British Prime Minister Andy Burnham: Reforming Britain with the values ​​of 1945

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced an ambitious reform program for Great Britain over the next ten years in his keynote speech at the Labor annual party conference in Liverpool on Monday. Social housing should be expanded and the socialization of water and electricity production promoted.

More “public control” is the basis for higher economic growth, said Burnham. He promised “growth in every zip code, hope in every heart.” More growth is also the key to investments in public services and defense.

Burnham announced the establishment of a state nursing service, the National Care Service, analogous to the state health service, the National Health Service. This is to be financed by changing the current pension formula from 2030. So far, pensions have been linked at least to wage developments, after which it would be at most either the inflation rate or 2.5 percent. The Prime Minister expects significant savings from this.

His announcements about an improved relationship between Great Britain and the European Union remained relatively vague, although he criticized Brexit, for example because it did not lead to a decline in immigration. The Prime Minister also announced a Commission on Electoral Reforms.

Burnham has made most of the specific announcements in his speech before, but at the party conference under the motto “Hope Again,” he placed them in a larger, even personal, context. He recalled his recently deceased father, who had worked in the port of Liverpool, and his family's rise from humble beginnings.

Burnham made extensive appeals to the British values ​​of 1945, which would have made a better life possible for ordinary people, when the then elected Labor government put the common good at the center of politics through social reforms. Forty years ago - in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher - the country strayed from this path. It has to be found again so that everyone can find perspectives again.

Burnham received the most applause for a clear declaration of war on the SNP (Scottish National Party) nationalists in power in Scotland. The fact that Scotland's SNP Prime Minister John Swinney Burnham had predicted on the very day of his father's death that he would be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom made him even more determined, Burnham exclaimed. He obviously found it difficult to hold back tears. He repeatedly appealed for British solidarity.