I have some thoughts to share for anyone who was fool enough to believe newly installed British Prime Minister Andy Burnham was going to be a welcome breath of fresh air, and any directional change from the last guy.
The first one is easy.
Labour is as Labour does, and ho, boy.
This 'new' Labour government is doubling down on the old one's worst impulses almost out of the gate.
Anyway, here he is, chirpy and personable, at his first cabinet meeting.
HELP IS COMING
“Life’s hard out there,” says Andy Burnham as he holds his first cabinet meeting as PM and calls on ministers to give people a sense “that help is coming"
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) July 21, 2026
Follow live: https://t.co/PzrtEDEXdL pic.twitter.com/vklIxVZdbb
And hadn't the PM pulled some razzle dazzle, making news with a bold announcement that he'd immediately cut the value-added tax (VAT) to give people relief on 'household energy bills'.
It sounded good as long as 'the household' didn't do the math.
HAHAHA … it’s not a £45 reduction in energy bills. It’s a tiny reduction in the size of the increase.
— Bernie (@Artemisfornow) July 21, 2026
VAT on domestic electricity is only 5% anyway and Burnham isn’t removing it from gas!
The energy price cap has just risen by £221. So you’re now only £176 WORSE OFF 🤡… pic.twitter.com/6R5Vfjk3kj
So it's a little less of a monstrous rise in the bill as opposed to 'savings.' It's not applicable to one's natural gas 'household energy bill,' so it's cultishly selective. And it's temporary - expires in six months.
What a guy!
His cabinet is filling out, too. Meet the new Secretary of Housing...who looks suspiciously like the old Secretary of Housing.
Angela Rayner has been appointed as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government @mhclg. pic.twitter.com/CG9YLNePg2
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) July 20, 2026
Or she was until Angela Rayner had to step down from Starmer's administration in the face of a number of financial scandals, including a sketchy tax scandal surrounding what she owed on her second home that should sound really familiar.
Angela Rayner dodges £40,000 stamp duty
Deputy Prime Minister reduces tax bill for Hove flat by declaring it as her main residence
Angela Rayner saved £40,000 in stamp duty on her new seaside flat after telling tax authorities it was her main home, The Telegraph can disclose.
The Deputy Prime Minister is understood to have removed her name from the deeds of her house in Greater Manchester a few weeks before buying an £800,000 seaside flat in Hove, East Sussex.
The changes enabled Ms Rayner to avoid paying £70,000 in stamp duty, which would have been applicable if Hove was her second home. Instead, she is thought to have paid £30,000 in stamp duty, saving her £40,000 in the process.
But she has also told Tameside council in Manchester that her constituency house remains her primary residence and informed Brighton and Hove council that her apartment there was a second home for council tax purposes.
Although the changes are entirely legal, the arrangements will raise questions over whether she has deliberately conducted her property affairs to pay less stamp duty and council tax.
But, no worries - SHE'S BACK!
And ready to wreak havoc on the taxpaying homeowners of the United Kingdom with her immigrant housing schemes. This interview with Nigel Philips, who is now the CBS News chief foreign correspondent, from her previous term in the position, is pretty illustrative of how the 'champagne socialist' (as Rayner's been dubbed) will handle the continuing housing crisis facing the UK.
Watch this absolute car crash interview again, with the now Secretary of State for Housing, Angela Rayner. pic.twitter.com/p0A5HTYYue
— TheManWhoFellToEarth (@ReturnofColin2) July 21, 2026
And she does come by her nickname honestly, much as Bernie and our socialista/commies do here.
...They told The Telegraph: “For ordinary people who are struggling, it doesn’t correspond to how people live their lives. She’s got a house in Ashton, a flat in London and now she’s got a house in Brighton.
“These options aren’t available to ordinary people and I don’t think MPs or ministers or even the Deputy Prime Minister should live a life that is so far away from the lives of ordinary people.
She also has the issue of a handsome payout to get her to leave her post last year unresolved. Now that she's reemployed in the government after only ten months or so, inquiring minds want to know if the British taxpayers get their premature £17K severance payment back.
This lady striding purposefully up the sidewalk towards No. 10 and not answering any of the giddily shouted questions is Louise Haig, known in political circles as Andy Burnham's enforcer.
