Conor here: My general rule is that if a candidate isn’t being pilloried in the media, then expect the status quo. For what it’s worth, Jeremy Corbyn, who got that media treatment, believes that will be the case with Burnham:
Jeremy Corbyn on Sky News today, talking about Andy Burnham:
“He doesn’t appear to be doing anything different internationally. I wrote to him to ask if he’d support something as straightforward as an inquiry into government policy on Gaza and the supply of weapons.” pic.twitter.com/vIzXjeAkxl
— Wokerati Marty (@WokeratiMarty) June 20, 2026
Burnham has also pledged to keep on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who has helped lead the charge against Palestine Action protestors against genocide with thousands arrested and many charged with terrorism.
By Richard Murphy, Emeritus Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School and a director of Tax Research LLP. Originally published at Funding the Future.
If Andy Burnham is serious about becoming prime minister, then there are a series of questions he needs to answer before anyone can sensibly judge whether he offers a genuine alternative to the current government, or merely a different personality pursuing much the same agenda.
The questions need to go beyond personality, competence, or electability. They need to establish what he believes, what he would do, and how he understands the challenges the UK faces.
Here are 52 questions, including one final critical one, I would like him to answer.
The Economy
1. What is the fundamental purpose of the UK economy?
2. Do you believe economic policy should prioritise GDP growth, or should it prioritise wellbeing, security and sustainability?
3. Do you believe the UK government is financially constrained in the same way as a household, business or local authority?
4. Do you accept that a government issuing its own currency can always meet obligations denominated in that currency?
5. What role do you think taxation plays in the economy: revenue raising, redistribution, inflation control, market shaping, or all of these?
6. What is your view on the current fiscal rules, and would you retain, reform or abolish them?
7. Would you continue paying interest on all commercial bank reserve balances held at the Bank of England?
8. What is your view on quantitative easing and quantitative tightening?
9. What would you do to improve productivity in the UK economy?
10. How would you reduce Britain’s dependence on rent extraction, financial speculation and asset price inflation?
Wealth, Tax and Inequality
11. Do you believe wealth inequality is now a greater problem than income inequality?
12. What specific measures would you introduce to tax wealth more effectively?
13. Should income from wealth be taxed at least as heavily as income from work?
14. How would you tackle tax avoidance by large companies and wealthy individuals?
15. What is your view on reforming inheritance tax?
16. How would you reduce regional inequality within the UK?
Housing
17. Do you think housing should primarily be a home or an investment asset?
18. What would you do to reduce house prices relative to earnings?
19. How many social homes would you build each year?
20. How would you finance a large-scale social housing programme?
21. What would you do to reform the private rented sector?
22. Would you support land value taxation, compulsory purchase reform, or other measures to tackle land speculation?
Climate and the Environment
23. Do you believe economic growth can be fully reconciled with environmental sustainability?
24. What is your strategy for achieving net zero while maintaining public support?
25. How would you fund the transition to a low-carbon economy?
26. What role should public ownership play in energy generation, transmission and distribution?
27. How would you ensure that the costs of climate transition are borne fairly?
28. What policies would you adopt to restore biodiversity, waterways and ecosystems?
Public Services and the State
29. What should be the balance between public provision and private provision in healthcare?
30. Would you reverse NHS privatisation measures introduced since 2012?
31. How would you tackle the social care crisis?
32. What reforms would you make to education?
33. How would you rebuild local government after fifteen years of austerity?
34. What powers and funding would you devolve to local and regional government, and are you open to independence if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland wish for it?
Work, Income and Social Security
35. What is your vision for the future of work?
36. Do you support stronger trade union rights and sectoral collective bargaining?
37. What is your view on a job guarantee programme?
38. How would you address economic insecurity among younger generations?
39. What reforms would you make to Universal Credit and social security more generally?
Debt, Money and Finance
40. Do you believe the national debt is a major problem facing the UK? Please explain your logic.
41. What do you understand government debt to be? Should government debt always be reduced, or can it sometimes be increased for good economic reasons?
42. How do you distinguish between productive public investment and current spending?
43. What role should government borrowing play in funding infrastructure, housing and climate transition?
44. Should the Bank of England’s mandate be reformed? Should it pay interest on central bank reserve accounts?
45. What reforms would you make to the banking system?
Britain and the World
46. What should Britain’s economic relationship with Europe be?
47. What industrial strategy would you pursue?
48. How would you respond to increasing geopolitical instability and trade fragmentation?
49. How do we resolve conflicts in the Middle East? What is the UK’s role in that?
50. What role should Britain play in tackling global inequality and climate change? 51. What is the future of our relationship with the USA and NATO? What are the defence consequences of that?
