Burnham Opens Door to Tax Rises in First Interview
Andy Burnham used his first interview since becoming the sole Labour leadership candidate to say “there is some room within that manifesto for movement on tax”, while promising to take responsibility for funding the defence plan “extremely seriously”. The plan he inherits leaves a £4.7bn gap for the next Prime Minister. He floated higher business rates on warehouses to fund relief for pubs and high streets, ruled out “crude cuts to benefit levels”, and confirmed he has not yet chosen a chancellor.
Seventeen days from Downing Street, this was the first sketch of Burnham-era fiscal policy: discipline rhetoric, a concrete business-rates rebalancing, and deliberate space for tax rises the manifesto’s drafters never advertised. Ed Miliband is widely seen as his favoured chancellor — an appointment the unions back and the City fears — and overnight reporting of government analysis suggesting the infrastructure cuts funding the defence plan could cost 10,000 jobs sharpens the trade-offs. Kemi Badenoch accused Starmer of “leaving this mess to his successor”. Watch the chancellor announcement before the 20 July handover: nothing will signal his direction more clearly.