IMF raises UK growth forecast as economist says Healey should ‘stay the course’
John Healey should “stay the course” and continue repairing the UK’s public finances, the International Monetary Fund’s top economist has said, after the fund lifted its growth forecast for Britain, Heather Stewart reports.
Andy Burnham will take Britain back into European Union, Neil Kinnock claims
Good morning. In his long statement to MPs yesterday, Andy Burnham was evasive when asked whether he wanted his planned renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the EU to result in a Labour-led government, after the next election, rejoining. In response to one question about this, Burnham told a Tory MP he was “getting way ahead of himself” with the question. But one well-placed observer is not being so coy.
Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader and one of three people Burnham has named as his political mentors, has given an interview to la Repubblica, the Italian newspaper. He told it that he believes Burnham does want to, and will, take the UK back into the EU.
Kinnock said: “Andy makes the declaration of his determination to change the relationship, and it’s obvious that his objective is to join again.”
Asked again if he thought Burnham would be the person to take the UK back into the EU, Kinnock replied:
Yes, sure, sure, sure. His commitment is authentic. He really does understand from the grassroots up why restoring what I think of as normality in our continent is vital for every party economically, politically, culturally, all in security terms, and is able to articulate it in language that people can understand. So yeah, he is definitely.
Asked about Burnham playing down his desire to revisit the referendum result during the Makerfield byelection campaign, Kinnock claimed this was just a matter of deciding when to have this debate.
Andy’s not changed direction. He’s always been a committed pro-European. In the byelection, he rightly didn’t make a noise about it. That’s tomorrow’s debate. Simply because the byelection wasn’t about Europe. It was about winning Makerfield in order to enable him to become leader of the party. That’s all it was about.
Kinnock was interviewed by Antonello Guerrera who asked how, as someone who inherited a leftwing party and dragged it to the right, Kinnock felt about a sucessor taking Labour to the left. Kinnock said he thought Burnham’s approach was right.
It’s common sense. It’s not left and right. Andy’s view of the engagement of the state is about what Winston Churchill did in the 1950s, and I don’t remember Churchill being thought of as on the left. Andy’s a socialist, but he’s a very common-sense socialist. He’s very rational. He’s cool, not just with his dark blue T-shirt, but in his thinking, and he’s advanced a hell of a lot in the last 10–12 years in terms of his understanding of the absolute importance of utility, of usefulness in politics.
That’s what puts us, basically, he and I, on the same spot. Of course he’s on the left. I’m on the left. We’re socialists, but we are prompted by the usefulness of the application of ideas.
We have got a lobby briefing later and no doubt No 10 will clarify that its understanding of Burnham’s position on rejoining the EU is not quite the same as Kinnock’s. Kinnock is a former vice president of the European Commission, and an ardent pro-European, and perhaps there is some wishful thinking in what he says. But he is also a good friend of Burnham, and an astute observer of Labour politics. You will have to decide for yourself if he is right.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Andy Burnham chairs cabinet.
Morning: Burnham attends meetings with business leaders in No 10.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate the remaining stages of the courts and tribunals bill.
3pm: Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, gives evidence to the Commons defence committee.
5pm: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, attends the regular weekly meeting of Lib Dem MPs, after two frontbenchers stood down amid concerns about his leadership.
Also today, another round of prisoner releases is happening under the prisoner early release scheme in England.
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