Burnham hires men who administered Thatcherism
Burnham says he will end 40 years of Thatcherism, but keeps Reeves's fiscal rules, a corporate lobbyist as chief of staff and a welfare cut still coming.
Disabled claimants facing a revived work-capability style test got their answer on Friday: the man vowing to end 40 years of Thatcherism plans, first, to reduce the welfare bill.
Andy Burnham was confirmed as Labour leader at TUC headquarters in London on 17 July, winning the backing of all 379 Labour MPs and every affiliated union. In his first speech as leader-in-waiting, he pledged “a new path from the one we have been on for 40 years,” promising to end Thatcherism, restore public ownership of utilities and build council homes. He becomes prime minister on Monday.
The welfare bill he wants to reduce
Burnham has already set out where the money comes from. In June he told reporters: “I am not squeamish about saying that the plan would be to reduce the welfare bill. Not at all.” He frames this as a “preventative state” rather than “crude, short-term cuts,” moving claimants into work.
His welfare tsar, Alan Milburn, has held private talks with Burnham and says the incoming prime minister knows welfare reform is “absolutely necessary.” Milburn’s own report criticises the failure to link Personal Independence Payment to work requirements.
Standing at Burnham’s shoulder as chief of staff will be James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary who introduced the Work Capability Assessment in 2008 specifically to cut spending on out-of-work disability benefits, telling the Liverpool Echo that year: “People who scrounge from the system take money away from legitimate claimants.” Academic researchers at Liverpool and Oxford later linked the WCA reassessment process to around 600 suicides between 2010 and 2013.
What stays the same
Burnham has re-committed to Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules and the 2024 manifesto tax lock. Bond markets have shown little concern, helped, reports suggest, by Burnham “burnishing an image of fiscal responsibility.” Shabana Mahmood, seen in Westminster as the safer pair of hands for the markets, is the frontrunner for chancellor over the left’s preferred candidate, Ed Miliband, though no appointment is confirmed before Monday.
Purnell resigned as a director of Flint Global, the lobbying firm he runs whose clients include Uber, Amazon, BP and Apple, in a Companies House filing dated 24 June. No 10’s business adviser under Keir Starmer, Varun Chandra, stays in post.
The counter-case
Burnham has been leader for three days and has cut nothing yet. Public ownership of utilities, council housing and social care funding are real breaks from the Starmer years, and he explicitly rejects “crude” cuts in favour of moving people into work. Whether that survives contact with a chancellor chosen to reassure the bond market, and a chief of staff who built the last decade’s disability assessment regime, is what the next few months will show.
The government that promises to end Thatcherism has hired the men who administered it.
