Andy Burnham has taken a break from pledging not to enact Starmer’s policies and today’s been talking to train operators at the Rail North Committee meeting, mostly about the “big deterioration” of services by Northern Rail. Burnham was aghast at state-owned Northern’s continued use of fax machines – “How is earth is that the case in 2024?” He went on the attack:
“Your modernisation plan, like your training plan, is moving nowhere near fast enough. You could get rid of this stuff tomorrow. You could put in place IT to support people to communicate differently.”
Northern Rail’s response? Yeah, sure. But the unions…
“We wouldn’t be able to get rid of them tomorrow without an agreement with our train unions. We have to look at these issues with the depth and complexity they have and the historical issues that we absolutely are going to address. It isn’t as simple as turning them off tomorrow because at the moment we have an agreement to use the processes that we have and in order to change that, we do have to change the agreement.”
Burnham has discovered the unions. Remember Louise Haigh gave ASLEF train drivers a pay rise to £70,000 and reversed the previous government’s commitment to get rid of “Spanish practices.” Which allows staff to start their lunch break again if their boss starts talking to them and blocks the use of technology like video calls…
Former Treasury minister and adviser to Burnham in the Makerfield campaign Lord Jim O’Neill, who has turned down a role in his government, said Burnham’s first statement Commons was:
“The last thing investors wanted to hear… gilt yields have risen by a 0.25% in one day, which is a lot. We’ve not had that since Liz Truss days… If your country is under the focus of ‘can they come up with a sensible fiscal strategy’ on a day when the markets think ‘well no, you’re not showing any sign of it’ you’re going to have a tough day…if it stays like this your mortgage rate is going up.”