The current Chancellor says new boy Burnham needs to be properly “prepared to govern” when he arrives in Downing Street in a little more than a week.
Rachel Reeves has made a stark warning to incoming prime minister, Andy Burnham, urging him to be prepared for his first day in the new job.
The current Chancellor says new boy Burnham needs to be properly “prepared to govern” when he arrives in Downing Street in a little more than a week.
Reeves told Laura Kuenssberg in a BBC interview that “it is important that when Andy walks through that door he has a worked-through plan, because governing is hard in Britain, and lots of challenges and shocks will come his way”.
She says that “thinking about” and “actually doing” the job are two very different things and has urged him to be “really clear about what they want to achieve.”
She said: “He needs to stay laser-focused on those things that have always motivated him, have always driven him”.
Reeves spoke about the outgoing PM Keir Starmer, whom she is known to be close to, saying she “understood” why his time had come to an end.
She said: “People are impatient for change – I’m impatient for change and I totally get that people want to see their lives changed faster.”
It is likely Burnham will bring in his own team, including a new Chancellor, but Reeves wouldn’t explicitly say who should be the next chancellor, or even if she would like to stay.
She has always said that “being chancellor is her dream job” and she believes she has done it well.
“I have brought stability and trust to the economy over the past two years. Andy will take over an economy that is much stronger than the one I inherited from the Conservatives just two years ago,” she said.
In the interview, Reeves wanted to focus on what she described as the “big picture” – government borrowing costs that have gone down, inflation way down from its peak, increased investment in infrastructure like roads and railways, and the economy growing faster than the UK’s nearest competitors.
But other problems have not been solved just yet including inflation being above target and the Bank of England warning that interest rates may have to go up again.
A close political ally of Starmer, Reeves became shadow chancellor in 2021 as Labour campaigned to return to power, resulting in their landslide victory two years ago.