By Cllr. Matt Renyard, Southampton City Green Group Leader and Ward Councillor for Coxford.
At the May 2026 local elections, the message was clear – the majority of you wanted change. You wanted leaders who would genuinely tackle the growing gap between your wages and the cost of living, the squeeze on our local services and an end to paying more for less.
With Andy Burnham looking likely to be the next Prime Minister, what can we gather from each of the commitments he made in his speech, and will that be the change that is wanted and needed?
The King of the North’s Big Gimmick
On brand and on message, Burnham promised a No.10 based in Manchester to drive devolution, redistribute power and resources across Britain, to give ‘good growth in every postcode’.
But is this all that it is cracked up to be? Sure – putting greater control regionally may help move us away from the current Westminster bubble. But giving a little more power to local government won’t restore decades of cuts in public services or fix the ever-growing divide between rich and poor. Without funds, this move simply shifts the blame of failure from national government to local government at a time when local government could not be in a worse position. Every local authority: Hampshire County Council, Eastleigh Borough and Southampton City, all have been through the wringer financially with more crises still on the horizon. That means reduced services, fewer bin collections, poorer adult social care outcomes, children in poverty, and the selling off of vital public assets. Not exactly the desired outcomes we want to see.
Public control of key utilities
What is interesting here is the phrase ‘public control’ not ‘public ownership’. This means private companies still making big profits from the services that we all rely on, just with a few levers to push for better service: no different from what we were meant to have for the last four decades with Ofwat, Ofgem and Ofcom, with no guts to actually hold these companies to account. I would argue that this is not a model for success. It might have worked for buses in Manchester, and could do the same for buses here in Southampton, but is unlikely to support wider regional transport, water and energy. There is widespread support for these services to be brought back into public hands: 82% water, 70% energy, 75% railways, so why not simply do that? An economy thrives when the basics are reliable. That is the basis of a functioning society and the responsibility of government to provide the infrastructure and stability for enterprises to innovate and grow on-top of; not a system by which big business continues to extracts rents from an already weakened economy.
House building, but for who: people or profit?
People who know me will know just how passionate I am about the need to build council-owned homes to help tackle the UK homes crisis. While Labour have said some big things, there always seems to be a catch. First it was whole new towns that would ride on the back of a large scale reduction in regulations and local planning controls: great for private developers, but not necessarily good for those people needing homes. In Southampton, we have more than 8000 people on the council waiting list, with what I would estimate to be over half again who would love to put their name on the list if they felt they had any realistic hope of ever getting one. There is a desperate need for council-owned eco-efficient homes, built on a scale like we did post WWII. Frustratingly, there is an easy fix for this: we simply need a national government to lift the restrictions on local authorities set up in the 1980s and an end to right-to-buy, at least for the next decade or two while we build homes for people and not for profit and further rent extraction. Will Andy Burnham deliver that? We live in hope. But anything less than that is simply more of the same.
Cuts to the welfare bill
Putting more welfare costs into local hands won’t suddenly mean people don’t need help! Why is it always cut first, solve the problem later? The vast majority of welfare spend is either on retired individuals who have worked their whole lives, or on in-work benefits. This indicates a failure of our economic model – not of the individual. We have a tax system that taxes work at a higher rate than those that extract wealth through asset ownership (rents). Cutting welfare without fixing the underling issues in our economy is another means of shifting blame and demonising recipients of welfare – the most vulnerable in society.
This is by far the most telling of all of Mr. Burnham’s statement, and I believe it really shows the mark of the man. Be wary of he who would divide us against each other.
Reform business rates
Small and medium sized businesses definitely require support to help enable local growth. They tend to be better employers than large multinationals while adding much more value to the local economy. Business rates is one lever that could help address this imbalance and reward those businesses that do the right thing. However, that means less in the coffers of local authorities. Starting to see a pattern? Already struggling local authorities will need national government funding to fill that gap, which is unlikely to follow without economic change and greater taxation of asset wealth.
Sticking to Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules
No tax increases – so no intention to tax the super-wealthy or powerful global corporations.
This last point is of course the most important, so no wonder he refused to answer questions after his speech, the main one of course being how does he intend to pay for council housing or improvements to local services? Power in local hands is one thing but, completely pointless without funds. How can we rebalance the economy to work for us all if he refuses to change any of the current rules?
There is a desperate need to build an economic system that works for us all, drives green innovation and redresses those areas that have led us to a place where we spend more for less, leading to increased frustration.
He said nothing at all about climate change or sustainability, ironic when he was delivering his speech at the tail end of one of the most extreme weather events we have experienced in the UK, events that are happening more and more frequently.
He didn’t say anything meaningful about a fairer and more equal society, about how you unite communities that have been so badly fractured and divided.
Overall, it was a succession of sound bites with very little substance.
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