At his first PMQs Burnham refused to rule out tax rises:
Kemi Badenoch: “The markets are clearly worried that we now have a spendthrift Prime Minister who wants to say yes to everyone but cannot tell us where the money is coming from. He needs to pay for all his new promises and he has a choice: higher taxes, more borrowing or spending cuts. Yesterday, he said change begins with honesty. So will he be honest and tell us is he preparing to raise taxes again, yes or no?”
Andy Burnham: “I’ve already indicated my first moves were to cut tax but I’m not going to do what any Prime Minister has done and is write the Budget here. That would be the matter for my Right Honourable friend… But can I also say to her and indeed to the whole of her new shadow cabinet, the majority of whom were part of a government that lasted for 49 days, a short-lived government that crashed confidence in the economy, hammered people’s mortgages. She took a decision at the weekend, she removed a shadow chancellor who said that the Truss mini-budget was a mistake and she replaced that shadow chancellor with one that helped write the Truss mini-budget and dare I remind the House that the leader of the Opposition is on record as saying that Liz Truss is 100% right? What other thing can I say… other than God help us?”
He refused to rule out more borrowing. Burnham could also not say, when asked, how he would deal with rising borrowing costs.Which have spiked and wiped out more ‘fiscal headroom’…
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.”