Guido has looked at comparable costs of starting new campuses and come up with some estimates for Burnham’s No10 North:
That lands at between £250 and £500 million. It’s an estimate…
Burnham is set to pack No10 North with local allies – he asked Caroline Simpson, chief executive of the Greater Manchester combined authority to be his deputy chief of staff and lead the unit. As Guido wrote in Labour Wars yesterday there is a lot of concern among insiders that this is an expensive gimmick. A Downing Street source said:
“We all fear we will be forced to attempt to run a G7 nation across two sites for a while until it is proven to be a disaster. But that won’t happen before we send dozens of people to Manchester, buy office space, get tons of secure IT, and ruin some Permanent Secretary’s career by making them go there.”
A Whitehall source said: “We left the EU only to replicate the Brussels-Strasbourg travelling circus at home.” When your taxes go up, this is what they are paying for…
Asked by Lobby hacks about his past comments on Trump (“any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now”) Burnham was blithe:
“Politicians say things throughout their career, but now the important thing is to focus on the moment you are in.”
Were it so easy…