00:00We still don't know the extent to which this new drilling will happen.
00:03And I would say more importantly, it still doesn't fully answer how he's going to deliver on his ambition to
00:12deliver growth in every postcode.
00:14So his agenda is clearly to revive growth in a way that's felt by voters.
00:21And that policy enough is unlikely to do it.
00:24Now, what we've heard from him before was that part of his answer or the core of his plan would
00:31be to devolve more power from the central government to the local government so that they can replicate the success
00:39that he had as a mayor of Manchester.
00:42But again, we lack very little detail on exactly how that's going to play out.
00:47We don't know which kind of devolution is he aiming for, if he's thinking about administrative devolution, which is just
00:53giving more power to the local government to do to provide services.
00:57Or if we're also talking about funding and tax autonomy, these are important details that we need to know.
01:03And to be honest, it's also not very clear that there's a clear and exact formula that explains the success
01:10of Manchester and that can be replicated nationwide.
01:13So overall, I would say we're still pretty much in the dark about how he's going to deliver on this
01:19big ambition.
01:20I mean, Starmer announced a battery of plans.
01:23He also had this growth-driven mission and his living office having witnessed living standards growing by only 1%
01:30over the past two years.
01:31So that really speaks on how hard it is to deliver on this big goal.
01:37Yeah, and I think that's a question for many people.
01:39You know, if Keir Starmer couldn't do it, I mean, is it just a situation where there's such a difficult
01:44moment for the U.K. economy?
01:46I mean, for Andy Burnham, does he have additional levers available to him?
01:49Does he have the ability to sort of bring into effect certain things that Keir Starmer just couldn't get over
01:54the line?
01:58I don't see it.
01:59I mean, just for one, the economic backdrop is still challenging.
02:04So in the U.K., we have headline inflation currently at 3%.
02:08We project it to stay there over the rest of the year.
02:11We also have geopolitical tensions rising.
02:14So that means that the economic fallout could be bigger.
02:17We don't see the Bank of England easing anytime soon.
02:20So there won't be that relief to the economy.
02:22So a good performance of the economy might help Andy Burnham, but we're not really expecting that to happen.
02:28And then fiscally, of course, we know what inheritance looks like.
02:31We have high levels of debt, very little space to do something new.
02:37But I would say that actually his biggest constraints, which were also the biggest constraints for Starmer, are political.
02:44First, I mean, Burnham, in contrast to Starmer, doesn't have a full parliament to deliver on his ambitions.
02:50Starmer had a little bit more horizon.
02:51But also they've pledged in the manifesto not to raise a lot of the taxes, a big stream of taxes
02:59that could help fix public finances.
03:02And there's also things that they could explore, like reform of the tax system that will also be growth friendly
03:07for the economy.
03:09But again, there's likely to be political resistance there.
03:12So with limited time and with big political constraints, what we're likely to see is a bit more of the
03:18same, which is providing a little bit more of near term fiscal loosening, maybe in the form of cost of
03:23living support, delaying fiscal decision, delaying consolidation and difficult choices down the road.
03:30But that won't really be transformative for the economy in the long term.
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