From my Conservative Home article
Mr Burnham has set himself up to fail. He looks backward to the 1980s. This was an era which most voters did not live through. He seeks to refight old battles which Labour lost by miles at the time. Having a distorted view of history is bad modern politics ignoring the experiences and preoccupations of modern electors and running the risk of getting them to tune out. It clouds his judgement about what is needed now to revitalise the economy, boost jobs and restore confidence as it is based on a false analysis of what happened in the 1970s and 1980s.
Most people who lived through those decades remember the financial and industrial collapse under Labour in the 1970s followed by the very strong recovery and rebuilding after 1981 led by Margaret Thatcher.
Mr Burnham wrongly thinks private capital and competition which blew as a reviving wind through the socialist 1970s economy a few years later are the cause of modern troubles. When tried in the 1980s they gave us rapid growth, many new jobs and a big boost to tax revenues. He should think again. Our car industry which had slumped in the 1970s doubled its output. Now as then the biggest problems come from monopolies, state mismanagement and ill directed regulation.
Labour already has a Post Office and British Steel in the public sector losing fortunes each year with no plans on how to save all the jobs and turn round the businesses mired in losses. They inherited a largely nationalised, heavily loss making, rail industry which does not allow competitors to bid to run different and better services.
They wish to double down on the poor performance of the monopoly by stifling what remains of private finance and initiative. More of the delays and cancellations came from mistakes of long nationalised Network Rail than from the private sector train operating companies.
No-one today thinks we should renationalise British Telecom and recreate a state monopoly. When we had one such it rationed access to phone lines, limited the equipment you could add to the network and kept the UK years behind the US in technological developments. Privatisation and the advent of competition led to exploding growth.
It rescued our services driven economy that needed so much more capacity and flexibility in communications and data than the old state owned BT provided. The great success in expanding our financial services sector depended on access to more and better telecommunications. It was the private sector that developed mobile phones and later the much needed broadband networks with fibre optic cable. Nationalised BT ran on copper cables, electro mechanical not electronic switches and wired in fixed telephones.
Today Mr Burnham wants to nationalise water, seizing on the strong public anger about sewage discharges to rivers and the recent high price rises these regulated private monopolies have inflicted on customers. He will discover that nationalisation will make the problems worse, as they did when we had a fully nationalised set of monopoly water companies prior to 1989. The faults of the industry today are the same as they were then. They stem from monopoly, not from private ownership.
One of the last acts of the nationalised industry was to poison some water users from the Camelford works. In the hot, dry summer of 1976 large numbers of customers lost all supply of water to their homes and had to queue to fill buckets from street standpipes. The nationalised industry could never get enough public money to expand and modernise its facilities as it needed to do. How would today be any better, when public spending pressures are acute and the state is already borrowing far too much?
Putting water onto the public accounts would greatly add to the strains. After all, the whole point is the regulated industry did not invest enough either thanks to strict controls on new capital so we need to spend a fortune on bigger pipes, more treatment works and new reservoirs.
Mr Burnham sees that the UK is way off being able to deliver the 1.5 million homes over five years Labour promised. It will be pushing it to do 200,000 a year, not 300,000. Instead of asking himself how the government has driven mortgage related interest rates so high through its own excessive borrowing, or why people struggle to pay the extortionate Stamp duties on homes, he has decided that the state can build and pay for more homes instead. He wants to provide more Council homes, though he probably means more social housing through Housing Associations. He will find that this imposes more strains on state finance and will come nowhere near the numbers required to hit the pledged 1.5 million 2024-9.
Everything Mr Burnham says is geared to polling and to his immediate political task, self defined as seeing off the voting threat from Reform. As Prime Minister he will be judged more by what he does than what he says. He will discover it will not matter how he spins it if the underlying reality of people’s lives is different to his honeyed tongue account. Labour MPs brought him in as Leader because he beat the Reform candidate in Makerfield. They misread that election. It wasn’t Labour that won the election. It was the anti Starmer candidate with the power to topple the PM if he got elected.
Mr Burnham is right about one thing. People want change. They are angry about depressed standards of living and high prices. He is wrong in thinking you need to put our taxes up to solve that, as it is the high taxes that cause much of the anger and stress in family budgets. We can afford the 45 per cent of the petrol price that goes to the oil company, but not the 55 per cent that is tax for the government. Home buyers are put off by high Stamp duties. Business people cannot afford to offer more jobs to young people because of the high costs of National Insurance. Farmers are giving up because of the Farms tax, and because the grants are now given out to stop them growing food instead of to help them farm.
In Mr Burnham’s world, more income and benefits come from the state in a crazy money-go-round where many have to pay more tax, to get some of it back as subsidy because the tax has done so much damage. The nationalised steel industry has to pay huge energy and carbon taxes, only to get a subsidy to pay the resulting losses.
It all creates work for administrators to do, taking the money off us and giving back some of it after a big handling charge.
Mr Burnham is also split over his lack of mandate and the need to stick to Labour’s Manifesto which he did not stand on. It did not contain a lot of positive change in it. He would be well advised to cancel the tax rises, the giveaways of our overseas territories and the other obvious violations of the Manifesto by the Starmer government but I doubt that will occur to him as a good
July 31, 2026
You refer to ‘the socialist 1970s economy’. Some of us recall the great achievements of that decade when the ‘socialist’ Ted Heath took us into Europe.
Reply Name a success. Socialist Heath introduced comprehensive wage,price and dividend controls which of course failed to control the inflation he caused. The Labour replacement government turned the inflation into a run away inflation and a visit to the IMF for a bail out. Membership of the EEC led to a collapse of a lot of our not very competitive industry with high unemployment as tariff protection was removed.
