The Transport Secretary has been unable to explain how Burnham’s £2 bus fare cap – a Tory policy – will be funded. A Downing Street release states it will be majority funded by converting £400 million international climate finance grants into loans…
Heidi Alexander said:
“The detail of it needs to be worked through. But in order for loans to qualify as overseas development assistance, the terms of the loan need to be reasonably favourable to the developing country and it needs to contribute to developing that country’s economy. So it makes sense to switch the spending. Instead of it being a grant, it will be a loan, and that frees up money to spend on domestic priorities, to spend on our public transport.
The detail will need to be worked out… You will appreciate that I’m not going to sit in your studio and tell you how something will work when the detail hasn’t yet been worked through… I’m not going to give you the detail. I don’t have the detail to give you.”
Burnham’s government is simultaneously insisting that the loan conversion frees up all the cash while the loans themselves are so generous in their terms that they still count as ‘aid.’ Cuckoo…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”