Burnham be bold - or risk being bowled

This article by Carl Richardson was first published in the Express & Star on 3rd September 2026.

"For many traditionalists the British summer draws to a close when the England Men’s cricket team’s final home test match concludes and ‘stumps are drawn’. At that point it seems normal for children to head back to school, politicians to return to Parliament and sporting attention to switch back to football after a brief respite.

The summer of 2026 has, however, proved to be anything but traditional.

By the time Joe Root and his colleagues run out onto the pitch at Edgbaston for the final test against Pakistan on 9^th September, both the new school year and football season will already be in full flow, and Parliament will equally have been back in action for over a week after the summer recess.

The new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, will have had more than six weeks over the summer to assimilate into to his new role, an unprecedented ‘bedding in period’ to settle into Number 10 (South), without the intense scrutiny and pressures that invariably come when Parliament is sitting.

It feels fair to say that the PM has used that time well and made a start to his Premiership without mishap.

Initiatives such as Number 10 North, signposting a push towards a greater devolution of powers to regional Combined Authorities and Mayors, have been generally well received, and it is hard to be anything but supportive of most of the small initiatives that have been announced to date, such as the pledge to have nobody sleeping rough at Christmas this year.

While the costings behind such initiatives need fair scrutiny, and the new team in Downing Street must be realistic with the public on the state of the public finances, there is little doubt that communications in general have been slicker and more engaging than was the case under his predecessor.

Burnham has also handled those issues that have come his way so far with his trademark deft touch, be that the wild fires that destroyed homes across the West Midlands or the ‘rage’ that swept across all parts of the UK when Gianni Infantino threatened to ‘sell the World Cup.’ 

As a warmup for heading back into Parliament he has now also undertaken his first major overseas visit as PM, joining President Zelensky in Kyiv to emphasise the UK’s ongoing support for Ukraine, and ably demonstrating his ability to appear statesman-like on the world stage.

 The challenge for the Prime Minister moving forward will be to build upon these first few weeks in office, and in particular to plot a course that can help to shake the UK out of its economic stupor. With major economic forecasters such as the OECD and IMF predicting anaemic UK economic growth of somewhere between 1.1%-1.3% in 2027, the Prime Minister and his team clearly need to do something significant to bring the prospect of real growth back into the economy over and above these levels.  

Writing from the perspective of a family business that has roots in the UK but now invests all over the world, we would certainly urge the Prime Minister to be bold in his actions. 

In the past we have suggested that successive governments look at a range of different initiatives to help fuel economic growth. 

These have included ideas such as having a Minister for the ‘Magnificent Seven’, as the tech behemoths Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla are sometimes known, in order to ensure that the UK can best match up to them and is securing an appropriate share of investment and jobs.

Other ideas have been to establish a Ministry of the Future to focus on emerging trends that cut across existing ministerial lines. Or to establish a ‘Brownfield first, Brownfield fast’ guarantee, whereby relevant planning authorities either refuse, approve or request amendments to planning applications within 100 days of submission.

While the merits of the above ideas can all be debated, the over-riding point in suggesting such changes to existing ways of doing things was focused less on specific details at this stage, and more on the need for government to be bold and brave in reimagining how day to day government business is conducted.  

Alongside this is a hope that rather than looking to fund new initiatives with additional punitive taxes on business, the PM may actually consider making the risk/reward equation more – not less - attractive for entrepreneurs and wealth creators in order to realise greater economic growth, and in turn generate more funds for the Treasury to pay for public services such as the NHS and defence.

The world is changing rapidly and so we, as a country, must be open minded to ideas and initiatives that break from the ‘norm’ and traditional ways of doing things, and aim to align most effectively to that changing world.

So far, in a short space of time, the new Prime Minister has shown an admirable appetite for doing just this. The Number 10 North initiative was certainly a bold way of visibly demonstrating that greater devolution is on the way, in England at least.

Moving forward we hope that there are more such initiatives, and that they prove to be more than just gimmicks or ways of demonstrating a point of differentiation from his predecessor, and are instead a real commitment to a fresh new approach.  

While not everything may work, such an approach would send an important signal to the country that things can be done differently than they have been in the past.

In turn this can then help to inspire greater confidence throughout the country, and not least amongst the business community, which has felt somewhat disenfranchised by government in recent times, but needs that sense of confidence and belief in order to drive investment and growth in our economy.

While the new Prime Minister may have inherited a somewhat sticky wicket upon assuming office, his initial small steps have gone down well, even if the scrutiny he has faced thus far has been akin to facing underarm bowling. Once the inevitable political bouncers start heading his way it is to be hoped that the bold approach ramps up, or else the risk of being bowled out by the opposition will surely increase rapidly."

Link here to the original article in the Express & Star: We need a fresh approach from Andy Burnham, says Black Country business boss