Stupidly Simple
Tuesday 28th July 2026
Andy (Big Boy) Burnham has been wowing Westminster with his 6am announcements on how he will spend more taxpayer’s money.
We all know none of them touch the sides but it is fun to wake up each morning trying to guess what the next Big Boy idea will be.
Thursday’s gob of genius was to reduce the rates bills of English pubs and clubs by 20%.
Whatever happened to the Labour Manifesto pledge to scrap business rates and come up with a ‘fairer’ system for all commercial properties?
The new Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds haplessly tried to dodge that question. She barely seemed to recognise that it was one of their promises in the Election a full two years ago.
Another of BBB’s top ideas has been to bring Angela Raynor back to the housing brief.
‘Exonerated’ by HMRC, she says, of what the rest of us would call tax evasion, Angela will now charge with gusto into implementing the left-wing agenda of the young and utterly naïve civil servants in DHCLG and The Treasury. They who came up with the ill-conceived and splendidly poorly drafted Renters Wrongs Act.
Rayner has pretty much conceded the 1.5m new-build target has fallen by the wayside. Nobody in the real world ever thought it would be hit anyway.
She and BBB want to focus on building new council houses. I have no problem with this. It was one of Thatcher’s failures that she did not allow Councils to build new social housing to replenish that which she allowed to be sold to council tenants.
This brings me to one of my pet topics. Councils need to be allowed to borrow to build council housing themselves.
We cannot keep expecting private property developers to build state assets through the ridiculous Section 106 social obligation process.
A little know truth about BBB’s Central Manchester building and growth success is that he and the local authority set aside Section 106 obligations for the private developers building in that city.
Funnily enough lots of new properties have been built there and it is considered a success story.
Our new Prime Minister knows this and needs to instruct Angela to change the rules around building social housing so that new construction can happen unimpeded by Section 106.
The extra newly built supply will be taken up by the better off. Tricky for Labour types to stomach. However, this will create a trickle-down of the current housing stock helping to ease the shortages.
Simple stuff.
Until next time……….
PB
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