Andy Burnham has said he still believes the UK is far too exposed to global shocks, defending comments last year when he said the UK should be less \u201cin hock\u201d to the bond markets.<\/p>\n
He said the comments had been deliberately misinterpreted by the former prime minister Keir Starmer and his advisers and said his aim was not more borrowing and spending but a far more resilient economy.<\/p>\n
Burnham\u2019s comments in an interview with the New Statesmen<\/a> last year made waves before the Labour conference because of the then Greater Manchester\u2019s clear ambitions to replace Starmer as prime minister.<\/p>\n In a fresh interview with the magazine<\/a> on Wednesday, he said he had intended to highlight how vulnerable the UK was to global price fluctuations. Government borrowing has climbed again over the past months as energy prices have risen in response to continued deadlock on the Iran war.<\/p>\n This week\u2019s New Statesman cover. Photograph: New Statesman<\/p>\n The UK government borrowed a higher than expected \u00a318.3bn last month, putting further pressure on the chancellor, John Healey, as he prepares for next month\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n Burnham said he wanted to build an economy that was far less vulnerable. \u201cI mean, the point about the bond markets, it holds \u2013 in that what I was saying was the country has left itself over-exposed,\u201d he said, telling the magazine he was arguing for a \u201cmuch more streamlined, productive state\u201d.<\/p>\n He said criticism from Starmer and the then chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was unjustified. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t understand why I was saying some of the things that I was saying \u2026 [They] didn\u2019t know what to do with it, but they did what they always do, which is they pulled one line out of it and then framed that one line within their world, rather than the one that I was talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n Burnham also addressed criticism from the Conservatives after he said during an exchange at prime minister\u2019s questions that national security \u201cshould not come at the expense of social security\u201d \u2013 which opponents said showed he was not willing to cut the welfare budget to fund increased defence spending.<\/p>\n \u201cIt oversimplifies the political discourse that we need to have, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n