🚨 WATCH: Louise Haigh walks up Downing Street pic.twitter.com/IBfdwRqErn
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) July 20, 2026
She was the former transport minister until word of her 2014 fraud conviction surfaced and she had to resign in disgrace.
...She admitted misleading police more than a decade ago after wrongly telling officers her work phone had been stolen when she was “mugged while on a night out” in 2013.
She claimed she initially believed the phone had been taken but later found the handset at home.
The following year, six months before she became an MP, Ms Haigh pleaded guilty to making a false report to police and was handed a conditional discharge by magistrates. It is understood that the conviction is now classified as “spent”.
As the minister in charge of the Cabinet Office, she inherited responsibility for the Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA), the Government’s centre of expertise on scams involving public money.
However, within hours of her taking office, that brief was handed to Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, instead.
The Cabinet Office said the decision to move the PSFA was made before Ms Haigh’s appointment and had nothing to do with her fraud conviction.
In 2024, Ms Haigh was forced to resign as Sir Keir Starmer’s transport secretary after it emerged that she had a historical conviction for fraud.
The case caused a headache for Sir Keir when Ms Haigh claimed she had informed him about the conviction when he put her in the shadow cabinet in 2020.
But, no worries - SHE'S BACK!
Haigh - convicted fraudster , criminal . Think Sir Keir sacked her when he found out . Brilliant . An end to sleaze . But ya know - she moved hell and high water to get Burnham in . Sooooooo - heres a job for you 😔 https://t.co/31N4Aea22e
— Jay Tee (@jt24uk) July 20, 2026
Jonathan Reynolds is Burnham's new/old Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.
When he was Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds presided over:
— Andrew Griffith MP (@griffitha) July 20, 2026
- 330 pages of new employment red tape
- Record insolvencies
- Higher taxes on business
- A crisis of youth unemployment
- 100,000 jobs lost
Do we really need a sequel? https://t.co/BSYhEadadh
He, too, has a colorful past. Or should I say, he is a bit of a 'fabulist,' as he had been a 'solicitor' (lawyer) in his own little world for over a decade before eventually correcting the 'inadvertent' mistake that his speeches and LinkedIn profile referring to the same were, like...wrong.
This is the new UK Business Secretary.
— David Vance (@DavidVance) July 21, 2026
His name is Jonathan Reynolds.
He has never worked in business.
Oh, and he pretended to be a qualified solicitor on several occasions when he wasn’t.’ pic.twitter.com/WwLqNifVWb
What a collection of characters so far, huh?
And it turns out that the celebrations over the VAT tax giveaway might be premature, as the 'savings' Burnham used as the justification enabling so handsome a gesture don't exist. Digital ID had been scrapped, and Burnham is using the £1.8B earmarked for that in the VAT suspension.
But - there's always a but - it turns out the Digital ID money was unfunded, so it was never real to begin with, so paying for the VAT tax suspension is based on what the Sky News reporter calls 'a black hole.'
It turns out there are lots of those lurking, and it's not stopping Burnham's hot pen on the checkbook signature line as he hires all his good buddies for friendship's sake, vice competency and the needs of the country.
Has Andy Burnham prioritised putting his friends in cabinet - and how many are from the north?
— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 21, 2026
@SamCoatesSky explains who is in the prime ministers new top team pic.twitter.com/x5jmjXX1aZ
No. 10 is truly an elite good old boys club of slackers and thieves so far.
The warning signs are flashing in every boast.
Oxford and Cambridge have spent decades becoming factories for ideological capture, grievance studies and elite groupthink. These institutions have championed cancel culture, prioritised DEI over merit, and produced graduates who treat real-world problems like grooming gangs,…
— Wilson & Blackett Archive (@WilsonBlackett) July 21, 2026
...prioritised DEI over merit, and produced graduates who treat real-world problems like grooming gangs, mass immigration and cultural erosion as inconvenient “narratives”
Academics and 'thinkers' abound. Good luck finding a 'been there, done that, let's not do that' doer.
I suspected Burnham's new cabinet had no private sector experience but it's starker than I thought ... Two - at a push three - of the cabinet members have done anything except be a council worker, charity or union employee or Labour staffer. Big government is about to get bigger. pic.twitter.com/CLWjhBH7py
— Joe Armitage (@joe_armitage) July 21, 2026
Who am I kidding?
They'd never get near the front door, let alone actually in it.
Exclusive clubs are like that.
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