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As he prepares his government, prime-minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham has made plenty of expensive promises. He wants money for defence, for taking the utilities back under public control, for tax cuts for pubs and restaurants, and for the reindustrialisation that will, somehow or other, ‘end forty years of neoliberalism’. Now, his reported economic advisers have come up with a plan to pay for it all. They have, apparently, suggested that he scrap the ‘triple lock’ for pensioners. This is a good idea – but there is no way that ‘Our Andy’ is going to do anything that bold.
The list of spending commitments racked up by Burnham on his march on No. 10 keeps growing ever-longer. He has nevertheless been promising to stick to the existing fiscal rules set by the current Chancellor Rachel Reeves. It is clear to just about everyone that the numbers don’t add up. Still, never mind.
The long-term projections for the triple lock are catastrophic
Andy Haldane, the former chief economist of the Bank of England; Richard Hughes, the former chair of the Office for Budgetary Responsibility; and Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs economist – the three said to be advising Burnham – have apparently suggested that the MP for Makerfield scrap the ‘triple lock’ on the state pension. This is the mechanism by which the state pension rises by the greater of inflation, average earnings, or 2.5 per cent every year. Doing so, he has argued, would make plenty of money suddenly available.
