‘It’ll be a repeat of Reeves’: How the new PM could bankrupt Britain

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0:52Complete nonsense. That's one of former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's remarks about Andy Burnham's economic plan. Hunt runs us through the crypt notes on Burnanomics 101 and everything that our Andy, the incoming Prime Minister, is at risk of getting wrong as he enters number 10. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominey. And me, Tim Stanley.

1:22Tim, I don't know what's more difficult to say. Jeremy Hunt's name three times in a row or Burnham-on-mix. Burnham-on-mix. Burnham-on-mix. Well, if you say... Burnham-on-mix. But of course, if you say Jeremy Hunt in the mirror three or five times, he appears. And here he is. Here we are. Former Chancellor. And you said it correctly by last name, which hasn't always happened in these studios. I have never mispronounced your last name. Jeremy Hunt, can you say Burnham-on-mix? I can, because I worked out the problem. His name, Burnham N's with an M, but economics has an N in it. So you have to switch the M to an N.

2:03It's Burnanomics. Love that. Burnanomics. Burnanomics. Burnanomics. And it's also good that Jeremy Hunt's here, because unlike us, he can count. And we are going to count the cost, the potential cost to this country of... Burnanomics. Thank you. First of all, what is it? Can we agree on a common definition? What are the central tenets of Burnham's economic policy? That's a better way of saying it. OK, well, I'm afraid I've got bad news for Daily Tea listeners because there is one trade-off upon which the whole future of Burnanomics depends and I think he's going to get it wrong. And that is this.

2:46You either cut the welfare bill in cash terms, So proper reforms that actually save money, not the kind of nice reforms that say we're going to improve education and training. It will help people in five or 10 years time. But proper reforms that say we're going to remove anxiety and depression as a criteria for claiming benefits and so on. Tough reforms. Or you have to increase business taxes because they have a manifesto commitment not to increase the other big taxes. So all you're left with is business taxes. In other words, it becomes a repeat of Rachel Reeves. That is, I'm afraid, the depressing truth.

3:22Now, I still hope, because I want the country to succeed, I want even the Labour government to do the right things, that he takes the right decision on welfare reform and that we avoid that. But as things stand at the moment on the big question of tax and spend, I think taxes are going to go up. They're going to go up on business. And what does that mean? It means that growth goes down. And if I'm right in this rather gloomy prediction, we remain in our low growth trap. It's not just business taxes, though. So say if he doesn't, the theory goes that he doesn't need to call a snap general election if he honours the manifesto and doesn't cross those red lines on not putting up income tax, VAT and national insurance contributions, notwithstanding the argument that they've already crossed those red lines with the employer's national insurance contribution, whatever.

4:12However, if he keeps all of those pledges, it's not just business tax he has got some leeway to put up. He can put up any other stealth taxes. And as The Telegraph has reported this weekend, he could slap a mansion tax on homes worth more than£1.5 million, which would bring the threshold down from£2 million. So there's a great many different ways he could tax what are effectively, I suppose, southerners, the middle classes. Yeah, but for the moment, we don't know what he's going to do because what he's not really commented upon is macroeconomic politics. Yes. He's not really told us what taxes he might touch or what elements of welfare he would reform.

4:51The two things he has promised to do as part of his plan of growth in every postcode is to, one, end what he calls trickle-down and neoliberalism, and two, to expand evolution. So if we can take those two things separately, aside from putting aside that I'm not sure any government in recent history has said we believe in trickle-down economics, not quite sure what it is, but it's a lazy caricature of cut taxes for the rich. Everyone else benefits as the rich then invests and the economy expands. And taking aside from it being a bit of a canard, Jeremy, the idea of rolling back neoliberalism, what do you think of that?

5:36I think it is complete nonsense. And, you know, I'm really struggling to find any serious economist, apart from the far left, who buys this analysis. Because, you know, you can have centre-left economists, centre-right economists. Everyone says the fundamental problem is that since 2008, the economy has not been growing. And our problem is not a lack of good growth, it's a lack of growth. And so if we spend a long time now agonizing about the perfect kind of growth, let's look at the basics here. If GDP goes up by 1%, the Chancellor has an extra 10 to 12 billion pounds to spend on public services from tax revenues.

