295. Jim O’Neill – The man shaping Burnhamomics
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You are reported regularly as being, in some senses, an advisor to Andy Burnham.
Andy needs to figure out what is exactly his key priorities and then communicate that to everybody and then actually stick with them. One of the many mistakes that Keir Starmer presided over was effectively trying to play around with small amounts of savings in welfare that I think the triple lot needs to be dealt with. And I suspect once the right person is bold enough to do it, it's going to be pretty hard for any major political opposition to disagree.
Burnham's talked about a 10-year plan. We've been talking about prime ministers only lasting two out of a four-year term and, you know, some even only last weeks. Do you think the markets will buy into that? Will people? Will the electorate? Is 10 years going to be the right time frame?
There are two opposing issues that somebody like Andy's got to face here.
This episode is brought to you by Octopus Energy. Greg Jackson, the CEO, is with us now. Greg, I want you to look into your crystal ball and tell me what's your vision in terms of, let's say, 10 years for how the average UK house will be powered?
As we build out more and more renewables on the grid, the underlying electricity system's much more volatile. And that means that people have got their own solar panels, their own batteries, can help balance the grid. And cars are gonna be doing that as well. So you're gonna end up with a system that looks a lot more like the internet, where everything is automatically improving, just like in the internet improves your bandwidth, here it'll be improving your energy cost, and prices are gonna come down. And by the way, It brings prices down even for those people who don't have the solar panels and batteries or the electric cars because it makes the whole system more efficient for everybody.
Let's hope that's right then, Greg. Thank you. Now on with today's episode.
Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Money with me, Steph McGovern.
And with me, Robert Peston in Ankara, in Turkey. I'm at the NATO Summit of World Leaders. It is Keir Starmer's last proper outing at an international conference as Britain's Prime Minister. And all the tension here is between Trump and the European leaders, including Keir Starmer. But we're not going to focus on that today, are we, Steph?
No, because over in the UK, obviously, Andy Burnham is pretty much set to become prime minister very soon. And we want to look further in this episode into what might shape his economic thinking. One of the people we know he's talking to is former Goldman Sachs top dog and ex-Treasuring Minister Jim O'Neill. So we've got him back in to find out what advice he's been giving the future prime minister. Here's our interview with Jim O'Neill.
Jim, it's terrific to see you. You may notice that I'm quite a long way from the UK and a UK that seems to be gripped again by Farage madness. But we don't really want to talk to you about Farage. What we want to talk to you about is Andy Burnham, who, barring some event that I simply cannot conceive of, will be Prime Minister in a matter of days. You are reported regularly as being, in some senses, an advisor to Andy Burnham. Can you characterise your relationship with him?
I mean I've known Andy ever since the Greater Manchester Mayoral Authority was created which of course indirectly because of George Osborne came out of the review on City's growth that I was leading so Andy was the first person to become a Mayor and I've known him ever since then and I've talked to him frequently about issues to do with devolution in Manchester as it specifically relates to the press media speculation the past what three weeks plus there is no specific role being offered and the early speculation was actually factually incorrect as far as I know he hasn't got any formal appointed economic advisors but I talked to him a lot and I talked to him a lot about the right things to do
And so, you know, you've told us in the past about the hard choices whoever is the next Prime Minister, probably Burnham, are going to have to make.
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