Out with the old, in with the old

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So far, the Burnham rhetoric has been better than the Starmer rhetoric, but that isn’t exactly a high bar. The substance – to the extent that there is anything other than a superficial paint job – will emerge in the coming days and weeks. Later this year, there will be (we are told) a 10-year plan. In the light of the recent rate of turnover in leaders of the UK government, the degree of confidence that Burnham will still be around to see the plan published (it will, inevitably, be later than proposed), let alone to see it through to implementation, cannot be high.

Some of the signs are not good, already. Putting a man who resigned from government because the Treasury wouldn’t divert enough funding away from protecting people against poverty and ill-health into deterring imaginary Russian threats in charge of the Treasury doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that the ‘change’ being demanded by Burnham will be quite the change that we need. Rhetoric about moving away from the neoliberal approach of the past few decades is utterly undermined by the statement that the arbitrary fiscal rules – only ever invented in order to entrench neoliberalism into the UK government’s economic philosophy – will be adhered to.

Scrapping the mad scheme for digital ID is a welcome step, but the mathematics behind diverting the uncommitted funding from that into a reduction in VAT on electricity costs are a little dodgy to say the least. Those paying the fuel bills – and especially those living in fuel poverty – will welcome any reduction, but when reduced to the level of ordinary household bills, the saving doesn’t look that large. £45 a year off the energy price cap equates to around 86p a week, strangely reminiscent of Gordon Brown's derisory 75p per week pension increase in 1999 - and worth rather less when inflation is accounted for.

We need more than a sharper rhetoric, a more developed sense of humour, and a bit of tinkering at the edges, but there are no signs as yet that Burnham is any more capable of envisioning a different approach than his predecessor. Being better at selling the same basic approach might buy him some time, but it will do little more than that.