6:23Because, you know, more GDP, more people pay tax. and then you can start to think about a virtuous circle where you start to bring down business taxes to help fuel even more growth and you can put more money into things like the NHS without having to put up taxes. But if you say, actually, I'm going to be very fussy about the growth we have because I only want good growth, I don't want any growth, you're not going to get that 10 to 12 billion and you'll end up having to put up more tax. And just to go back to what you said, Camilla, Yes, of course, you can look at things like mansion taxes and you can look at capital gains tax.

7:00But what the Treasury will tell Andy Burnham's new chancellor, and I know this because they told me exactly the same thing, is that those tax changes raise very little money and they take a long time to do it. And in fact, we know with capital gains tax, anything above 24%, you actually lose money. Just explain, by the way, what the current system is, because you're now getting into the territory. I think Louise Hague, who is a close ally of Andy Burnham's, used to be the transport secretary. She's talked about this equivalence between CGT, capital gains tax, and income tax. And Wes Treating was for it too, and he's sometimes tipped as a future Burnham.

7:36There you are. So what's the current situation, Jeremy, and what are they proposing? So lots of people say it's a bit odd that, you know, someone selling their shares pays 24 % capital gains tax. but someone who is earning more than£125 ,000 pays 45 % income tax and should we not be cutting the tax on people at work or equalising them? In fact, Nigel Lawson equalised them. They were the same rate. But it was Gordon Brown who then said, no, we're going to have a lower rate for capital gains tax because it's simpler. Because if you equalise them, what you have to do, I hope this doesn't get too complicated, but I'll have a go here.

8:20If you equalise them, you have to allow people to take account of inflation over the period that they've had an asset. So you might say, OK, we're going to tax you at 45%, but inflation has gone up 20 % since you own that asset. So we're going to knock off 20%. And it all got so complicated that Gordon Brown very sensibly said, we'll just have a flat rate at 20%, which has subsequently gone up to 24%. Was that one of the ones you put up? No, actually, it was Rachel Reeves. In fact, on this one, on this one, Camilla Tomney, by the way, I have to mention here, there's a new book out, How We Be Rich Again, which advocates exactly what you want, lower taxes.

9:04And I point out that I actually reduced the capital gains tax on property from 28 % to 24 % because the Treasury said I would increase tax revenues. Yes. Right. So that's why I think... Hang on, though. What was that 6 % rise that you put in? The 6 % rise? I think you're talking about... Corporation. That was, yes, we did. That was an error, wasn't it? Jeremy, come on. Look, I... A little bit. Factor wouldn't have approved. She would. Would she? Yes. No, would she approve? No, she'd have been like me. She would have said, reluctantly, we have to balance the books. We can't keep borrowing. We'd just borrowed 350 billion quid to get us through the pandemic.

9:49And we had, in my case, a 72 billion black hole in the public finances we had to fill. So we had damn any choice. And by the way, I cut spending as well at the same time. The question is, and this is the difference between conservative and labor, once you balance the books, as Geoffrey Howe did in 1981, when he also put up taxes, you then start the hard work to bring taxes down. and Rishi Sunak and I are both incredibly proud that we started that journey. We're both very sad. We didn't get anything like as far as we would have liked to have done but we did get employees' national insurance down 4 % and that was...

10:24Just quickly on that, did you sometimes wake up in the night in a sweat about that 70, how many billion black hole? Well, it was, you know, it was a horrible period. Inflation 11%. The Bank of England saying we're going to go into the longest recession for 100 years, 72 billion gap in public finances. And the only thing I wanted to do was to try and balance the books in a way that was least damaging to growth. So we got out of the recession. And actually, we did. We may have got other things wrong, but we got the country through that recession. Now, the problem is that, you know, this is the argument that people on the left, and I'm afraid I seem, you know, not a mention from Andy Burnham about how actually look around the world, the countries that are actually growing fastest, the countries, if you like, with more money to spend on public services and infrastructure and the things that Andy Burnham loves are the ones with lower taxes in North America, Asia.

