Andy Burnham called for a ‘new politics’ yesterday, promising to seek as much cross-party support for his agenda as possible. Little sign of that today.
But then again, if the Prime Minister meant it, maybe he shouldn’t have reopened the Brexit debate while tackling politically toxic subjects like social care reform and the state pension triple lock.
The Conservatives’ decision to come out today in defence of the triple lock makes a depressing kind of electoral sense – they need the pensioner vote, and they know that Reform UK would attack them if they took a different course. But new polling shows the Tories as the only party whose economic plans the public think are more realistic than unrealistic. That’s a reputation worth being careful with.
There is, after all, plenty else to criticise in Burnham’s 10-year plan to convert Britain to ‘business-friendly socialism’. As Gerard Lyons writes for CapX today, reforming the triple lock is reasonable, but the idea that it will cover the costs of social care free at the point of use simply doesn’t add up. Indeed, Helen Miller at the IFS pointed out that triple lock reform won’t free up a pot of money at all – it only removes an unfunded liability. Burnham may want cross-party support for these kinds of accounting tricks, but he doesn’t deserve it.
Below you’ll find all the latest pieces from CapX, plus what we’re reading from around the web.
Marc Sidwell
Editor, CapX
Today’s Takes
Fresh thinking from CapX
Triple lock savings can’t pay for social care
Gerard Lyons
‘It makes little sense to suggest that an uncertain stream of savings can finance a large and potentially ever-rising spending commitment.’
Instead of confronting Britain’s grim fiscal reality, Andy Burnham’s conference speech promised to create a new system of social care free at the point of use. But free at the point of use is not the same as free, and while Burnham’s triple lock reforms are reasonable, they cannot cover the bill for social care. Read More
Burnham’s doomed National Care Service
Joseph Dinnage
‘There is something late-Soviet about our veneration of the health service. Our leaders know it is broken, and as does anyone who uses it, yet it is an act of treason to point this out.’
Andy Burnham wants to create a National Care Service modelled on the NHS. His project is bound to fail. The NHS has one of the highest treatable mortality rates in the developed world and the satisfaction rate is at a near record low despite record funding. Burnham needs to make it easier for new insurance providers to enter the market and make private healthcare more affordable for everyone. Read More
Labour are coming for your empty home
Harry Phibbs
‘The merest whiff that the British government does not regard private property as sacrosanct is very dangerous.’
Housing minister Matthew Pennycook announced Labour’s plans to seize private properties that have been empty for at least six months. This won’t do anything to fix the housing crisis, but the threat of confiscating assets will put a real dent in investor confidence. The state should tackle its own vacant assets before attacking private property. Read More
Stat of the Day
Best of the Web
We can’t afford Burnham's old-Labour policies
Daniel Finkelstein, The Times 🔒
‘And how can this be a good moment to propose taking control of utilities, spending even more public money and taking even more attention away from the things government is already failing at?’
Andy Burnham enjoys attacking the Thatcher government and labelling it the origin of where we went wrong. But he’s actually describing Britain 50 years ago, when James Callaghan made a speech to the Labour Party conference in 1976 discussing the need to control public spending. Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher knew that when the government does too much it fails. It’s time that Burnham listened. Read More
🎧The case for scrapping the Online Safety Act
Ben Ramanauskas
Reheated Help to Buy is a bad idea
Sam Dumitriu, The Spectator
‘In fact, a growing number of people who bought under Help to Buy are struggling as they refinance under far less favourable conditions.’
Labour are 500,000 homes short of their 1.5 million target so Andy Burnham is re-running George Osborne’s Help to Buy scheme. Yet the conditions that existed when Osborne laid out the original are almost the opposite to today. The biggest obstacle to getting homes built is their economic viability for housebuilders: the cost of building has gone up and house prices have gone down. A rerun of Help to Buy won’t change that. Read More
The Capitalist: the past was worse than you think
And if you want more...
– How to boost philanthropy in Britain (The Telegraph)
– What Hayek can teach us about AI safety (City Journal)
– We can get rid of mosquitoes (Works in Progress)
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