Burnham Tells His First Cabinet: We Are a Cost-of-Living Government
Andy Burnham chaired the first meeting of his new Cabinet on Tuesday, declaring his administration a “cost-of-living government” and ordering every department to find ways to ease the squeeze on households. Convening ministers a day after purging eleven of Sir Keir Starmer’s allies, he told them Labour was now “one team” and that all new policies must show how they would be paid for. The confirmed first act — scrapping VAT on domestic electricity from 1 October — set the tone.
The televised opening of the meeting was Mr Burnham’s first set-piece as Prime Minister, staged barely eighteen hours after a ruthless reshuffle that removed Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Darren Jones. His instruction that ministers “always show how they are going to pay” for policies was pointed, coming hours after his own flagship tax cut was attacked as unfunded. The Chancellor, John Healey, promised in his first words in the role to work “in lockstep” with the Prime Minister to “meet the fiscal rules with a buffer against uncertainty”. The test of “Burnhamism” will be whether costed retail offers survive contact with a Budget arithmetic his former colleagues are already picking apart.