Team Burnham briefed Bloomberg and the FT last night that Andy is “being advised” by ex-OBR chairman Richard Hughes, former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill, and Carys Roberts, the former executive director at the IPPR think tank. This was meant to calm the gilt market…
Co-conspirators may remember Roberts, who spent some time in the No10 policy unit before exiting last year. Her personal mission is to increase taxes on employees and on wealth. She co-wrote a report which advocated for a radical proposal to combine employee NICs and income tax, apply them to all incomes on an annual basis, and apply a gradually rising marginal tax rate as income rises. A massive radical increase on “working people”…
Roberts’ passion is taxation of savers through the abolition of capital gains and dividend taxes in order to tax them as highly as income. Her report also called for the replacement of inheritance tax with a whole-life gift tax with a lifetime allowance of around £125,000 – effectively a gargantuan enlargement of confiscation of family inheritance. She personally supported John McDonnell’s plans to hike wealth taxes as well as to mandatorily reduce working hours. Here are some other policies she supports:
Zoe Billingham, the chair of IPPR North, is also advising Burnham – they all have the same ideas. Roberts additionally supports replacing business rates with a land value tax on all non-residential land, taxed on optimum use rather than current use. Burnham is a big fan of land value taxes which will hit the economy very hard – here’s an explainer…
Ex-minister Miatta Fahnbulleh led the capitalism-sceptic New Economics Foundation and is designing Burnham’s policies too. Any of these radical tax hikes will fail and Burnham will have to borrow more to fund his inflated spending commitments. Gilty as charged…
Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay up first…
Harriet Harman has told the Today programme she thinks Starmer, Burnham and Streeting should agree on a ‘process’ for a leadership contest, and Labour MPs should have the final say. Just six weeks ago, Starmer appointed Harman as his new ‘Adviser on Women and Girls’ in the wake of Labour’s local election bloodbath. Now she’s explaining to Justin Webb how he should probably go…
‘[They] should be got in a room by the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Lucy Powell, and the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Jess Morden, to agree a process whereby the Labour MPs choose who they want… you can’t govern without the support of Labour MPs… But that’s my view. I think the process should be Labour MPs choosing. And I think that’s the best thing for stability of government.”
She did at least add that a woman should be on the ballot as well. So Starmer can be reassured she’s still taking her new role seriously, sort of…
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that public sector borrowing in May was well above the OBR’s forecasts. Quelle surprise…
Borrowing was £23.3 billion in May – £5.4 billion more than in May last year and £5.6 billion more than the £17.7 billion forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility only three months ago. The highest deficit for any May since Covid…
Meanwhile gilt yields are rising on market open with the Burnham Makerfield news. Strap in…
Starmer-loyal Housing Secretary Steve Reed is on the broadcast round for the government this morning. Reed said of Starmer:
“He’s made clear his own position… That he’s not going to walk away and that he would he would fight it if there was a challenge. But we’ve got to focus not on internal debates in the Labour Party, but on facing the country and delivering the change.”
Asked whether he was in denial about Burnham’s intentions he said:
“Well, he said he said if there was a leadership challenge, he would be in it. But there isn’t. So therefore it’s hypothetical. Now I’m we are getting on with delivering change for this country… No, I’m not in denial. I’m just the country expects us to focus on the things that matter to them.”
Reed said focus now has to go on the Manchester mayoral election. He added “the public don’t like psychodrama” and said the Labour Party is “not going to fall apart in the way that the Conservatives did” after Burnham’s win: “Andy’s not that kind of person. Nobody wants that kind of fight inside the party.” If push comes to shove…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”