The Biggest Question
And perhaps the most important question of all:
52. What is your theory of society?
That question matters because every successful political project ultimately rests on an answer to that question:
- Neoliberalism begins with the individual.
- Conservatism begins with institutions.
- Reform begins with belonging and identity.
- The Greens begin with nature and climate.
- Labour traditionally began with solidarity, but that no longer seems to be the case.
Before Andy Burnham can ask people to support him, he needs to tell them where he begins and what his priorities are, because every policy choice that follows depends upon his answer to that question. Isn’t that the least we should expect?
There is a clip on X, where he says the first thing he’d do as PM is a trip to israhell.
Don’t expect anything to change, the powers-that-be will remain in power.
TBF, that clip is from a previous – and failed – Labour leadership election bid in 2015. However, Burnham is a member of Labour Friends of Israel, so he may well think that still, but more likely not say it aloud in 2026. Either way, nothing will fundamentally change.
This is no more than a bloody libel. Where is the evidence that Burnham is – or ever has been – a Labour Friend of Israel?
I can’t vouch for the source, but I just found this – https://novaramedia.com/2026/06/05/andy-burnham-declines-to-call-israels-mass-killings-in-gaza-a-genocide/
“Burnham became a member of Labour Friends of Israel in 2015 and during a Labour leadership bid the same year described the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel as “spiteful”.
He also promised to make Israel his first state visit if he won – calling the country a “democracy that has a long history of protecting minorities and promoting civil rights”. ”
If slaughtering is protection, then I guess he’s correct!
The way I see it Starmer got elected Labour leader by promising Corbynism without Corbyn. After winning he promptly abandoned that promise and set out to purge the left in the party.
Burnham is now essentially running on some sort of Starmerism without Starmer. The question is what he will do after winning? If he promptly abandons that promise and abandons neoliberalism he has a chance, if not he too will soon fall. Maybe then they out do the Tories by formally elect a head of lettuce?
George Galloway said on his MOATS show yesterday that Burnham is a Starmer twin politically.
I think the most useful questions are: will the new prime minister and his cabinet set a DOGE team loose on the intelligence services and the military to follow the money trail, investigate the full range of their operations and have the power to make arrests as part and parcel of reviewing the UK’s defence structures, including R&D, military-corporate relationships, including all existing and potential transnational relationships?
A second team should be set loose to identify and clearly define existing and potential political, intelligence and military problems, define the UK’s current positive, conflicting and negative payback strategic objectives; and to define a range of potential – perhaps alternative and conflicting – strategic objectives which, if achieved, would bring prosperity and peace to the His Majesty’s subjects now and in the future.
A Board, perhaps a Royal Commission with full powers to compell witnesses to attend and give evidence, should oversee the entire process and make recommendations in a time fashion in the form of full report backed by all research papers and documents obtained and generated during the exercise published so that we may all judge what policies will be most advantageous to our posterity.
The UK’s future depends on our capacity to trade and co-operate with overseas economies on a growth trajectory, and we should clearly define our interests and foreign, economic, military and intelligence policies based on that basic truth that if we are ever going to turn this country around, as opposed to run it backwards into a past which is already swiftly sinking out of sight. We need new friends, and it may well be they are our current “adversaries” and superior competitors in a rapidly changing physical as well as economic environment.
My problem with this approach is that it could affirm that everything Starmer did was fine, perhaps some minor corrections may be possible.
How about top level questions like
direct efforts on military and intelligence, boosting funding if requested
or
cut that significantly and focus on conflict avoidance, including a stop on support of Israel
Minions with palm fronds are walking in front of him sweeping the path as he glides to power, metaphorically speaking. No investigating journalists to trouble him, the sun is shining upon him in the media.
So here we have another politician who suddenly has wings beneath his feet for a top job. I suppose we just add him to the stable of people who will serve the powers who rule the world. The small cost he pays is jettisoning any views in the past that were inconvenient to power.
Sanders. Starmer. Ardern. Burnham……… add a name to the list of lackeys.
Borrowing from General Smedley Butler, Democracy Is A Racket.