When Andy Burnham returned from the summer recess to make his first Commons speech as Prime Minister, he promised MPs a “clear diagnosis” of what ails Britain. From the 1980s, he said, the country took a series of wrong turns. According to him, political power was centralised, economic assets were privatised and industry was hollowed out. Thatcher was the villain and the 1970s constituted the lost Eden. The Institute of Economic Affairs rightly called it a speech steeped in nostalgia. Weeks later, at the Labour conference in Liverpool, the PM went further. Invoking 1945, he declared that “we built the common good”, then promised to repeal the Thatcher-era ban on public ownership of water companies and to launch GB Grid, a publicly owned company to take on private energy operators. Energy, water and housing were to come back under “public control”....<<<Read More>>>...
