Burnham: US result is an ‘opportunity’ to unite on cost of living
Andy Burnham said the midterm results gave the world “an opportunity now to unite around the issue that is affecting us all, and that’s the cost of living”, speaking from the Commonwealth summit in Antigua. “President Trump has accepted the results,” he said, adding that he could not bring living costs down “until the conflict in the Middle East is resolved” and Russia’s war in Ukraine ended. He promised to press other leaders to focus on both.
Mr Burnham said the cost of living had been the issue he had “put front and centre in my first three months in Downing Street” and that American voters wanted to “see the world coming together and focusing on the things that matter to people”. At Prime Minister’s Questions, taken in his absence by Louise Haigh, the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Daisy Cooper said voters had rejected Mr Trump’s “warmongering and the economic chaos that it has caused” and urged ministers to tell Washington and Jerusalem “there must be no more strikes”; Ms Haigh replied that the United States was “one of our most important allies and our priority absolutely is de-escalation”, called the war “catastrophic for the cost of living crisis” and said the Conservatives and Reform should “consider very carefully their judgment in calling for us to jump so readily into it”. Mr Trump told the Financial Times on Tuesday that the United States was “locked and loaded if we need to go”. The Bank of England’s decision on Thursday, where a majority of the committee is expected to vote for a rise to 4%, will show how far the squeeze has already fed through.