11:23Where are the low growth economies? It's all in high tax Europe. And, you know, unless you understand that basic, why is that, by the way? You know, we as conservatives say you should reward hard work. Economists would make a different argument. They would say growth means investment. And if you tax people more, there's less money to invest, and that means you grow more slowly. And investing the right way. So in the case of things like capital gains tax, if you start taxing it more, it's going to discourage the kind of investment that we want to see more of. I mean, I think also of the future of the ISA, which the government seems to be coming for with changes, which I don't understand.

12:04And whenever someone does something you don't understand, it's always a con. But they would say they want to move us away from just from parking our cash towards instead putting our cash into things which will then go into the economy. Well, that's good for a government, but I don't really care about that. I just want my savings to be protected because it's good for an individual to save, right? It is. And, you know, one of the most important things, if you do look at the countries that are growing the fastest, is that they encourage their population to save more. They incentivize saving. But I think the bigger point on tax, Tim, is, you know, many years ago, I set up and ran my own business.

12:47And anyone who's set up a business, what are the killer taxes? They are the taxes you have to pay before you've made a penny a profit. VAT, employers, national insurance, business rates, you know, you can have a loss-making business and you've still got to pay those taxes. So if those are higher, as they are in this country, then if business is tough, you're more likely to go under. If those taxes are lower, as they are in America, where their sales tax, which is the equivalent of VAT, is typically less than half VAT in the UK, then if you have a difficult patch, you're more likely to survive.

13:25And that's the fundamental problem with high taxes. It makes it more likely for vulnerable small businesses to go under. But how did righties lose this argument? This is what intrigues me, because we had Arthur Laffer in on the Daily Tea and one particular clip has gone viral subsequently, where he says, you know, if you tax things, the intention is to put people off doing them. So we tax smoking and we tax drinking. If you actually tax work, then don't be surprised if more people go on to benefits. And it's a perfectly cogent economic argument that I think most people can agree with. And yet we know, Jeremy, that wealth taxes are increasingly popular.

14:05This idea of clobbering businesses is quite popular, not least with young people, with people aged 18 to 24. You know, they don't have homes to lose and therefore they're quite down with Corbynomics. Well, I would just say that I think people see that as unproductive wealth. They have this idea in their head that that is wealth that's just sitting there and being greedily accumulated and actually held back from a social good. Sure. And I would argue that that is because people stopped making the kind of Thatcherite arguments in favour of free markets and competition. Capitalism became a dirty word.

14:41And I think the Conservatives, both small c and large, are responsible for that. They kind of let this idea of sort of the slow creep of socialism infect the mindset of a generation. And it's quite hard to kind of turn back from that. That is why we get people becoming so popular on social media, because they're basically planting magic money trees, thinking they're growing pounds on them and selling a generation. Actually, what I would imagine you're going to argue is a lie. Well, we have got to win that argument if we're going to turn the ship around. And I actually think a fair reading of the 14 conservative years would be to say that in the first half of that period, when George Osborne was chancellor, we did actually quite dramatically reduce the size of the state.

15:30And taxes didn't come down very dramatically because we've had that enormous deficit after the financial crisis. And then in the second half, we had this horrible thing that happened. I was the first chance that I had to deal with it where national debt had gone up to 100 % of GDP and interest rates had gone up. So suddenly our debt interest was humongous. But we've got to win that argument. It's absolutely central. And I would say that in many other parts of the world and interestingly in the developing world, in the countries that have traditionally been very poor that are now growing like bilio, they get this.

16:05They understand that you have to leave money in people's pockets if you want the economy to expand. And sure, we can have an argument if you get the growth. Do you want the money for the NHS or do you want it for lower taxes or whatever? But get the growth first.

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18:06us. Didn't austerity in the Osborne years, it's become a dirty, one man's efficiency is another man's austerity, but that is now used as a stick to beat the right, isn't it? It is. But I think it also, it's combined with a story the left tells, which is very attractive, which is that 50 years ago, and I'm almost taking words out of Burnham's mouth, everyone lived in a council house and worked in a factory, and they were poor but happy. And neoliberalism and trickle-down and the service economy and automation, all these things were done to people by Tory governments in alliance with the rich and big businesses.

