Andrew Griffith: Burnham’s only belief is that the state knows best
Andy Burnham has offered up a ten-year plan for socialism. Conservatives would do things differently, says Andrew Griffith
I sat down to watch Andy Burnham’s conference speech on Tuesday with trepidation but a genuine interest in what he was going to lay out for people who create jobs, take risks in starting their own businesses and ultimately for those who are currently paying sky-high taxes.
He spoke for the best part of an hour and I was stunned when he got to the end of his speech without mentioning the current burden on businesses, the jobs tax, the Employment Rights Act, business rates, corporation tax, or the City of London at all. Instead, he dedicated his first conference speech as Labour Prime Minister to state control.
Energy, water and housing are to go “back under stronger public control” with a new state-owned energy company set up to challenge private operators. Then came not an olive branch but a threat. Every business in a regulated sector was warned that if it did not serve the public interest, the state would take it into public control. In other words, the state knows best, and enterprise is to be tolerated when it behaves. For a speech billed as a break with politics as usual, it was a familiar Labour argument that completes their shift back to the 1970s.
He said Britain has been on the wrong path for 40 years and named deregulation as a wrong turn. Next month, it will be 40 years since the Big Bang made the City of London the world’s leading international financial centre, not to mention the powerhouse of the British economy that funds most of the public services he wants to expand. I want continued reform to boost competitiveness in the City, whereas the Prime Minister appears to want to reverse all that good work.
We also have a million young people not in work, education or training. The Prime Minister did acknowledge that Britain is full of brilliant businesses who want to employ them. His advice? “Help them do that.”
The nerve of it, from a government that charges businesses an extra £25bn a year for the privilege of employing anyone. Payrolls have shrunk by more than 200,000 since Labour took office. That is what Labour’s regard for Britain’s entrepreneurs looks like.
Undoing Brexit
He then decided to reject the votes of 17m people and the result of the 2019 Election by re-opening the long-settled Brexit debate, just as everyone had moved on. This summer, Andy Burnham told Makerfield voters, two in three of whom backed Leave, that he respected their decision. On Tuesday, he told his conference, “Brexit has done more harm than good”, and on Wednesday confirmed he would campaign for it at the next election. Rejoining means more regulation, less say in what we decide, billions in fees and our trade deals torn up. Any finance director who proposed that to his board, without knowing the final cost, would be shown the door by lunchtime. We would be paying for the privilege of losing control.
Any finance director who proposed that to his board, without knowing the final cost, would be shown the door by lunchtim
This isn’t the direction I would take the country in. We will cut taxes in our first Budget, abolish business rates for thousands of high street shops, scrap the Unemployment Act, get Britain drilling to bring energy costs down now, and take a chainsaw to red tape. All of it will be fully funded by fixing out-of-control welfare and cutting the size and cost of government.
Mr Burnham offered the country a ten-year plan for public control. When I take to the stage at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham later this week, I will lay out why Britain needs an economic revolution, led by the people who build businesses, not by the state and not by the EU.
Andrew Griffith is shadow Chancellor