Burnham is keeping his enemies close

Last Monday, Andy Burnham delivered what was perhaps the most ambitious statement of economic intent since 1997. Standing outside Downing Street, the Prime Minister spoke of “a new political model and a new economic model”. The idea, he said, was to put “life’s essentials back under stronger public control” and to reindustrialize Britain “using public procurement to back British industry”. This certainly sounds ambitious. But rhetoric is cheap and it has so far proven difficult to pin down Burnham on specific policies. He took a week to end speculation about scrapping council taxes and stamp duties and replacing them with a flat property value tax, clarifying that “nothing immediate” on the issue was in fact planned. This was just a day after he walked back an earlier suggestion about rais