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In politics, it’s the personalities that grab the headlines, and never more so when a new prime minister is about to take charge. In economics, it’s the numbers that matter: what’s happening to inflation, to unemployment, to interest rates, and most especially to growth.
The next few weeks will be full of stories about what Makerfield MP Andy Burnham says when he gets the job, his ability to empathise with voters, who he appoints to the various posts and so on.
But what will determine his success, or otherwise, is what happens to the economy. So what do we know about his ideas on that?
Quite a lot, actually. He believes in active big-state government – to spend more on infrastructure, believing that public investment can drive growth – but a government that does this in a business-friendly way. It is what he has done in Manchester and his instinct will be to roll that out across the country.
