tax cut on household electricity bills<\/a>, it
\nis clear that Andy Burnham is prioritising tangible measures which can be
\nimplemented quickly.<\/p>\nThere is a stark tonal shift, too, from Keir Starmer\u2019s first
\nweeks in office in which he emphasised how difficult things would continue to
\nbe (something which he later acknowledged was a mistake).<\/p>\n
The decision to reimpose the bus fare cap of \u00a32 contrasts
\nwith Burnham backing away this morning from suggestions which he made as
\nrecently as Monday about the possibility of increasing the personal allowance \u2013
\nthe amount people earn before paying income tax, which has been frozen since
\n2021.<\/p>\n
Backing away from that reflects that this is a new prime
\nminister who has both made quite a lot of commitments and displayed a range of
\ninstincts on major policy questions.<\/p>\n
He talks of the biggest council house
\nbuilding programme since the postwar period, fixing social care on an NHS
\nmodel, taking public control of utilities \u2013 and that is before you get to the
\nlevel of defence spending implied by John Healey\u2019s appointment as chancellor.<\/p>\n
This week we are learning the order of Burnham\u2019s priorities.
\nAnd perhaps now he has access to the civil service and to more granular advice
\nabout the state of the public finances, Burnham himself is learning which of
\nhis commitments are viable in the near-term. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Burnham’s announcements a stark shift from Starmer’s first weeks at helmpublished at 07:07 BST 07:07 BST Henry ZeffmanChief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-704779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Analysis\"](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/core\/website\/assets\/static\/news\/incident-types\/light-mode\/analysis.77b314ef10.svg\")
Burnham’s announcements a stark shift from Starmer’s first weeks at helmpublished at 07:07 BST<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/34ffac2f-7f37-4fd4-a556-a1061819b8d0.jpg.webp.webp\")
Henry Zeffman