Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Seems like Andy's dropped the 10% VAT on hospitality and is now talking about reforming business rates. This is all sounding rather like the "failing" Reeves-Starmer approach.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -ministers

Andy Burnham says he will end culture of briefing against female ministers
PM hopeful tells meeting of women’s parliamentary Labour party that any staff who undermine female members of his team will be sacked

The context of this is that some women MPs felt that Starmer's team briefed against women ministers more than men. I don't know if that's true- Lou Haigh, for sure, but Miliband has had briefing against him. Of the others mentioned, I've not noticed Bridget Philipson or Yvette Cooper being on the wrong end. And Starmer's relationship with Reeves has been good. I almost wish he'd briefed a bit more against Shabana Mahmood. But briefing against other ministers shouldn't happen, full stop. Andy might need to sack a few of his own supporters, some of whom have been briefing against Miliband and others against Streeting when it comes to the choice of Chancellor.

Is this true? Hard to say, without being there.

“Rooms where decisions are being made are often closed to us, leading to blind spots in appointment decisions and policy development. The tendency of previous leaderships to sideline the voices of women makes us a weaker government,” the letter read.

Or does this just mean decisions are made that they don't like? The main reason for unpopular decisions being made is cost. Rachel Reeves would have been involved in most of those, with other women involved as Treasury ministers. It's not been one of those governments where the women just get told to do the girly nurses and teacher stuff by any means.

Burnham left with £4.7bn bill for Starmer’s new defence investment plan
Ally of PM-in-waiting says four-year boost for the armed forces is an ‘unexploded bomb’

I guess this sort of briefing is OK because it's only shitting on Starmer.

Total spending in the last year was £1,362bn. In those terms, it's not really very much.

All good, but this rather dated Oasis, puffy-chested nonsense seems rather overblown. Are the new king' advisors scared of him already?

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2026 9:01 pm

Burnham left with £4.7bn bill for Starmer’s new defence investment plan
Ally of PM-in-waiting says four-year boost for the armed forces is an ‘unexploded bomb’

I guess this sort of briefing is OK because it's only shitting on Starmer.

Total spending in the last year was £1,362bn. In those terms, it's not really very much.

This has been met with cries of sabotage.

Boo fucking hoo.

Does Burnham really think he can just bring down a Labour PM only two years into a five year mandate, with all sorts of policies and manifesto commitments in train, and just fucking start again with a clean slate?

It doesn’t work that way, Andy.

Every day, and in every way, Burnham and his cult gets more and more on my nerves.

If he wants to just tear everything up and start afresh, surely he'd need a fresh mandate from the electorate to do so?

If so, let him call a General Election and then we'll see just how popular he really is.

Has he said he wants to tear everything up though?

Wait a minute ... Starmer prepared defence spending and then was gazumped by Burnham and his fan base, can't really blame Starmer for setting up a plan he was willing to lead on?

As for the Tories spending 14 years cutting it to the bone didn't help. Not to mention they wanted to commit us to a further war in Iran that has come out as a disaster.

Quite incredible how the Tories are allowed to attack on Defence spending. Not just the many years of low funding but the last two budgets where they cut taxes. But they get to line up with a load of military people and condemn Starmer?

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Wed Jul 01, 2026 3:38 pm Quite incredible how the Tories are allowed to attack on Defence spending. Not just the many years of low funding but the last two budgets where they cut taxes. But they get to line up with a load of military people and condemn Starmer?

It's almost as though the left-wing media aren't left-wing at all.

Gordon Brown had a guy called Bob Ainsworth as his defence secretary. Very much a classic career path, shop steward in a car factory, then local Councillor, and finally MP.

As I recall, he got a lot of stick from the right because he looked scruffy, had an oiky name, and didn't come across as smoothly as some ex-Sandhurst Tory.

Bob’s a good bloke, and was a very decent minister. Very broad Brummie/Midlands accenr.

I read that as "Bald Brummy accent" the first time.

I know it's not, but that certainly looks like Cummings on his t-shirt.

That £4.7bn black hole is over 4 years, apparently. So comfortably within the existing fiscal headroom. That's not really handing Burnham a grenade, is it?

Anyway, I think it's more than likely that Burnham gets backbenchers to accept PIP restrictions, which they wouldn't from Starmer. The Timms Review is due in the Autumn. Purely in political terms he might as well do that, because the same people will be slagging him off as a rightwing Tory by then anyway.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:56 pm Does Burnham really think he can just bring down a Labour PM only two years into a five year mandate, with all sorts of policies and manifesto commitments in train, and just fucking start again with a clean slate?

It doesn’t work that way, Andy.

I think Andy would probably be very happy for Starmer to make a load more contentious decisions, so that he doesn't have to. Starmer's done him a favour with the Defence plan.

Apparently his speech on Monday was decent. He's said more in an interview.

The Makerfield MP told LBC that if he became prime minister later this month, as expected, he would look at reducing business rates for some high street businesses, bringing down water and energy costs by de-privatising companies and making bus travel free for 16- to 18-year-olds.

The measures are likely to be included as part of an immediate cost-of-living package which allies say could include more radical measures such as freezing private sector rents.


Burnham told the station’s Andrew Marr: “There is some room within [the 2024] manifesto for movement on tax. So if you take business rates, for instance, I believe there is a case for higher business rates on warehouses and the major developments we see on the outskirts of our cities, so that we can cut business rates for pubs.

He added: “Britain is paying too much for the basics. People are paying too much, but businesses are also paying too much, and that is certainly true of energy.

How does he bring down the cost of energy? It's expensive because there's a worldwide supply problem, and because we include lots of the cost of the transition in bills. You could take some of the latter out and put in general taxation, but how's he going to do that?

Taxing warehouse businesses extra sounds fair enough. How much does that raise for "pubs", assuming they're the priority?

Rents are falling in real terms (from diabolical to appalling, admittedly) but falling nonetheless. Unless your landlord sells up and you have to look for another place which will likely be quite a lot more. How much difference does a rent freeze make, and won't it back fire if more landlords get the hump and sell up?