British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, in his first speech to the House of Commons as head of the Executive, attributed the origin of the country’s problems and, above all, the decade of slow economic growth, to Brexit, the exit from the European Union that was approved by the British in a 2016 referendum.
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The Labour leader claimed to have a clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong in the United Kingdom and explained it clearly: “since the 1980s, this country made a series of wrong decisions. Political power was centralized, economic power was privatized, the country was deindustrialized and austerity followed, weakening local councils and depriving them of the capacity to reverse this situation. And then Brexit worsened the damage, leading to a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.”
Burnham, who succeeded Keith Starmer as Labour leader and prime minister at the end of July, indicated that change begins with honesty. “Unless we are frank about what went wrong, we will not manage to change things,” he qualified.
Burnham also had words of thanks for his predecessor, who just yesterday announced that he will leave his seat as a member of parliament, according to a local newspaper report yesterday.
The British prime minister also promised to regain public control of more essential services, as well as to decentralize more powers to the regions of the country.
Burnham’s diagnosis
“Political power was centralized, economic power was privatized, the country was deindustrialized and austerity followed, weakening local councils…”
Andy Burnham returned to parliament this afternoon after ten years of absence as an MP, having resigned to run and win the 2017 elections to become mayor of Manchester. And he assured that his government “will be relentless in giving people and places what was promised to them 10 years ago: ownership and control,” as a step to achieve the country’s economic growth.
In this regard, the prime minister harshly criticized the “failed economic model” and the privatization policies prevailing in the United Kingdom since the 1980s, and advocated exercising “stricter public control over essential products” such as water, with the aim of lowering the cost of living.
Since coming to power, Burnham has emphasized the importance of decentralizing politics from London to the rest of the country and announced, among other things, the opening of an office in Manchester nicknamed the ’10 Downing Street of the North.’ He now seeks to go further. Specifically, he focused on achieving a decentralization agreement for the Cornwall region (western England) and extended the offer to other parts of the country.
On the other hand, he has also said he is willing to “study” a possible electoral reform and has committed, among other things, to presenting a bill on condominium ownership and leasing, to be able to end an “unfair” system.
In her first face-to-face with Burnham, the opposition leader, Conservative Kemi Badenoch, reminded him that the job of prime minister is very different from that of mayor of Manchester and called his growth vision “wrong”: “He believes that if the government spends more money, we will all become richer. That’s not how things work.”
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