July 31, 2026
Unfortunately we have been reduced to ‘political parties’ which do not even consider the obligation to deliver what they say they will in their manifesto.
We have competing Narcissists who say whatever wins the argument – or campaign – on the day. And they drive each other into more mad and undeliverable ‘promises’, indeed I don’t believe they even comprehend that they are making promises – they compete on the virtue signalling rules which mean that you say whatever trumps your opponent in the ‘I’m the nicest person stakes’.
It like watching the Miss World Competition of old: ‘I want to get rid of poverty, war and injustice, unlike the rest of you squares’.
A politician of old would admit that it is impossible to get rid of poverty, war and injustice and try to deliver honest money and defended borders’.
We need some sort of binding obligation from elected political parties which do not even attempt to deliver their Manifesto – involving the Chiltern Hundreds.
July 31, 2026
Privatisation is not the answer in every given scenario.
It failed to work for the railways as was discussed yestwrday and sadly it has rather not helped the water industry – to put it mildly – alongside excessive housing development to cater for out of control immigration, badly affecting SE England particularly.
There is an argument for privatisation.. but not at any price as we witness the failures repeatedly today.
Reply Monopoly is the problem. Successful privatisation requires competition. Public monopolies are usually worse than regulated private monopolies but both are bad.
July 31, 2026
In the same way Labour under Starmer gained power just by not being the Conservatives, Burnham gained power by not being Starmer.
In both cases reassuring messages were sent out while unpopular plans were concealed.
There will be an issue funding all the things Burnham wants to do. Big tax increases are hinted at. It is not clear whether these would be implemented immediately or after the next election.
He has not addressed big issues like illegal immigration at all. It has all been small stuff.
The wheels may come off before then. He relies on ‘hope’ and positivity in his pronouncements,
Maybe he is hoping an alliance of the Left – Labour, Lib Dems, Greens plus those reliant on state handouts or employed by government will see him through?
July 31, 2026
If only the Conservative Party had not let its voters down so badly since it came into power after the last disastrous Labour government, the country wouldn’t be in the dire mess it is now. I will always be upset and bitter about that. I honestly thought I would be a life-long Tory voter but Prime Ministers David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak – and the Conservative politicians that stood by and allowed the destruction, have destroyed my faith. The only Prime MInister I haven’t mentioned, Liz Truss, is the one that wasn’t even given a chance. Whoever coined the term ‘the uniparty’ got it dead right.
July 31, 2026
You mention a ‘distorted view of history’ and ‘what most people who lived through those decades remember’.
I don’t believe there is one view of history. I certainly don’t believe what the media tell me about the 1970s.
I remember full employment.
Homelessness was traditional tramps rather than youngsters sleeping on the streets.
There was rampant inflation, but wages went up
The three day week did not bother me at all. It was a couple of extra days off work
Same with the so-called Winter of Discontent. I read about it in newspapers but it did not affect my life.
The famed ‘swinging sixties’ ? It was not like that around my way,
Nostalgia may play a part. They claim that for many people the times when they were around ten years old are often viewed through rose tinted glasses as the ideal era.
July 31, 2026
One has to ask how Burnham got to be PM when 3 months ago he wasn’t even a politician. He is a man without a plan but there are sime dark forces behind him who definitely have a plan.
Him continuing with the Chagos car crash and continuing to cosy up to Brussels are not going to generate growth or tax receipts. His prevarication over approving exploration of the North which will generate taxes and secure good well paid jobs is puzzling.
He is not old enough to realise the dire state of Britain when Maggie took over in 79 so we can o ly assume that his agenda is being driven by the unions who saw the 70s as the Halcyon days for them.
We have a lot more pain to come before these Fabians are removed and normal service resumed.
July 31, 2026
Yes was around and working in the 1960’s so remember well the situation at the time, and what followed in the following years,.
Then it was all about Union strikes, power and control, the Balance of Trade payment deficits, loans from the IMF, very high taxation, unemployment, devaluation, and even a limit on how much you could legally be allowed to take as spending money when going on a foreign holiday !
Then Local Councils looked after the roads, lopped trees, cleared ditches, sucked out drains, swept pavements, looked after playing fields, parks had a gardener who planted flowers and cut the grass. they maintained schools and Council housing, street lights, and cleared pavements and roads when it snowed.
Now they are simply a giant redistribution centre of taxes and money for benefits and fines.
So then Government had failed but the local Authorities still did what they were supposed to do.
Thatcher certainly dragged the government back to some sort of control for a short period and things started to look better but:
Now it would seem everything has failed !
July 31, 2026
john, you make the same mistake as Burnham by not mentioning immigration, legal and illegal, as being the biggest issue of the voters and country. he doesn’t mention it because he has no credible story or action. you are the opposition you should rip him apart on his biggest weakness.
Reply I do. I did a big interview on Talk tv yesterday calling on government to stop paying France for failing to stop the boats and proposing international court action against them for letting unsafe boats depart! I have often set out the case against mass migration here.
July 31, 2026
I was around in the 60s and 70s when the economy was dominated by unions and nationalised. There were power cuts and cables.
Today, we have had power cuts in London. The National Grid was nationalised to become Neso and recently whistle-blower engineers told the Opposition that the grid was operating too close to safety margins. The Nationalised bosses condemned the engineers for bringing the company into disrepute. They are depending on imports from Europe but the adverse weather is also affecting them, with nuclear power stations closing for lack of river water and the need for aircon. The anti cyclone is bringing low winds in summer as it can in winter. Gas stations are keeping us going for now but are going to close before long.
The Mancunian Candidate has decided to appoint a minister to replace Mad Ed with another Oxford PPE and LSE who appears to understand sums as well as her predecessor. This time I’m relying on 12v car batteries instead of candles.
July 31, 2026
Candles not cables. [Phone correction]