Incoming PM Andy Burnham backed a campaign by his transition policy chief – then a think tank director – to hike benefits spending by £90 billion. Funded by massive tax increases…
Andy Burnham’s transition policy chief Miatta Fahnbulleh made clear to Sky News that cutting welfare by reducing cash handouts or eligibility is off the table. Instead the nebulous “let’s get people into work” line was trotted out again…
Fahnbulleh’s New Economics Foundation, a think tank of which she was director for seven years, ran a flagship campaign for a “living income” in 2021. Fahnbulleh has held the idea so close she put it on campaign material for her 2024 run at the Peckham constituency…
The campaign reached a crescendo with a 2022 policy paper. This is the proposal:
Andy Burnham was a special guest as the NEF’s launch of its campaign, alongside Miatta Fahnbulleh. He also went on to support a pilot scheme of the campaign in Manchester just last year. At its launch event he said:
“We are saying to the government, let us here in Greater Manchester rethink the entire benefits system and turn it from a negative deficit model that’s trying to see the worst in people into an empowering system that builds people up rather than knocks them down.”
Burnham has indicated as of the one press interview that he’s done since winning in Makerfield that he will not attempt to cut benefits. Instead he backed a gargantuan socialistic ‘rethink’ of the system thought up by his policy chief – will Andy rule this out?
Badenoch said at her speech on Monday morning: “We are absolutely ready to fight a general election. We saw the results in Aberdeen South: 50% of the vote. Because we can unite the country… It’s about uniting the country, for God’s sake, behind a centre-right agenda.”