"We are on borrowed time if we don't get a move on," Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister who this week returned to cabinet as housing secretary, told the BBC's Today programme on Friday. It has been quite the week at Westminster. Sir Keir Starmer's departure as prime minister on Monday seems rather a while ago.
The fledgling Burnham administration has been seeking to find its feet and make a decent first impression, with an early pattern of dropping news from No10 each morning. On Tuesday it was a VAT cut on electricity bills; Wednesday, bus fares in England; Thursday, business rates. Today, Burnham is assembling what Rayner calls "a pride of mayors" for a meeting of the National Economic Council at his new base, No10 North in Manchester.
“Andy Burnham hints at tougher benefits rules and warns NHS will collapse without social care fix in first week as PM.”
Burnham claims his Manchester base represents the beginning of "the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen" and he will be "bringing forward the biggest changes in the last 40 years". His early announcements have been considerably more piecemeal than that – he says his "10 year plan for Britain" will come later this year. The early evidence points to Burnham being both more sharp and more nimble than his predecessor in setting out his agenda, with the creation of the Office of Prime Minister and No10 North making clear that the arteries of power flow to and from him.
But beyond the choreography, the substance is emerging. In an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, Burnham suggested he wants to make it harder for people to claim benefits in a bid to bring down the welfare bill. "We've got to get really serious as a country," he said about reducing what the government spends on benefits. Asked if that could mean benefits cut or removed entirely for some, Burnham said: "It's about changing the nature of the support and making some of the support conditional upon people taking opportunities that are presented in front of them. So you might increase the conditions required to receive benefits."
His comments are likely to prove controversial with the left of the Labour Party. Last year, Starmer was forced to ditch plans to reduce the welfare bill by £5bn following a rebellion by his own MPs. Burnham added: "There are people in the benefits system, young people in their 20s, who have been, I would say, quite seriously let down because the support wasn't there for them when it should have been there. So I don't blame them." He is expected this week to set out how he plans to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training.
Elsewhere in the interview, Burnham warned that the NHS could collapse unless the UK's social care crisis is solved. "Whatever political capital I have, I will put in to fixing broken social care," he said, adding: "If we don't do it, the NHS will collapse under the weight of trying to care for people who've really not needed to end up in the NHS system." He said he cannot put a timeline on the change but would not want to leave office without bringing in a new system.
Burnham's opponents are having to recalibrate. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch's al fresco speech on a rooftop in central London on Thursday was a tacit acknowledgement that the political terms of trade have changed. She teased the new prime minister over his informal style – he "seems like a nice g…"