Whether consciously or otherwise, Andy Burnham is currently preparing to be prime minister by drawing some sharp distinctions with his soon-to-be immediate predecessor.
Unlike Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Burnham is a more relaxed and direct communicator, more at ease with not wearing a tie, and more open-minded and creative in his policymaking. We already know about his radical, if not revolutionary, plans for a federal Britain, and his desire to exercise more “public control” (albeit a vague term) over vital utilities such as public transport, water and energy.
His sincere wish to regenerate beleaguered high streets and see “good growth in every postcode” is a clear response to the concerns he listened to during the Makerfield by-election, and is also high on his agenda. He has a nascent plan to shift the burden of business rates away from pubs and socially useful businesses in towns and cities, and towards the out-of-town malls (and perhaps more towards the digital sphere, though he’s been quiet about that).
He is also taking a healthy interest in the complex and contested issue of intergenerational fairness – and, in particular, the closely related shortage of affordable housing.
As The Independent reveals, Mr Burnham is considering giving an estimated £3.5bn in tax relief to young people so that they can save for a deposit to buy their first home.
Allies of the prime minister presumptive present this as part of a “major offer” to Gen Z voters, who happen to have been born during the life of the last Labour government, and who reached maturity in the era of Tory austerity, Brexit, and massively inflated tuition fees.
If there is such a thing as intergenerational fairness, they have some claim to at least have their case heard, and Mr Burnham is listening. As one MP close to Mr Burnham put it: “This is a major offer to young people, looking at education, employment, tax, public transport, rent to buy – helping through their lives.”
It is an interesting proposition, not least because it immediately addresses the cause of so much hardship – the cost and quality of accommodation. Of course, this is hardly confined to the young. Sadly, many families well into their thirties and forties have to put up with poor-quality flats and houses and absurd rents, with their efforts to raise enough to put down a deposit frustrated by the need to pay the landlord.
It cannot be right that so many bright young people in good jobs, and with excellent prospects, who have demonstrated their capacity to service a mortgage because they’ve been keeping up with a possibly even heftier rent bill, year in, year out, are still unable to obtain finance to buy a home.
Mr Burnham has also discussed how building more social housing could save on the country’s bill for housing benefit, where money flows more or less directly from taxpayers to landlords. This is not the way to create a property-owning democracy, and a society in which families have their own substantial financial stake. Indeed, the distortions in the housing market are serving to exacerbate wealth inequalities, because the children of parents who are fortunate to have large equity in their own properties, and are willing to subsidise them – the bank of Mum and Dad – stand at a huge advantage compared to others.
There is nothing wrong in bringing fresh eyes to these problems, but Mr Burnham has also committed himself to fiscal responsibility. At every step on his journey to make the economy fairer and more productive, he will have to demonstrate how his plans add up. This has also been stressed by Mr Burnham’s experienced and respected advisers, who include Jim O’Neill and Andy Haldane. Their preference is to use the credibility and transparency of a new independent infrastructure agency to raise money on the capital markets without provoking a financial meltdown. That could be an enormous help in realising Mr Burnham’s hopes.
Mr Burnham should also be conscious that every previous scheme that has promoted first-time buyers has tended to push up demand and therefore house prices, while doing relatively little to end the affordability crisis. Increasing supply by building 1.5 million new homes is the challenge that the Starmer administration set itself in its manifesto. The pace needs to be picked up if it is to be achieved.
The new prime minister is not quite the political chameleon he is so often depicted to be, though he has been on some journeys during his relatively long time in the public eye – and 25 years is longer than any of the other party leaders have managed, aside from Nigel Farage. He is, in the usual shorthand, plainly “soft left”, and not exactly what the nation voted for two years ago.
Further, Mr Burnham still needs to define himself more clearly, and prove that he can pay for his ambitious plans without simply imposing new and more onerous obligations on other groups. As a case in point, helping Gen Z to enjoy a better start in life shouldn’t be at the cost of going back to the bad old days of pensioner poverty.
Fortunately for him, Mr Burnham, not yet prime minister after all, has time in which to answer his critics and mature his thinking.
With goodwill, and the leverage he will enjoy in the first phase of his premiership, he can make a start as a great reforming leader, getting young people into work and onto the housing ladder, at last. But he must also hope that he doesn’t run out of other people’s money.