18:51and what Burnham Onix is about is trying to rebalance things so that you get a growth which is felt across the country and is somehow a better kind of growth, a more moral kind of growth because it serves people's social needs. And this is where he ties in his anti-triggerdown message with devolution, the devolutionary message, which is if you have a country which is a patchwork of local champions somehow directing capital the right way, then we can almost turn the clock back to that happier period where there were more social goods like council housing and the wealth was more fairly spread around the country.

19:34Tim, that is such a perfect description of Andy Byrne's philosophy. I'm always wondering if you're going to get the call to come into Downing Street. I'm doing a better job than Lucy Powell, let's put it that way. Here's the reason why it is actually totally flawed. I mean, what is the reason that there was optimism up until 2008 in that period of dramatic economic reforms in the 1980s for about 30 years? What's the reason? When the economy is growing at 2.5 % a year, GDP doubles every 28 years. So we all knew because I was in that generation growing up in the 1970s and 80s. We knew with iron certainty we would be wealthier than our parents and a lot wealthier than our grandparents.

20:20And that meant we could look forward to life. Since 2008, when growth has been 1 % or less, the period for GDP to double is now 70 years. It's so slow, you can hardly notice it. And young people are now asking the opposite question. Can I be as wealthy as my parents? Or in fact, looking at house prices and what have you. is it actually going to be tougher for me than it was for my parents are we the unlucky generation and that's why you know if Andy Burnham wants to give hope as he talked about hope in every heart was his yeah you know his great politicians phrase well unlock the economic growth you know for all their faults Blair and Brown did understand that they did realize that you know having decent economic growth was absolutely fundamental and so I I think that you know that means getting some absolute basics right.

21:13On the kind of devolution of power, I'm worried that basically devolution in the UK has not worked to date in a way that it has worked very, very successfully in other countries. And the fundamental reason is because we've devolved political authority to devolve governments in Scotland and Wales and locally elected mayors. But we haven't devolved the tools that mean that they can stand on their own two feet. So, you know, Scotland gets two-thirds of it. Scottish government gets two-thirds of its income as a check from number 11 Downing Street. In Wales, it's 80 % is just a check from number 11 Downing Street.

21:52Manchester's 75%. Whereas if you were the mayor of Bilbao or Denver or Paris, you are raising a lot more of your own revenue locally. So if you actually wanted Manchesterism to work, by the way, Manchester, still only half the GDP per head of London, a massive, massive gap there. So just spreading what happens in Manchester is not going to do it. The single thing that would make the biggest difference actually is, and it pains me to say this, but they do this in France, is to allow local areas to keep all the extra taxes from planning decisions that they make. So what happens in this country is if you authorize a new shopping center or a nuclear power station or a big new housing development, the extra tax revenue is clawed back by the treasury.

22:43So basically, local areas have very little incentive to improve big new planning decisions. In France, there are departments in the Loire where they have had free broadband forever because they approved a nuclear power station in the 1970s and that's generated but then the fear would be that it would create concrete jungles well I don't think it's done that in France because what actually happens is you get the local area the local mayor saying how can we make do this development in a way that works for us locally and brings in the DOSH as well. And so you align incentives, which we haven't done.

23:25And so basically at the moment, when you're talking about big new developments, particularly infrastructure developments, you have central governments set against all these local councillors that are basically trying to say no, and we get the worst of all worlds. Now, that's the kind of thing which would align incentives, and that really could unlock economic growth. And if you look at, I mean, Denver's a really interesting example, actually, because, you know, in 1980s, Denver was a city that was not unlike Manchester. It was de-industrialised, a lot of economic problems. It's now nearly caught up with New York in terms of its average wealth.

24:01How's it done that? Because they have an elected mayor who raises his own dosh. And he did very inspired things like saying, we're going to have an international airport because of Denver's position. Then he raised$3 billion. Is that largely external investment? Yeah, he had to actually put in a new transport system. He had to win a referendum to increase property taxes in order to pay for this transport system. But they have turned around the economy in Denver. And they didn't have to beg, steal or borrow from anyone in D.C., but they did it themselves. Isn't this the difference between the American and the British model?

