Five big ideas for Burnham’s new government

In his first speech as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham set out his bold ambition for ‘a new political model and a new economic model’. This is the scale of ambition that is needed to meet the challenges of the moment. Trust in institutions is falling, public debate is polarised, and too many people feel democracy no longer delivers for them. 

Turning the country around will require bold ideas and radical change – a New Deal between citizens, states and the institutions that shape daily lives. At Demos we have been developing the practical foundations for such a deal. To turn rhetoric into action, here are five big ideas the new Prime Minister should adopt. 

1. Implement a new democratic operating model for government

Burnham committed to change politics, ‘to make it more collaborative, more about problem solving than point scoring’. This means trying new and different ways to tackle the biggest issues facing our country, and putting people at the heart of policy making. As PM, Burnham is already acting to address problems raised on the doorsteps, and vowing to remain in touch with ordinary people, including by going much harder and faster on devolution. But devolution can’t stop at the Mayor’s office or Town Hall. It needs to extend into communities. Breaking the democratic doom loop will require more than ensuring the man at the top stays grounded. It will require fundamental change to the way that government works; a new operating model that builds citizen participation, deliberation and genuine partnership into how decisions are made. 

Demos’s Citizens’ White Paper sets out a radical plan for driving this change. It includes big bold set piece citizens’ assemblies on major contested questions like assisted dying or social care funding, and establishing permanent citizens’ panels at a national and local level to ensure that citizens’ voices inform policy choices on an ongoing basis. To deliver the seismic shift in approach his vision requires, Burnham should make a clear and binding commitment to participatory democracy, and ensure the civil service has the skills, capability and incentives to embed it in their day to day work. The Cabinet Secretary’s Review of the Civil Service provides a vehicle for driving this change.

2. Endorse a Marshall Plan to reinvigorate civic life in the UK

Key to the success of the new Prime Minister’s plans for growth is the ability for government, business, civil society and key institutions to work in lockstep towards common goals. Burnham has spoken passionately about the success of this approach in Manchester, replicating this success across the country will require his government to develop ‘Economies of Coordination’ across the country. That means going beyond cluster strategies that just co-locate businesses, instead actively enabling businesses to pool learning and resources to collectively raise their productivity.

Essential to this mission is a strong and resilient civil society. Our Marshall Plan for Civic Life, developed in partnership with Kinship works, will design and build a coalition of funders, practitioners and policy makers to develop a new funding settlement to revive civic life. The government should endorse this essential work.

3. Be honest about the spending conundrum and introduce fair, popular, pro-growth tax reforms

The Prime Minister has been clear about the direction of travel on tax: shift the burden from work to wealth, raise council tax on the most valuable homes, and give something back to lower earners, rather than raise the headline rates that working people pay. Over the past year, Demos has tested exactly this kind of reform with the public, in nationally representative polling and focus groups, and with business. Last year in our report Solving the Tax Puzzle we identified eight reforms that would raise around £21 billion in 2026/27 without touching the headline rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT.

The public is ready for this. By 58% to 11%, and across supporters of every party, people would rather the tax burden fell on income from wealth than on income from work – and they prefer each of these reforms to cuts in public spending. When we put the whole package to the public as a plan to “close the loopholes and rebalance the system”, more supported it than opposed it, and they came away more favourable towards the government, not less.

Ideas include applying National Insurance to rental income and business partners; reforming capital gains tax to prevent people shifting employment income into capital gains, while removing the disincentives that currently exist to invest; and introducing a council tax premium on non-UK residents’ second homes. Taken together, these reforms offer a way to raise significant revenue while keeping faith with the commitment not to increase the taxes that working people pay. With the Budget approaching, the moment to prepare them is now. 

4. Make his promised “preventative state” a reality by creating a new category of preventative spending

On the steps of Downing Street Burnham set out his intention to build a more preventative state, ‘investing in people’s success, rather than paying for failure’ (see Demos’s essay, The Preventative State). Keir Starmer and his Ministers placed a similar emphasis on tackling the problems in the NHS upstream, promising to end ‘sticking plaster politics’. But this failed to materialise into the radical change in the approach to public services that is needed to avert a major crisis. 

The UK’s chronic underinvestment in long-term preventive measures is contributing to our crumbling public services, which in turn is stifling our potential for growth. To break the cycle, we need to start by measuring prevention and having a transparent process of budgeting and accounting for prevention spending. Demos has proposed a new category within Department Expenditure Limits: Preventative Departmental Expenditure Limits (PDEL). It would classify and ring fence preventative investment, injecting long-termism into public spending. If Burnham is serious about bringing public services back from the brink this would be a bold first step.

5. Develop a cross government strategy on democratic resilience and information security

To succeed, Burnham’s government will need to be geared to the future. The last government’s action on the big tech threat to our security, safety and wellbeing has so far been fractured, underpowered and slow. The new PM has already made big changes to the way the government approaches technology abolishing the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, bringing all of ‘information resilience’ under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, he will need to both capitalise on the opportunities and guard against the threats it presents.

Burnham will need to be willing to take on the tech companies and their vested interests to safeguard our democracy and tackle the risks posed to the cohesion of our society. The government needs a cross-government Information Resilience Strategy engaging everyone across government to address this whole society issue. To tackle misinformation, the government should legislate to give public interest news prominence in our social media feeds and AI chatbot results while bringing in a permanent BBC charter and solidifying its governance to strengthen its independence. We have left our critical digital infrastructure underpinning our information environment vulnerable to foreign governments and private interests. This government needs to have the right fight to take back public control.