Andy Burnham has said he wants to see the UK rejoin the EU in his lifetime as he hit back at Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer’s attempt to compare him to Liz Truss.
The Greater Manchester mayor also urged his party to “call out” the financial “disaster” of Britain’s departure from the bloc, as he insisted he would not be “hopeless” on the economy as prime minister.
As speculation over his leadership ambitions erupted last week, Keir Starmer seized on Mr Burnham’s claim the UK should no longer be in hock to the bond markets to link him to Ms Truss and her disastrous mini-Budget.
Saying he was not going to comment on the mayor, he added: “It was three years ago this week that we had the Liz Truss experiment where she abandoned fiscal rules, in her case for tax cuts, and the result was a disaster for working people.
“The same would be true if you abandoned fiscal rules in favour of spending, and I’m not prepared to ever have that inflicted on working people again.”
On Monday, Mr Burnham told a fringe event at Labour’s conference in Liverpool that the party leadership should “call out” the disastrous effects of Brexit.
“I do think you call out what has put the country in this position,” he said. “The growth is not there as it once was.”
He added: “Long term, I’m going to be honest, I’m going to say it… I hope in my lifetime I see this country rejoin.”
He also criticised Sir Keir’s flagship policy announcement going into this conference – compulsory digital IDs.
In a quickfire round of questions, he was asked whether he backed digital ID and said: “Not now.”
He also called on Labour to cut rail fares, saying it was the “next stage… they need to go on to” adding that the cost of travelling by train was “way too high”.
And he refused to rule out a leadership challenge, as No 10 even as he tried to play down speculation about his ambitions.
Despite saying he would have to be ‘wrenched’ out of Manchester, he added: “I can’t predict the future.”
He added: “You would have to wrench me out of the place, I’m so committed to what we are doing there”. He insisted that the only thing he had launched at the conference was a debate about the direction of the party, but also suggested that if he was prime minister he would stick to “fiscal rules”, just not the same ones as Rachel Reeves.
He also said he would “reject entirely” the suggestion that he is “hopeless” on the economy after both Sir Keir and Rachel Reeves compared him to Liz Truss, after he said the UK should be less in “hock” to the bond markets.
“I reject entirely this idea that I’m sort of hopeless and I’ve no idea about how to make it add up. I’m doing it every day in Greater Manchester. No-one ever says Greater Manchester is run in a financially imprudent way.”
On the economy he said “we overtax people’s work and we undertax wealth and assets” and should change that, starting at the Budget.
The Greater Manchester Mayor said Rachel Reeves would not be able to do it all in the Budget but should “start a process” towards “getting that balance a bit more even”.
He also suggested reform of land value taxation and council tax, adding: “We’ve not looked at council tax since 1991. House prices are unrecognisable.”
