vote across Makerfield’s eight wards, compared to Labour’s 22 per cent. Simons’s majority sits below 6,000. Despite Burnham’s local profile and all-round Manc-appeal, there is a very real possibility he could lose both the by-election and his mayoralty to Reform, plunging Labour into further chaos. Still, Burnham insists: “We will change Labour for the better and make it a party you can believe in again.” The problem is nobody seems entirely sure what Burnham himself believes in beyond “Manchesterism”, whatever that means. Westminster has long joked: “A Blairite, Brownite, Corbynite and Starmerite walk into a Manchester bar and the barman says: ‘What can I get you, Andy?’” Burnham’s ideology blows with the political wind. His self-styled Manchesterism is essentially a blend of business-friendly socialism (if that isn’t an oxymoron) and aggressive devolution: local control over transport, housing and education, with councils empowered to “fix the foundations” of everyday life. In theory, much of it sounds sensible. In practice, Britain already has examples of devolution failing badly. Wales has been economically broken almost beyond repair while Scotland is now drifting back towards nationalism. Burnham remains personally popular, boasting a net approval rating far above Keir Starmer’s. But his flagship projects reveal the limits of his model. Take the Bee Network, his promised London-style integrated transport system. Years after the fanfare, commuters face endless closures and have largely spent recent months on replacement buses. The “world-class” scheme is currently being held together by temporary timetables and engineering works. Similarly, Burnham’s TravelSafe and LiveChat crime-reporting tools have generated thousands of complaints about anti-social behaviour on public transport. Their popularity has underlined not success, but the scale of the disorder they were designed to tackle. Then there is housing. Burnham famously pledged to end rough sleeping. His Housing First and A Bed Every Night schemes have reduced homelessness compared to 2017, but the wider housing crisis has only deepened. Thousands of children across Greater Manchester remain trapped in temporary accommodation while rents continue to rise. Since the BBC moved into MediaCityUK in Salford Quays, Manchester itself increasingly resembles a city built for investors rather than residents, with surrounding towns left behind. Luxury apartment blocks dominate the city skyline while young professionals are priced out. Burnham talks endlessly about “inclusive growth”, yet many Mancunians feel excluded from the prosperity supposedly being created around them. Like the rest of the UK, they are paying ever higher council tax bills for ever-diminishing public services. Even Greater Manchester Police’s (GMP) recovery tells a more complicated story than Burnham’s supporters admit. Under Chief Constable Stephen Watson, arrests have surged and performance has improved dramatically following years in special measures. Yet critics argue the force has become increasingly heavy-handed while a major independent review into grooming gangs in Oldham delivered a scathing assessment of GMP’s historical and ongoing conduct. As of late last year, GMP was still under investigation for its handling of over 1,000 grooming gang suspects. The Auditor’s most recent annual report cited GMP’s “challenging financial position” for the 2026-2027 period. Meanwhile, Labour’s dominance in Manchester has been fracturing on Burnham’s watch. The Greens have surged in the city centre while Reform topped polling across the wider region with 31 per cent of the vote. Increasingly, voters seem willing to back Burnham personally while abandoning Labour altogether. That may help him in a by-election, where anti-Starmer Lefties could rally behind him. But victory in Makerfield is far from guaranteed, especially if Reform fields a decent opponent. The party’s 2024 candidate, Robert Kenyon, came second, benefitting from an 18.7 point swing. Unlike Burnham, he’s had jobs outside politics. He’s a plumber, served in the British Army and worked for six years in the NHS. And he’s local. He was elected for the Bryn with Ashton-in-Makerfield ward to Wigan council last week. If Burnham does make it back to Westminster, his “business-friendly socialism” will require eye-watering amounts of borrowing and spending – despite there Burnham has hardly calmed nerves. He has repeatedly argued Britain must stop being “in hock to the bond markets”, claiming governments have become too timid about public spending. His answer is another £40bn in borrowing alongside looser fiscal rules and carve-outs for infrastructure and defence investment. He insists borrowing for long-term assets is fundamentally different from borrowing for day-to-day spending. Markets, however, tend to see borrowing as borrowing. Nor is Burnham particularly honest about the trade-offs involved. Every grand infrastructure pledge, every subsidised transport scheme and every new regional authority ultimately depends on taxpayers footing the bill. His politics rest on the comforting illusion that Britain can enjoy Scandinavian levels of public spending without Scandinavian levels of taxation. Voters are promised better services, cheaper transport and more state intervention, while politicians quietly avoid explaining who pays. Burnham’s allies claim investors would eventually “fall into line” behind his supposedly pro-growth, pro-community agenda. But confidence cannot simply be declared into existence by politicians. You cannot endlessly tax and borrow your way to prosperity, no matter how worthy the spending sounds. With “Red Ed” potentially handed the keys to the Treasury, Burnham’s economic instincts would be given rocket fuel. For all the rhetoric about renewal and radicalism, the only guaranteed change Burnham offers may be making Britain poorer. Markets are already watching nervously at the prospect of a post-Starmer Labour Party led by Burnham alongside an emboldened Ed Miliband. Britain’s borrowing costs sit at a near three-decade high, with gilt yields climbing above the levels Labour once blamed Liz Truss for crashing the economy.