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If we have learned anything from the Makerfield by-election campaign it is what a slippery character Andy Burnham is. Last September, in an interview with the New Statesman, you may remember, he said that ‘We’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets.’ The bond markets themselves responded immediately by reminding Burnham that governments spite them at their peril. Yields rose sharply as investors, who were already taking Burnham seriously as a potential prime minister, feared that a government under his control would borrow recklessly and lose control of public finances.
And now? Burnham claims that it was all a horrible mistake; he was misunderstood. ‘My argument was always that politicians have left the country in hock,’ he said in an interview with the Guardian:
If you give up, as we did, the levers of control, then you end up losing control of public spending and not able to get a productive, efficient state as a result.
In other words, what he really meant was that governments have borrowed too much money over the past decades. Burnham would make us less dependent on bond markets by borrowing less and paying down debt, presumably with the help of the higher taxes he is proposing to inflict on the country – because he certainly hasn’t proposed spending cuts.
