00:00Well, Andy Burnham has got a vision which is firmly based upon his experience as being the sort of the
00:05mayor of Greater Manchester and having sort of, dare I say, put the place on the map.
00:10He benefits, dare I say, from having sort of taken over in 2017 when, of course, he sort of ran
00:16when the combined authorities were sort of formed, if you like.
00:21And, of course, they sort of ran for election.
00:23Indeed, we had them all over the country.
00:25But Andy Burnham, if you like, is the standout star, of course, he's the equivalent, if you like, of many
00:31others, but most especially sort of Sadiq Khan.
00:33But, of course, London is the place where it all happens.
00:36So, of course, that's the sort of the firmly where power is located and also finances.
00:41Burnham believes, and of course, there's a lot of justification for this, that if you can somehow take some of
00:46that power and also the finance that comes with it
00:49and put it into different areas of the country in the way that he has done in Manchester, then, of
00:56course, the local citizens will benefit.
00:59The reality is, of course, it's not quite as simple as that.
01:02And, indeed, Burnham, of course, is right upon the success, if you like, of the sort of the previous chief
01:08executive of Manchester, a certain Howard Bernstein,
01:10who was very sort of much of the view that the council should work together, which is not always possible,
01:16given the sort of the political sort of landscape that exists in different parts of the country.
01:21One of the sort of the issues is that, you know, Burnham's going to have to find extra money because,
01:26of course, why he doesn't want to end up in is a situation like Liz Truss,
01:29where the sort of the money markets take fright and they start to put interest rates up, the so-called
01:34guilt rate,
01:35which, of course, governs how much we pay in terms of sort of the if we borrow money and mortgages
01:39go up.
01:40Now, of course, that that's the sort of the nightmare.
01:42So the only way that you can do that is by sort of raising sort of taxation levels.
01:47Now, how is he going to do that?
01:48Because, of course, if the assumption is he'll sort of comply with the sort of the manifesto commitment of 2024,
01:54not to raise income tax.
01:57But, of course, as we've found, Rachel Reeves, probably not going to be the chancellor for much longer.
02:02She tried to find creative ways around this.
02:05Now, of course, there's various sort of whispers about what this may involve.
02:08There could be local land tax on all sort of properties.
02:12Now, of course, there'll be winners and losers.
02:13One of the things that's been mooted is in terms of sort of shifting money from the southeast to northern
02:19regions.
02:20What he's trying to do, and of course, there's a big vision in this, which, of course, is to sort
02:25of to somehow try to re-engage people in what's going on around them.
02:31So this is what devolution is always about, putting power in the hands of those who know what the sort
02:35of the issues really are and what the solutions may be.
02:38But, of course, it's always about finance, and this is where Andy Burnham may sort of come up against the
02:43sort of harsh reality that, you know, this is a country which, of course, is swimming in debt, if you
02:49like, or drowning, perhaps, more particularly.
02:51That's as a consequence, of course, we had the sort of the shutdown or lockdown because of COVID.
02:57We also sort of gave a lot of money away because of the sort of the Ukraine war that started
03:01four years ago.
03:02So there's a whole lot of issues and sort of the circumstances that sort of confront him now, as opposed
03:08to, say, 10, 15, 20 years ago, are different because of the sort of the amount of money that we
03:14sort of we have to sort of pay in terms of servicing the debt on sort of the three trillion,
03:19sorry, three trillion pounds.
03:21A lot of money, so 12 noughts, and it costs over 100 billion simply just to sort of pay the
03:26debt on that.
03:27Now, all of those things notwithstanding, Burnham is of the sort of the view, the sort of the previous way
03:33that we do things has failed.
03:35Now, of course, there's arguments about that, but undoubtedly people are disillusioned.
03:39And, of course, we've seen that going right back to 10 years ago, you know, when we had the sort
03:43of the vote on Brexit by a sort of a narrow but a significant, sufficiently robust majority of people or
03:52the sort of the collective will of the sort of people of the UK is that we should leave the
03:56EU.
03:56Now, of course, we're not going to enter all the sort of the ways and workforce as far as that
04:00vote was concerned, but there were many issues there which led people to believe that somehow people in Westminster don't
04:07understand their issues.
04:08Burnham, of course, he's a man who sort of speaks with a fair degree of authenticity, or he's seen as
04:13being authentic in a way perhaps that sort of Keir Starmer certainly wasn't.
04:19Now, again, coming to a conclusion, will it succeed?
04:22Well, it's really difficult.
04:23It's not to say we shouldn't try, but, of course, the sort of the obstacles and the sort of the
04:27hurdles that he'll have to overcome are sort of pretty considerable.
04:30But he's made a sort of pretty rapid start.
04:32The reality, of course, is that we've yet to see all of the detail.
04:35And, of course, the sort of the thing is, though, he's got probably maximum of three years to sort of
04:40to create some success, because, of course, that's the whole point about this.
04:44If Starmer had been successful and had kept some Labour high in opinion polls, we wouldn't be in this situation
04:50now.
04:50And that's what it's really about, the Labour MP's fear for their own seats.
04:54But the bottom line always is, if there is some degree of success and hopefully spectacular success, although I think
05:01that's really put it out at the extreme, then, of course, we all collectively start to feel better off.
05:06And that's what politics is always about, because, of course, people do not vote for sort of parties that make
05:11them feel worse off.
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