Cllr Chris Steward said ‘Whilst I don’t believe a change of Prime Minister should necessitate a General Election when the Conservatives changed leader all key Labour people – especially Andy Burnham – were adamant that there should be one. There is therefore a huge stink of hypocrisy about Burnham’s arrival, in fact of record levels given he was not even an MP at the time of the General Election.
‘Whilst Burnham comes across as a decent bloke this surely is not a sufficient quality to become Prime Minister – even by the Labour Party’s standards of deciding after they ousted Keir Starmer that none of their more than 400 MPs were fit to be leader and their consistent refusal to pick a woman for the role. Burnham is, rightly, proud of his northern roots, but again this simply narrows the would be pool of candidates down to the many millions. We need real a mandate, talent, experience and a plan for a Prime Minister, now more than ever.
‘Burnham is only coming to power because of the disgrace of Keir Starmer who hiked taxes to record levels, released the most seriously offending prisoners early, called people concerned about murders far right, destroyed the education prospects of thousands of children, attacked farmers, has failed to deliver new homes and damaged the UK’s reputation on the world stage.
‘I hope Burnam will succeed as it truly matters for the country but is very hard to see what he really stands for. He is keen to be a ‘new face’ against the establishment but has a long past as an MP and was a weak Culture and Health Secretary. When going for leader in the past he fell well behind the woeful Ed Milliband and then Jeremy Corbyn, hardly a high bar. Whilst he has been a popular mayor of Manchester he is leaving the region with eyewatering debt and the success he has enjoyed has been largely due to successive governments putting Manchester at the pinnacle of a devolution experiment which resulted in huge government money flowing in.
‘The Labour Party is badly divided, in many ways several parties within one party. It remains to be seen whether simply being northern and wearing t-shirts is enough to keep his MPs happy. Certainly financial markets and residents need a lot more convincing and he needs a good team around him – which does not look to be happening.
Cllr Steward concluded ‘Here in York we have seen a huge number of press releases from the Labour council, MPs, mayor and government about the likes of York Central, the dualling of the A1237 and Haxby Station but delivery has been generally lacking. The council is also subject to a shocking government funding settlement which is the worst in history and Labour has been continually hiking council tax by the maximum legally allowed. We have Labour politicians at every level of our government, there really are no excuses now and the time to deliver, but that has been the case for two years already and instead they are just doing damage’.
