Why Westminster Will Hate Burnham - and Why it Doesn’t Matter

Image - Number 10

England’s overcooked South-East, and the Westminster establishment it contains, have not taken to the beginning of Burnham’s premiership well. The first reason is his Number 10 North initiative, which will shift executive power from London, where, let’s face it, governmental decision-making has long been too centred. It’s refreshing for the Burnham ministry to be the first formally in touch with the rest of the country it seeks to serve. The second, but more important, is his council tax reforms, which will be based on property values.

The resultant tax cuts for the North and Midlands, and hikes for the South, will face immense opposition from the UK’s most affluent region, because the pre-eminent way to kick up a fuss is to hit people’s pockets. The Telegraph’s declaration that “Burnham has declared war on the South” makes that abundantly clear. All of a sudden, the modern right-wing economic mantra of ‘cut taxes to increase growth but don’t leave it unfunded’ has been the undoing of its Westminster preachers, who are belligerent towards a new Prime Minister on a (relatively mild) redistributive streak now they’re not the ones getting rebates.

But can we blame them? We all live in our own economic bubbles, and feel we work hard for our money, and for the Southerner, seeing a new, non-elected leader eating away at their bottom line must be an infuriating thing. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, and with that notion in mind, hostility is unsurprising. But it is all the same frustrating.

Beth Rigby, Political Editor of Sky News, boasts a fairly robust reputation as far as journalists go. She has a love of the game that is hard to hate, regardless of partisan affiliations. But despite her typically effective holistic analysis, she has quickly attacked Burnham for ‘othering’, by which she means not seeking to represent the entire country.

What Rigby is getting at here, however, is that minor pain for the South-East, whether it be rising taxes or the loss of bureaucratic dominance, is intolerable, even if for the benefit of the whole. This sentiment was, of course, impressively absent for all administrations before, when the boot was on the other foot, and it was London domineering over everywhere else. Who’d have thought it: the South-Eastern-born Cambridge and London-educated journalist is suddenly unpleased when her end of the country has to endure discomfort to correct a historically wayward scale.

What we can take away from this is that, so long as Burnham continues this agenda, the Westminster-centralised political bloc will remain hostile because it’s ‘harming’ (note the single quotes) its home turf. But such ‘harm’ is so vague when taken out of the context of individual bank accounts and back to the nation at large. Few would doubt change is needed in a Britain that has been “comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline.” Yet, the moment that change has short-term costs to the most affluent and privileged region in the nation, such an appetite for true political reform goes askew. That’s not to say that because someone is relatively wealthier they should always shoulder the burden amid tax changes, but if he’s going to rewire UK governance, Burnham was always going to have to break a few eggs.

We’ve always been short-termists in Britain. Whenever someone recalls [Nick Clegg’s coalition stance that we shouldn’t build nuclear because it takes too long](https://dev.unherd.com/2025/01/britain-is-too-dysfunctional-for-nuclear-power/#:~:text=In 2010%2C Nick Clegg made a fateful intervention,“come on stream” until about 2021 or 2022.), a shiver crawls down the spine. Southern anti-Burnhamism, otherwise known as establishment protectionism, is yet another example. While there are benefits to those within the overcooked South-East as the UK’s beating economic heart, why is it so hard to envision a better Britain for all where we’re less dependent on London? It’s not as if Burnham has expressed any kind of anti-Southern sentiment, or disregard for its problems (such as housing concerns), but merely a desire to lean on the region to help kick-start some growth and political vigour in others.

Thankfully, the ‘Burnham bounce’, which has seen Labour take the lead in the polls, shows that some in this country can begin to see the bigger picture. So, while the political bloc will always resent Burnham in the now, his ministry cannot abandon its promising redistributivist urges; even if the battle for Westminster is lost, the war for Britain is infinitely more important.

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