BURSTChief secretary to PM rules out leadership bid as he says he has received reassurances from Burnham
Here are some more extracts from Darren Jones’ interview with Beth Rigby from Sky News. Jones spoke to Andy Burnham on Monday seeking reassurance about his economic plans, and the interview is interesting because Jones, a fiscal hawk in Labour terms, came away satisfied by what he was told. (See 9.46am.)
But Jones would not go as far as saying he wanted to see Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, as the next chancellor. Miliband is thought to be Burnham’s preferred option. But he is under pressure from the Tories and the rightwing press who are trying to convince the public that Miliband is some sort of fiscally irresponsible, far-left version Liz Truss (he isn’t – not by any stretch) and that appointing Miliband would run the government’s economic credibility.
We all want to build more council houses. We want to see more control over public utilities. We want to be able to devolve more, to get more development and investment in infrastructure in and around the country. But there is a route to doing that in line with the fiscal rules, in a way which continues economic stability as opposed to moving too quickly. And just saying you’re going to borrow lots of extra money – because the risk of doing that – borrowing isn’t free. I mean, if you just say you’re going to borrow lots of extra money, you could probably sell the debt. But it’s increasingly expensive, and it means you take money away from doctors and nurses and police officers of the armed forces in order to pay debt interest payments, predominantly now to American hedge funds.
I think there’s room to borrow a little bit more, and there’s room to do things in a different way. So let me give you an example. We all want to see more council houses built. You could just say I’m going to borrow tens of billions of pounds, put it into Homes England will give it to councils and say build. That’s just not going to work. Because the problem is that we don’t have enough builders, we don’t have enough bricks, and we can’t plug these things into the electricity grid. So I’m all for investing into new towns and mayoral development corporations that give apprenticeship opportunities, that support British business, that can help fix our energy system. But you can do that without kind of broad brush borrowing and spending, which actually doesn’t really deliver the outcomes that you want to achieve.
I think he does. And I think the people around him do. And I think it’s important he’s committed to those fiscal rules.
I’m not going to get into personalities, but maybe I can answer that by saying what I think the tests are for who should be chancellor. I think the next chancellor needs to be able to have a clear view about the political economy and understand how the Treasury works. I think they need to have an important relationship with the prime minister, because, quite frankly, in many circumstances, the chancellor in the Treasury is more powerful than the prime minister in Downing Street. So you have to have someone that’s going to enable the delivery of the prime minister’s priorities and not not try to control the prime minister. And that relationship is really critical. And you also need a chancellor that can reassure the markets, reassure the trade unions and reassure the parliamentary Labour Party and by extension the public.
It has emerged that Burnham will appoint James Purnell, who served in cabinet with him under Gordon Brown, as his chief of staff. Here is our story, by Kiran Stacey and Jessica Elgot.
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