The Burnham-backing pressure group Mainstream has published a 69-page document outlining how Burnham should ‘scale up Manchesterism nationally’. Oh boy…
The ‘highlights’:
- Public ownership of energy and water (national corporations), housing and transport (city-region scale), and care (municipal). They’re at pains to insist this isn’t “nationalisation”, obviously…
- Let Thames Water fall into special administration and take it into public hands on the cheap.
- A beefed-up GB Energy with a real trading mandate, plus regional public housebuilders building at postwar scale on public land.
- A “national energy guarantee”. A free block of gas and electricity for every household.
- Scrap remaining energy levies, an “emergency brake” on rents, and a subsidised national bus fare cap (cheaper still for under-25s).
- Structure the new bodies to sit off the government’s books, Dutch-style, so the borrowing dodges Reeves’ fiscal rules. Burnham plans to sack her anyway…
Read the full document below:
Mainstream: The Productive State a Framework for Manchesterism by Guido Fawkes
