People pleaser Burnham’s vibes won’t tackle Britain’s REAL problems… We need PM with a plan rather than kumbaya rhetoric

LESS than a week into the job and our new Prime Minister has been exposed as The Man With No Plan. Just days after turfing Sir Keir Starmer out of office, it is already painfully obvious that, just like his predecessor, Andy ­Burnham has spent far more time thinking about how he could become PM than he has thinking about what he was going to do once he finally got the top job. PM Andy Burnham with new Chancellor John Healey at a pub in Harlow, Essex Credit: Getty Images New Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh is even more of a climate-change zealot than Miliband Credit: Getty Images Judging by his first few announcements — the daily 6am good news story — it’s abundantly clear that most of us put more thought into planning (and paying for) our summer holiday than Burnham has put into how he will run the country. Sure, there have been lots of feelgood words and buzz phrases about “hope” and “change” and all that “good growth” he wants to deliver (but none of that “bad growth” we apparently don’t want). Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! But despite feverish chatter among the leftie lanyard classes about the Burnham “vibe”, and a clear Labour bounce in the polls, there is nothing so far to suggest that he has an actual programme for government to sort out ANY of the key problems afflicting our country. We’ve had no shortage of policy announcements since Monday: £340million spent to tackle rough sleeping, £850million on cutting VAT from domestic electricity bills, £500million on cutting the cap on bus fares to £2, and £100million to cut 20 per cent off business rates for pubs and clubs. MORE FROM JULIA HARTLEY-BREWER While they are exactly the sort of popular — some might even say “populist” — policies that we would expect from a people pleaser like Andy Burnham, they don’t even begin to touch the sides of the REAL change this country needs. Equally, his decision to “pause” the early release of prisoners while he conducts an “urgent review” has betrayed the fact that he hasn’t given a moment’s thought to prison overcrowding before this week. This isn’t governing — it’s doing the easy stuff. Like the eminently personable Burnham himself, this is all about easy PR with no real substance. Most read in The Sun I’m all for cutting energy bills (although I still haven’t decided how to spend my 86 pence a week saving), helping the homeless and hospitality businesses, and lower bus fares too, but these policies are far too meagre to matter — and many of them have turned out to be unfunded. If the new PM and his team haven’t worked out how they’re going to pay for a bus fare cap, how will they find the funding for everything else Burnham says he wants to do — from devolution, a huge council house-building programme and reforming social care, to the renationalisation of many utilities — which will cost hundreds of billions. Those are just some of the priorities Burnham has talked about, but he is still yet to mention any of the major problems and issues that urgently need to be addressed by the new PM. He refused to tell us what his big policy plans were before he won the Makerfield by-election, then he refused to tell us them before he became PM. Even his first statement outside No10 was just empty kumbaya rhetoric. Now he says he will tell us about his Ten-Year Plan in the autumn. Let’s hope his team can Google and type up some policy ideas quickly, eh? We have not heard a single word about what Burnham plans to do about illegal Channel boat arrivals Credit: Getty Andy Burnham is going to discover there’s far more to being the leader of a G7 nation than just being someone people might like to go to the pub with Credit: PA To this day, we still don’t know how he plans to deliver growth or reindustrialise our nation, while we have the highest energy prices in the Western world thanks to the insane Net Zero policies. Yes, Burnham has plans to allow more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea but his new Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh is even more of a climate-change zealot than Ed Miliband. We have not heard a single word about what Burnham plans to do about immigration — whether that’s the mass legal influx or the illegal Channel boat arrivals. But I guess that means we know who will be living in all those new council houses. There has been no hint about his strategy to cut our almost £1trillion in Government debt or how he will tackle the ballooning working-age benefit bill, or a blueprint for funding the desperately needed boost to defence spending. While Burnham is far more likeable than his predecessor, and talks like a normal person, he is quickly going to discover there’s far more to being the leader of a G7 nation than just being someone people might like to go to the pub with. I hate to be the one to burst the Burnham bubble, but vibes don’t deliver growth. Vibes don’t build council houses. Vibes don’t provide plentiful secure energy. Vibes don’t build warships or missiles. Vibes don’t stop the Channel migrant boats or keep our streets safe. We don’t need a people pleaser as our Prime Minister. We need a PM who is able and willing to make the tough choices our country needs. We need a man with a plan. LINEKER TAXES MY PATIENCE There’s no need for millionaires like Gary Lineker to beg to pay extra tax Credit: Getty Images for Netflix WHILE one million extra people are being dragged into paying income tax or a higher rate over the next year, please spare a thought for those of us who just don’t get to pay ENOUGH tax. I am talking, of course, about the pitiful ranks of the “super-rich” who are apparently DESPERATE to pay more of their hard-earned wealth into Treasury coffers. So keen are they to pay more, they’ve even written a letter to the new Prime Minister BEGGING for the chance to do so. Gary Lineker and 150 other British millionaires told Andy Burnham that “millionaires are a patriotic bunch” and “proud to pay”, pleading: “We want you to tax us – the super-rich. “We can afford it.” The former England footballer, turned crisp salesman, doesn’t just want us all to know how rich he is. He wants us to know how super he is, too. Our Gary loves to virtue-signal about the latest “progressive” cause, whether it’s defending Channel migrants, LGBTQ rights in Qatar, taking in Syrian refugees or the plight of the Palestinians. But his fine words are rarely backed up by his actions. He’s had his own battles with the Inland Revenue over a claim for millions in unpaid tax due to his off-payroll freelance status at the BBC. And he was revealed in the Panama Papers to have used an offshore company set up in the British Virgin Islands to avoid tax on his luxury villa in Barbados. There’s no need for millionaires like Lineker to beg to pay extra tax. They can voluntarily pay more at any time simply by clicking on a link on the HMRC website. Or Gary and his super-rich chums can email accounts- receivable@hmtreasury.gov.uk to request to make a donation. Either way, we’d all be grateful for the extra dosh to pay for public services. But we’d be even more grateful if Gary Lineker and his super-rich chums would pay up and then shut up. Comment now