24:37The British model of devolution, to me, seems to become about competition for access to Whitehall money. Exactly. Even to the point, which is bizarre, of competition to get more civil servants to live in your postcode. So we'll have a number 10 north, please. Why is that regarded as an achievement of devolution to have more civil servants in your area? Whereas in the United States, you'll have Austin looking at New York and going, well, your property taxes are too high. We'll cut them. So we'll bribe businesses to come here. They want roads. We'll build the roads. if they want a new airport, we'll create the airport.

25:17They're competing with each other to be more economically attractive. Whereas the model here of say Wales or Scotland is outbidding each other to be the better model of socialism so that people will continue to vote for them. Because of course, what they're really doing in those two cases is building the base for future independence, which is a political base, which is all about saying we can do redistribution better than England will because it always votes Tory. Absolutely right. In fact, interesting you mentioned austin because uh a chapter in my book on devolution i compare austin texas with the west midlands because they both have a similar population and they both had very pro-business mayors a guy called steve adler in austin and andy street and they were mayors for about the same period of time and in that period the west midlands grew by three percent they had the pandemic, which has obviously made things harder, Austin, Texas grew by 53 % in real terms.

26:17Now, it wasn't just because of the devolved structures. But the truth is, you look at the powers that Mayor Adler had in Austin, he was the chief executive of the city. He was controlling the city taxes. He was raising money for mass transit systems. He was making planning decisions. Everything Andy Street did, he had to bang on my door at number 11 or my predecessors as chancellors and say, please can I have a bit of money to do this? Please can I have a bit of money to do that? Things took forever. And, you know, a really talented man, I think, ended up very frustrated at how long it took him to turn things around compared to when he was running John Lewis and he was actually able to turn around that business.

26:58But then that plays into a degree of Burnhamism, doesn't it? When he talks about sort of smashing up the civil service, is he really saying that he wants to stop the Treasury's stranglehold on other departments. I mean, how influential is the Treasury? We heard Liz Truss talk about Treasury orthodoxy. Are they immovable? Are they all lefties forcing Conservative chancellors into doing thoroughly socialist things? Do you know they're not? I think this is a complete fabrication. In fact, if you were looking for thatch rights in the civil service, you would find more in the Treasury than anywhere else.

27:33Why are we then one of the most highly taxed nations in Europe? Well, it is all... OK, there is a problem in the Treasury, which I'll come to. But if you have a prime minister and a chancellor who know what they want to do, the Treasury will do it. Right. That is, you know, to me, I never had a problem with the Treasury trying to frustrate what, you know, Rishi and I were trying to do. There is one problem there in the Treasury, which is that the biggest moment in the Treasury year is the budget. the chancellor's reputation is at stake and that's basically the accountancy function of the treasury that's making tax receipts and public spending add up within the fiscal rules and that tends to eclipse everything and the growth function of the treasury taking the long term decisions uh i found they did a lot of that when i was there but it was because i asked for it but it doesn't naturally rise to the surface.

28:29And the growth department in the Treasury is much, much smaller than the tax department and the spending department. And I always thought there was an imbalance there. Ending control of whips over MPs, another idea of his. I mean, is this just stuff he's just saying because he's trying to avoid a leadership contest? No, that really worried me when he said that because... How would you pass welfare? It's not just naive. But, you know, if you're saying, why have things not gone as well as they should? And I say this, you know, taking some responsibility as well. It's not just structures. It's also leadership.

29:08And what is it we need in a prime minister? Fundamentally, what we need is someone who, from the get-go, is going to make the argument for unpopular difficult choices. You know, being a good communicator can help you win elections. but it's not enough to be a good prime minister. A good prime minister actually has to lead us by explaining why difficult things have to be done. And my worry about saying, you know, we don't want the whipping system, we don't want the punch and duty Westminster politics is that your mindset is I'm going to keep everyone happy, I'm going to be nice, when actually the prime ministers that have succeeded in my lifetime, to paraphrase the film, have seen that job as one battle after another.

29:54they they they recognize you go in and it's win one fight uh you know this is margaret thatcher all over win a fight get the political capital for that use it up on the next fight win that fight and the cycle continues but if you think that you're going to come in and keep everyone happy well i'm afraid that's what keir starmer did and look what happened but then i'm just noticing a little bit of a similarity perhaps between you and andy burnham here because maybe the reason that you didn't win the Tory leadership is that people thought you were too nice. I'm saying that as a compliment because whenever people talk about you, they do say, look, he's a thoroughly decent human being and in a way, would you have made a good prime minister?

