Chris Johns

They won't do it.

a long time ago because I think they realized that the British people don't want

What is necessary that we have to have trade-offs explained to us is that if you want this welfare state that we've got in the UK, and that is as it exists at the moment, you're going to have to pay higher taxes for it.

If you want economic growth, you're going to have to remove all the barriers to economic growth that you've put in place over the last 30 to 40 years.

Rishi Sunak actually, interestingly, had a wonderful turn of phrase for describing Britain's problems.

It was much better than Andy Burnham's It's All Inequality.

Sunak has said today that all of Britain's problems are downstream of the lack of economic growth.

And he's absolutely right when he says that.

And he explained that all of the very well-intentioned, well-meant regulations, rules, planning, all that stuff that you and I talk about a lot, Jim,

that effectively have amounted to a collective choice made by the British people over the last three or four decades to stop this economy from growing.

The zero growth thing is a choice that we have made.

I'm not sure we realize that we've made it, and the politicians know that we've made it, but they also know, if they stand up and say, this is what we've got to do, we've got to dismantle an awful lot of the stuff that we've done over the last 34 years, well-intentioned though it was, if you want economic growth back,

If you want those problems that are downstream of the lack of economic growth, if you want those problems mitigated, maybe solved even, you've got to make a lot of changes.

And that's the radicalism that us centrist dads are looking for.

But they know that that's not a vote winner.

Because the British people have been told by people like Boris Johnson that we can have our cake and eat it.

And that's how we behave.

And that's why we vote for populists now, because the populists tell lies.

And I'm afraid Burnham is a populist, because if he just simply says there's one problem facing the UK, which is inequality, then he is going to be as big a failure as Starmer.

Maybe one with a bit more charisma than Starmer.