Andy Burnham is days away from taking charge of the country and we still do not know what he stands for.
Will he stick to Labour's manifesto? Will he borrow even more money? Will he fund his Defence Plan so that our country is not at risk?
We don't know, and we've seen the consequences of a Prime Minister without a plan with Keir Starmer. We can't let it happen again.
Watch Kemi's speech on how the Conservatives will hold Andy Burnham and Labour to account👇:
Read Kemi's full speech below 👇:
Britain is heading for a summer of chaos.
We have a caretaker Prime Minister, barely in office and definitely not in power.
All major policy and spending decisions have been put on hold.
The last Defence Secretary resigned because the money needed to keep Britain safe has not been found.
Ministers at the Home Office are fighting each other.
In fact, the Immigration Minister has been banned from seeing government documents.
Rachel Reeves is ringing round businesses trying to get them to say that sacking her would risk destabilising the economy, as if that has not happened already.
What she should have had the good grace to do was resign alongside Keir Starmer.
Meanwhile, trade unions are arguing about their favoured candidates to be the next Chancellor.
The Government is descending into chaos and no one is dealing with the serious and urgent threats that this country faces.
War in Europe and the Middle East, and an underfunded Defence Investment Plan that is putting our troops in danger.
Public spending spiralling out of control and no plan or political will to cut benefits.
Yet we are importing oil and gas from Norway and even Russia while banning new drilling in the North Sea.
Difficult problems need solving and difficult decisions must be taken.
But the man who will be Prime Minister in a couple of weeks wants a three-month summer holiday because he needs some time to work out what he thinks.
He will spend the next three months with unions and left-wing think tanks demanding policy changes which nobody voted for.
Andy Burnham is already the Prime Minister in everything but name.
He needs to act like a leader, put an end to speculation, walk into No. 10, name his Cabinet and come to Parliament to tell the country what he plans to do.
Instead, he is allowing this speculation and this chaos to run and run.
He has clearly learned nothing from the disastrous speculation before Rachel Reeves’s last Budget.
Do you remember the one where she went on breakfast TV with an emergency press conference and frightening messages about income tax?
That speech, according to the former Chief Economist of the Bank of England, became “the single biggest reason growth flatlined”.
Her chaotic briefing had real-world consequences.
Investment decisions were paused.
People lost their jobs.
And because Andy Burnham is not taking charge and shutting down speculation, it is already happening again.
People are worried about capital gains tax, so they are changing their investment decisions.
The car industry is in limbo again because they do not know when petrol cars will be phased out.
Everyone, everyone, is terrified about what will happen if Ed Miliband becomes Chancellor.
The same is true in every sector of the economy.
Britain is facing a summer of chaos.
Investment decisions across the country will be put on hold every time the newspapers are briefed about new tax rises.
The markets will react every time it looks like Britain is going to be borrowing more money.
Our economy will be left in limbo.
And all Labour MPs care about is which jobs they will be getting in the new Government.
The fact is, whether Andy Burnham likes it or not, Britain is facing a harsh economic reality.
Our national debt is nearly 100% of GDP.
Our credit card is maxed out.
We are spending more on debt interest alone than we do on our defence.
We are already paying more to borrow than Greece and Morocco.
Any signal that Andy Burnham intends to borrow even more money will instantly mean higher borrowing costs.
But he will not have to pay them.
We will, in higher mortgage costs and higher taxes.
And someday this money will have to be paid back, and that burden will fall to our children and grandchildren.
We need to cut spending.
Public spending is already unsustainable and it is becoming more unsustainable every day.
But is his priority going to be getting it under control?
Or is it going to be giving out more welfare handouts to keep his backbenchers happy?
Because it sounds like his priority is to send money to the north of England to try to bribe voters at the next election.
The proposals Andy Burnham will announce in his speech today are not some radical new agenda.
They are old hat.
He says Britain has underperformed because power, money and decision-making are trapped in Whitehall and London.
Where have I heard this before?
Another mayor who became Prime Minister had a devolution agenda.
He had a Treasury in the North.
Andy Burnham wants a No. 10 in the North.
But Burnham’s devolution agenda, unlike ours, is stripped of private enterprise and ownership.
It is loaded with Labour’s instincts: more public control, more regulation, more taxes.
All of the very things which have caused the problems we have today.
They will mean more power taken away from Parliament.
But more and more government created all over the country.
More politicians.
More outsourcing of decisions to bodies with even less scrutiny and accountability.
If you look under the hood of Andy Burnham’s proposals, you will find at their core a mistaken belief.
The belief that it is government that creates growth.
It is not.
It is business that creates growth.
It is business that creates jobs, and business is absent from Andy Burnham’s agenda.
Politicians are there to create the conditions for growth, and then get out of the way.
Low tax, simple regulation, stable government, cheap energy.
If you do not fix those things, nothing will grow in your economy.
The solution is to let people build things again.
Give them the incentives and the prospect of reward for taking risk.
If you fix the underlying conditions in our economy, I promise you that housing and infrastructure will be built faster than with any scheme that Andy Burnham can come up with.
If Britain is to succeed over the next two decades, we are going to need to lead the world in sectors like AI, quantum and defence tech.
