Andy Burnham ended his first week as prime minister back in Manchester on Friday, at the offices of the new No 10 North – where he hopes to work at least one day a week. Regional mayors sat alongside ministers in what Burnham bills as “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”.
The week was marked by a series of cost-of-living measures: a £2 cap on bus fares, a cut in VAT on electricity, and business rates relief for pubs, clubs and smaller music venues. The Guardian editorial described them as “modest moves” that “nodded empathetically to people’s need to have the chance to enjoy themselves as well as pay the bills”, contrasting them with the Starmer government’s early decision to cut winter fuel payments.
“Burnham's first week saw bus fare caps and No 10 North; chicken shop row erupts in France.”
Burnham’s surprise choice of chancellor, John Healey, will now prepare his first budget. With parliament in recess and Nigel Farage “distracted by a political farce of his own making in Clacton”, the prime minister has navigated the opening act with some aplomb, the editorial said. But recent polling points to an “exasperated and impatient electorate” giving him only a limited window. Burnham intends to use the summer to visit constituencies identified as losers from a 40-year political settlement in which “power was centralised, economic power was privatised and communities were deindustrialised”.
Separately, a left-on-left battle has erupted over the French chicken chain Master Poulet, which just opened its first UK branch. In Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, near Paris, Socialist party mayor Karim Bouamrane tried to block a branch that opened outside the town hall – first with concrete blocks, then with giant colourful plant pots after a court ordered their removal. The shop responded with quippy signs reading “we are open … no offence to Karim”, delighting French social media. Bouamrane insisted it was about quality of life, citing late deliveries and cooking smells. But the row has reignited questions about class and gentrification in a town transformed by regeneration.
