Andy Burnham used his first statement to Parliament as Prime Minister to blame Margaret Thatcher's reforms and Brexit for many of Britain's current economic problems, setting out a left-wing vision involving greater state control over the economy. He acknowledged that, two years into a Labour government elected on a promise to ease the cost of living, life remained "too expensive and too hard for too many," but offered little detail on how his plans would work in practice, prompting Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to accuse him of "living in the past" and wanting to "take us back to the 1970s."

During a three-and-a-half-hour Commons session, Burnham said the government would be "relentless" in taking greater control of utilities such as water and energy, calling the privatised water industry a "leaking monument" to Thatcherism, and argued that further devolution could drive growth. He declined to rule out additional tax rises in next month's Budget and refused to sanction "crude cuts" to benefits spending, despite warnings over its rising cost. Badenoch countered that Labour's £70billion of tax increases had already "crushed the economy," while Labour's own Darren Jones warned in The Times that a "sugar rush" of announcements would achieve little without addressing Britain's underlying problems.