Andrew Neil argues that Andy Burnham's first speech as Prime Minister was heavy on empty slogans and light on substance, echoing the rhetorical style that won him the Labour leadership. Neil contends the speech matters because it reveals a leader who lacks a clear mandate for major policy shifts and appears to look backwards to a pre-Thatcher economic model that Neil says failed disastrously.

Burnham announced a new ten-year plan due by autumn and pledged to end rough sleeping nationwide, though Neil notes his record as Greater Manchester mayor on homelessness fell short of similar promises. Neil also criticises Burnham's attacks on 1980s "neo-liberalism", arguing that Thatcher's reforms revived Britain after post-war decline and that Blair and Brown wisely built on them rather than reversing them, contrasting this with the union-dominated, high-tax, strike-hit 1970s that Neil suggests Burnham secretly admires.