30:41Because you're very likeable. I don't know how much you care about being liked, but it's a brutal game, this. Andy Burnham might be a little bit like you, a bit just too nice for all this. I think... Sorry, I don't know. That's not meant to be a criticism. No, no, I know. Look, I think with me you've got one big advantage, which you can actually look at my track record. And, you know, I was the person who made the NHS the first healthcare system in the world to give totally honest assessments of hospitals. Outstanding good requires improvement, inadequate. No other healthcare system does that.

31:14I wanted to clear out the mid-staffs, make sure we didn't have any. I had the junior doctors on strike for a year. As chancellor, I put up taxes. I cut spending. I think actually my weakness is that I didn't care enough about my own popularity, my weakness as a politician. But I've never had a problem making the argument for difficult changes. And I'm sure that another weakness I probably do come across as a bit too technocratic, and I'm not as good at exciting the emotions as people like Boris were. But if it's taking difficult decisions, I don't think I did much else. So do you think, I mean, from what you know of him personally, you doubt his capacity to do that?

31:59I hope he has changed over the years. But, you know, what he's done, what he did in government and what he's done in Manchester, you know, I don't think he's had those really big, tough fights. And I think you have to go into number 10 knowing this is only going to work if you choose very clear strategic fights. Now, one of them is welfare reform, and I'm really worried about what he said so far, because it seems to me he's saying, I don't want crude welfare cuts. Well, if you don't do that, you're going to have to hike taxes. It's as simple as that. Another is the NHS, and you were a health secretary.

32:33His last job in government was health secretary. Did you reach any judgment about him based upon his performance then? Well, we had pretty brutal exchanges because he was shadow health secretary when I was health secretary. And he basically destroyed Andrew Lansley's reputation over the 2012 Health and Social Care Act by telling everyone that that was a privatization plot, which it absolutely wasn't. And so and then, you know, and I pointed out that he was health secretary when the government failed to act on mid-staff. So we had some pretty frank exchanges in the commons. But the NHS, I'm glad you mentioned it, Tim, because that's an example of a huge system that needs profound reform if we're going to keep it.

33:26I think it kind of needs the kind of reforms that Michael Gove did in education, a proper decentralization. decentralization, not a privatization, but a decentralization because it's become so bureaucratic. It takes ages to get anything done. And every hospital has about 44 monthly targets. They are micromanaged by the Department of Health. And that's an area where you really need reform. But that will be difficult and it will involve fights. And is Andy Burnham up for I really hope so. But, you know, he has to understand that that's what this job involves. It involves picking sides, making an argument, being prepared to be very unpopular.

34:14But then the countries say that's leadership. We've got someone who knows what they want to do. They're prepared to make those difficult changes. So to conclude, is it too much to say that Burnham Onyx? Still can't say it. Burnham Onyx. Thank you. Does perhaps threaten to bankrupt Britain? If it just turns out to be a continuation of what we've had, then we are going in totally the wrong direction. And I just, there's one topic we haven't mentioned here, but I just want to mention it because it's so important. You know, we talk as economists, you know, debt, 100 % of GDP. What does that actually mean?

34:59It means the average household in this country is paying£3 ,900 in tax every year for our debt interest. That is, you know, it's like your mortgage, our national mortgage. So this is actually costing every family in the country, the average household, nearly four grand a year. That is not money that's building nuclear power stations to give us cheaper energy. It's not being spent in the local supermarket to help our farmers. And it's actually a lot of it's going to international investors who've lent us the money. And my big worry about this direction that we're going in under a Labour government is that debt is just going to keep going up.

35:40And it's going to become more of a noose around our necks. But I'm going to finish with something really positive and helpful. I'm going to tell you how to say this phrase. What you've got to do is you've got to say Burnham without the M at the end. Burnham. And then you've got to say Nomics. Burner Nomics. Burnonomics Burnonomics Burnonomics Burnonomics Burnonomics Burnonomics Jerry Hunt What a pleasure it's been to speak to you on The Daily Tea Thank you very much indeed My pleasure We'll be back on Monday at 5pm

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