They’re always tough, the first weeks back at work after a holiday, but the Prime Minister really has been off the ball since returning to the job from wherever he went. First, there was that awkward defence he made of the Home Office booklet requesting asylum seekers not rape people. Very odd. Now, Mr S has noticed him saying more strange things. ‘I’ve deliberately gone out this first month just doing things, saying we’ll do it, and doing it. No reviews, no commissions, no consultations,’ Andy Burnham told Times columnist Patrick Maguire in a piece for yesterday’s paper. No reviews? No consultations? Mr S hates to be a pedant, but that’s just wrong.
You’ll remember that one of the first things our new PM did on entering No. 10 was cut business rates for pubs and other venues. But do you remember how he said we’d pay for it? I doubt you do, because Mr Burnham never said. He just told us that the government would be ‘reviewing’ tax reliefs ‘for businesses that do not make a positive contribution to local communities, such as vape shops’. How long would this review take? Again, we weren’t told, so Mr S asked the Treasury. Is the review of tax reliefs ongoing? When will it conclude? A spokesperson gave me some minorly interesting background information, yet no answer.
The Prime Minister pretends he’s not like other politicians
Fair nuff, Mr S, but that’s just one example – an infelicitous slip from a new prime minister! Well…
A few hours after that first ‘review’ was announced, a second was declared. On the afternoon of 23 July, the PM ordered an ‘urgent review’ into the early prisoner release scheme. OK, sure, that review was done in a fortnight, reaching the genius conclusion that rapists and ‘serious’ child sex offenders should not be freed from jail early, but the PM then immediately ordered another, different review. This time, Mr Burnham told the Justice Secretary Alex Norris to conduct a ‘review’ into indefinite prison sentences (so-called ‘IPPs’), which have seen some crims locked up for over a decade for small-time crimes.
When will this review conclude? What form will it take? Mr S asked the Ministry of Justice. Again, no details. An MoJ spokesperson said the government is ‘looking at what more can be done’.
But that’s not it. By Mr S’s count, there have been three more can-kicks in addition to those already described. On 1 August, it emerged that Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook is performing an ‘active review’ of Help to Buy. (One assumes an ‘active review’ is more intense than a bog-standard ‘review’, and less so than an ‘urgent review’.) When will that one end? All a spokesperson for the Pennycook’s department would say is that there are ‘no current plans to introduce a new Help to Buy scheme’.
On 9 August, the government said that a ‘consultation’ would begin in the autumn into ‘rip-off discounts and subscription traps’. ‘No more detail to add,’ said a spokesperson from the Department for Business and Trade when asked for some by Mr S.
And on 14 August, the Department for Transport announced a ‘review consultation’ (seriously, what is that?) into sales targets for electric vehicles, which were introduced in order to phase-out new petrol and diesel cars.
Contrary to what Mr Burnham says, there are few politicians who like a review, commission, consultation or prevarication more than he does. Look at his time as mayor of Greater Manchester. Mayor Burnham ordered reviews into grooming gangs, the treatment of women in Manchester police custody, roadworks on the M62/M602, and bus fares. He has previously requested the Home Office review their ‘approach’ to accommodating homeless people, and that the Football Association review the use of VAR in the Premier League.
In fairness, Mr Burnham didn’t start this trend. Over recent years, all British politics has become infected and stalemated by a culture of review and consultation. According to Hansard, the word ‘review’ was used only 675 times in the Commons in the decade from 1900 to 1910. From 1950 and 1960, it jumped to 7,855 times, and from the 2024 election to today, ‘review’ has been said in the Commons 11,424 times. This near-exponential pattern is mirrored in usage of the word ‘consultation’.
The Prime Minister pretends he’s not like other politicians. Mr S doesn’t see a fag paper’s difference between them.
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