Conor right here: My normal rule is that if a candidate isn’t being pilloried within the media, then count on the established order. For what it’s price, Jeremy Corbyn, who obtained that media therapy, believes that would be the case with Burnham:
Jeremy Corbyn on Sky Information as we speak, speaking about Andy Burnham:
“He doesn’t look like doing something totally different internationally. I wrote to him to ask if he’d help one thing as easy as an inquiry into authorities coverage on Gaza and the availability of weapons.” pic.twitter.com/vIzXjeAkxl
— Wokerati Marty (@WokeratiMarty) June 20, 2026
Burnham has additionally pledged to maintain on Residence Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who has helped lead the cost towards Palestine Motion protestors towards genocide with 1000’s arrested and plenty of charged with terrorism.
By Richard Murphy, Emeritus Professor of Accounting Follow at Sheffield College Administration Faculty and a director of Tax Analysis LLP. Initially printed at Funding the Future.
If Andy Burnham is critical about changing into prime minister, then there are a collection of questions he must reply earlier than anybody can sensibly choose whether or not he gives a real different to the present authorities, or merely a special character pursuing a lot the identical agenda.
The questions have to transcend character, competence, or electability. They should set up what he believes, what he would do, and the way he understands the challenges the UK faces.
Listed here are 52 questions, together with one closing vital one, I would love him to reply.
The Economic system
1. What’s the elementary function of the UK economic system?
2. Do you imagine financial coverage ought to prioritise GDP development, or ought to it prioritise wellbeing, safety and sustainability?
3. Do you imagine the UK authorities is financially constrained in the identical means as a family, enterprise or native authority?
4. Do you settle for {that a} authorities issuing its personal forex can at all times meet obligations denominated in that forex?
5. What function do you suppose taxation performs within the economic system: income elevating, redistribution, inflation management, market shaping, or all of those?
6. What’s your view on the present fiscal guidelines, and would you keep, reform or abolish them?
7. Would you proceed paying curiosity on all industrial financial institution reserve balances held on the Financial institution of England?
8. What’s your view on quantitative easing and quantitative tightening?
9. What would you do to enhance productiveness within the UK economic system?
10. How would you cut back Britain’s dependence on lease extraction, monetary hypothesis and asset worth inflation?
Wealth, Tax and Inequality
11. Do you imagine wealth inequality is now a better downside than revenue inequality?
12. What particular measures would you introduce to tax wealth extra successfully?
13. Ought to revenue from wealth be taxed not less than as closely as revenue from work?
14. How would you sort out tax avoidance by giant corporations and rich people?
15. What’s your view on reforming inheritance tax?
16. How would you cut back regional inequality throughout the UK?
Housing
17. Do you suppose housing ought to primarily be a house or an funding asset?
18. What would you do to scale back home costs relative to earnings?
19. What number of social properties would you construct annually?
20. How would you financial a large-scale social housing programme?
21. What would you do to reform the non-public rented sector?
22. Would you help land worth taxation, obligatory buy reform, or different measures to sort out land hypothesis?
Local weather and the Atmosphere
23. Do you imagine financial development may be totally reconciled with environmental sustainability?
24. What’s your technique for reaching web zero whereas sustaining public help?
25. How would you fund the transition to a low-carbon economic system?
26. What function ought to public possession play in vitality technology, transmission and distribution?
27. How would you make sure that the prices of local weather transition are borne pretty?
28. What insurance policies would you undertake to revive biodiversity, waterways and ecosystems?
Public Providers and the State
29. What ought to be the stability between public provision and personal provision in healthcare?
30. Would you reverse NHS privatisation measures launched since 2012?
31. How would you sort out the social care disaster?
32. What reforms would you make to schooling?
33. How would you rebuild native authorities after fifteen years of austerity?
34. What powers and funding would you devolve to native and regional authorities, and are you open to independence if Scotland, Wales and Northern Eire want for it?
Work, Earnings and Social Safety
35. What’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for work?
36. Do you help stronger commerce union rights and sectoral collective bargaining?
37. What’s your view on a job assure programme?
38. How would you handle financial insecurity amongst youthful generations?
39. What reforms would you make to Common Credit score and social safety extra usually?
Debt, Cash and Finance
40. Do you imagine the nationwide debt is a significant downside going through the UK? Please clarify your logic.
41. What do you perceive authorities debt to be? Ought to authorities debt at all times be decreased, or can it typically be elevated for good financial causes?
42. How do you distinguish between productive public funding and present spending?
43. What function ought to authorities borrowing play in funding infrastructure, housing and local weather transition?
44. Ought to the Financial institution of England’s mandate be reformed? Ought to it pay curiosity on central financial institution reserve accounts?
45. What reforms would you make to the banking system?
Britain and the World
46. What ought to Britain’s financial relationship with Europe be?
47. What industrial technique would you pursue?
48. How would you reply to growing geopolitical instability and commerce fragmentation?
49. How can we resolve conflicts within the Center East? What’s the UK’s function in that?
50. What function ought to Britain play in tackling world inequality and local weather change? 51. What’s the way forward for our relationship with the USA and NATO? What are the defence penalties of that?
The Greatest Query
And maybe a very powerful query of all:
52. What’s your principle of society?
That query issues as a result of each profitable political undertaking in the end rests on a solution to that query:
- Neoliberalism begins with the person.
- Conservatism begins with establishments.
- Reform begins with belonging and identification.
- The Greens start with nature and local weather.
- Labour historically started with solidarity, however that now not appears to be the case.
Earlier than Andy Burnham can ask individuals to help him, he wants to inform them the place he begins and what his priorities are, as a result of each coverage selection that follows relies upon upon his reply to that query. Isn’t that the least we must always count on?
