Burnham — “Great Resentment” About IHT; Care Levy to “Save NHS”
Andy Burnham used Friday’s Makerfield campaign launch to put the NHS firmly on the agenda. Burnham said: “There is a great resentment about inheritance tax — take that away and look at a care levy.” The Greater Manchester mayor said he thought the NHS was “almost being overwhelmed” by a “broken” care system. The IHT-to-social-care-levy idea picks up a long-running social-policy thread: think tanks across the political spectrum have argued for hypothecating funds for adult social care, but no major UK party has previously made an explicit pledge. Burnham is the first senior Labour figure with realistic leadership prospects to put it formally on the table.
Burnham’s “there is a great resentment” framing is calibrated for the doorstep: it acknowledges voters’ lived experience of IHT thresholds and combines it with a substantive policy answer (the care levy) rather than a defensive position. The platform now has: proportional representation in the next manifesto, council tax reform, rail renationalisation, more council houses, wealth-tax openness (following Streeting), and the IHT-to-care-levy switch. The aggregate is materially to the left of the 2024 Starmer-Reeves prospectus while still committing to honour the existing manifesto. Sir Keir Starmer said on Thursday he would campaign personally for Burnham in Makerfield; the political theatre of a Prime Minister campaigning for a leadership-rival-in-waiting is now the central drama of the next four weeks.