More regional mayors are not going to do any of this.
Instead of treating the causes of our economic problems, Andy Burnham is going to try to treat the symptoms.
That is why our Conservative plan is to do five things to fix our economy.
Five things that will help every single person in this country.
If Andy Burnham wants to avoid a summer of chaos, he should start by announcing our five policies himself.
One, cut the cost of energy.
Two, get people working, cut the welfare bill and scrap the Employment Rights Act.
Three, cut taxes.
Four, slash burdensome regulation.
And five, champion business, not more politicians.
Champion the risk-takers.
Champion the job creators.
Those are the people who will actually get out there and hire young people.
We do not need 100 different schemes run by 100 different mayors.
Those five actions will spark growth in every corner of the country and every sector of the economy.
That is why they are our policy.
Let me explain more.
Energy is growth, and we are never going to grow our economy while paying the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world.
There is a reason the Conservatives have won a by-election in Scotland for the first time in 50 years.
We won that by-election because we are the only party in Britain standing up for Britain’s oil and gas sector.
To be honest, we are the only party even talking about drilling in the North Sea.
Ed Miliband’s policy of sanctioning Aberdeen oil and gas, while buying gas from Russia, has been rejected.
It is time to get Britain drilling again.
And if Andy Burnham had any sense, he would sack Ed Miliband, not make him Chancellor.
Mr Burnham needs to get Britain working again.
Everyone can see the welfare bill is spiralling out of control.
It is not just that we cannot afford the cost of benefits, which we cannot.
We also cannot afford to waste the potential of millions of people who can work sitting at home.
Getting our economy growing again is going to need a war effort, and everyone who can work will need to play their part.
Andy Burnham says he wants to use mayors to cut the benefits bill.
How?
He could not do it.
The number of people on benefits in Greater Manchester has surged in recent years.
If he could not do it, why does he expect others to?
Cutting welfare means taking tough decisions.
That is what real leadership is.
Spending other people’s money is easy.
Balancing the books is hard.
And it is even harder when all your parliamentary party does is go around asking who they can tax more to pay for more benefits.
So he must cut the taxes holding this country back, not put them up.
Once you have done the difficult work of making savings and fully funded the Defence Investment Plan, you can start to bring down taxes and give our economy the jolt of life it needs.
Our plan is to abolish business rates for most of the high street, scrap the Family Farms Tax, scrap the Family Business Tax and abolish stamp duty on family homes.
And there is more to come, but we are showing how we will pay for it.
And we will pay for that through our savings programme, cutting welfare, shrinking the size of the Civil Service and bringing the deficit down.
Andy Burnham needs to cut the red tape that is strangling business and stopping us from building the homes and infrastructure we need.
He can devolve all he likes to mayors.
Mayors cannot change the law.
If Britain is going to compete in the world, in an age of rapid technological change, it needs to be easy to build things here and to try new things.
Our financial services sector, for example, one of this country’s greatest assets, is now more regulated than its competitors.
That is why two weeks ago, I announced our plans to cut red tape for the City and unleash up to ÂŁ450 billion of new lending.
That is the kind of thinking Burnham needs.
ÂŁ450 billion without borrowing, without more taxing.
He needs to champion the businesses, the risk-takers, the wealth creators and the employers who get this country moving.
Not champion having more politicians.
So much of the rhetoric that comes out of left-wing politicians, from people like Louise Haigh, Neil Lawson and others advising Andy Burnham, is that business is evil and that wealth creation is evil.
It is not.
New ideas, innovation and capital are what drive progress and improve our lives.
Keir Starmer had plenty of good advice, not least of all from me.
But I was not the only one.
Many others gave him good advice, including Tony Blair.
Did he listen?
No, he did not.
And now he has gone.
Andy Burnham should not make that same mistake.
I would be very happy to sit down with him.
I quite like Andy Burnham.
He is very genial.
He is very personable.
I would be very happy to sit down with him, show him our plans, which are public, and share with him the Alternative King’s Speech we set out at the beginning of this session, which shows how a lot of this could be achieved.
In the national interest, I would be happy to lend him Conservative votes in Parliament to pass tough legislation that his backbenchers do not have the stomach for.
No one in this country wants a Prime Minister held over a barrel by a load of left-wing MPs.
If Andy Burnham wants to be the first Labour Prime Minister to leave office with unemployment lower than when he came in, he needs to get a grip of the party he is already leading.
He needs to put an end to the chaos and the speculation.
Mr Burnham is clearly desperate to be in charge, but Prime Minister is not a ceremonial position.
He does not have a plan beyond telling the mayors to go and sort it out.
This is not good enough.
There is a country to govern.
Devolved mayors are not going to fund the Defence Investment Plan.
He needs to come to Parliament, tell us what he wants to do and face some questions from MPs, the people elected to hold the Government to account.
Giving speeches in Manchester and not taking any questions is simply not good enough.
Britain cannot afford a summer of chaos.
Not another one.
We cannot afford three months in limbo.
We cannot afford three months without a government.
Andy Burnham should delay the summer’s parliamentary recess by just a day or two, come to the House and tell us his plan for this country.
This is not a game.
It should not be a soap opera.
If he wants to be the leader of our country, it is time to start acting like it.
