00:01There is no doubt in the last 40-50 years we've seen a sort of massive decline in manufacturing
00:07employment. What has taken its place of course has varied. Sometimes the new tech manufacturing
00:15which of course is highly automated but also more particularly retailing. But of course
00:21what has happened to the jobs that were carried out by British workers, they are now done by
00:27sort of workers in the Far East, perhaps in India, of course lower cost base. So the difficulty is that
00:34globalization which is part of this issue has had a sort of massive impact in terms of our
00:39resilience. We saw that perhaps to some degree in the aftermath of sort of Covid or maybe during Covid
00:45that of course supply chains got disrupted and there were temporary shortages of things. Promises of
00:51change can sound attractive when public services are under pressure and household budgets remain
00:57stretched. Andy Burnham's pitch is built around moving more decision making out of the centre,
01:04backing local growth and giving communities more say over services that affect daily life.
01:10So what Andy Burnham envisages to some extent is creating or recreating if you like resilience,
01:16so it's home produced. The difficulty is that it's a nice dream to have but of course it comes down
01:22to
01:23how is it going to be paid for. Now of course this is part of the sort of the devolution
01:27agenda and of
01:28course he talks to sort of Manchesterism and what he did in terms of sort of stimulating Manchester as
01:33you know if you like sort of having his claims to be the second city of Britain after London
01:37and also of course the sort of the re-balance of the economy which of course happened on the sort
01:42of
01:42big bang which is way back under Margaret Thatcher, the deregulation of financial services.
01:46So lots of sort of money flows to the City of London but of course it doesn't create any jobs.
01:51The plans being discussed include deeper devolution, a stronger role for public bodies in essential
01:57services and action aimed at reducing costs for households and small businesses. For people in our
02:04part of the world that could touch areas such as transport, housing, energy bills, water services,
02:10jobs and high streets. Burnham has also signalled that he wants to keep discipline over the public
02:16finances which means choices would still have to be made about priorities. That matters because
02:23national promises often depend on local delivery from councils and transport bodies to health services,
02:30training providers and businesses. The idea that somehow that there's an easy button to press
02:37costs there isn't and it would require a tremendous amount of money which I keep sort of emphasizing and
02:42of course where's that going to come from? Well the only way it can sort of be found is increased
02:46borrowing because I give you Lee's Trust who tried to do something along those lines. Guilt levels went up,
02:52borrowing costs went up and of course we're still suffering the sort of the consequences of that so he's
02:56really wary of that one. You can also sort of take money out of existing budgets from departments and shift
03:01them around. Hey but you know that's that's going to cause mayhem and a lot of sort of upset and
03:06of course
03:06it's probably going to sort of even further unbalance the country in ways that sort of
03:12we do not want to happen. Also of course there's money that needs to sort of go into defense
03:17if we really believe the sort of the threat from Russia is as great as it does so there's money
03:21needed
03:21there also. So where else does that sort of leave it? Well of course you can sort of create more
03:26money by
03:27raising revenues but of course presuming Burnham sticks to sort of the election manifest of 2024 which of course
03:33he didn't run on remember of course he wasn't even an MP because he was the sort of the mayor
03:36of Greater
03:36Manchester and then of course that that it won't be income tax or national insurance um largely or
03:43sort of VAT so there's a whole range of other sort of taxes but it's kind of sort of tinkering
03:48at the
03:48edges so it really is difficult um in the sense that if Burnham is to sort of to adhere to
03:53the financial
03:53rules that Rachel Reeves has found herself sort of caught by but of course that was part of what
04:00Labour's have offered they weren't going to sort of destabilize the system then of course it's going
04:04to be very difficult and it's going to take some really radical thinking but you know I should say
04:09in conclusion um if now is you know not the time for some radical thinking you know we're in a
04:14crisis of sorts you know cost of living we've got sort of a working population of 33 million people
04:20nine million people are economically inactive for a whole range of reasons nine sorry three million of
04:26whom are sort of on uh long-term sick um yeah we need to do something to sort of to
04:31to rescue
04:32ourselves yeah notwithstanding the sort of the current sort of problems we've got the sort of
04:37ai coming down the line and of course that's also going to sort of take away jobs the leadership
04:42timetable for the Labour Party means those questions could move quickly from campaign language into
04:49government decisions if Burnham becomes prime minister the first major tests are likely to be the
04:55shape of his economic team any emergency decisions on public services and the next budget for households
05:03firms and local services the issue is not just whether change is promised but how it is paid for
05:10for and how soon any benefits are felt
Comments