For one night only, Britain is being invited to stay up late — and raise a glass to football.
With England due to face Mexico in a World Cup tie that kicks off at 1am, the UK government has decreed that pubs can keep pouring until 5am tomorrow morning. It’s a headline-grabbing move, designed to let fans watch together rather than alone in living rooms — and to give the country a rare, collective moment in the small hours.
Not everyone is cheering. Police unions are grumbling that the late decision is throwing their roster system into disarray, while also increasing the risk that the familiar mix of late-night hours, heat, alcohol and sport could lead to a spike in violent incidents. England’s route through the tournament, they point out, has been clear for months — plenty of time, they argue, to plan properly.
Yet that is, in part, the point: had ministers announced it earlier, it would have lost some of the political sheen. A last-minute, feel-good gesture from the top carries a particular kind of obvious populist payoff.
And even in a government that frets more than most about weak productivity and the sluggish growth of the UK economy, there is an implicit acceptance that value is not always measured in the same way as cost. A nation that occasionally lets its hair down can bank something harder to quantify — the sense that life is good, that strangers can share a room and a moment, and that joy or heartache in sport can count for something on the socio-political balance sheet.
Those flashes of togetherness come and go. Andy Burnham, however, is talking about something more durable: giving the pub trade the kind of tax-based boost more commonly associated with Irish politics.
Because he is proposing changes to tax law, his pitch would last far longer than a single late licence on one particular Monday in one particular year.
Burnham’s big policy ideas
In his first broadcast interview since winning the Makerfield by-election a fortnight ago, Mr Burnham began to add detail to the big policy ideas he set out in a speech in Manchester at the start of the week.
At the heart of it is a plan to cut the rates charged by local authorities on pubs — and on select other “high street” retailers — in a bid to keep them alive. The cost, he says, would be covered by increasing the rates charged on warehouses and out of town retail parks.
The UK government has decreed that pubs can stay open until 5am tomorrow (stock image)
Speaking to interviewer Andrew Marr on LBC radio, he said: “I believe there is a case for higher business rates on warehouses and the major developments we see on the outskirts of our cities, so that we can cut business rates for pubs, and I proposed a 20% cut, and to lift some high street businesses out of business rates altogether.
“I say some and not all, because I think it’s important to, if you like, prioritise and reward the businesses that bring social benefit, the businesses that bring people together, the bars, the restaurants, the coffee shops, the hairdressers, because the high street really needs to get more of our attention, we need to bring life to the high street.”
Even as he outlined the scale of his ambitions, Burnham moved quickly to underline his claim to fiscal discipline — the numbers, he insisted, still have to add up. “I am not undisciplined when it comes to the public finances – I was in the Treasury. I ran the Department of Health, and – it was tight – but we had a very healthy set of finances.
“I’ve run Greater Manchester, the fastest growing city region in the country for a decade, and you can’t make it the fastest growing city region in the country, Andrew, without strong business confidence. And from those rock solid public finances come business confidence that has helped us get the growth.”
Britain’s costly debt pile
That focus on prudence is also a shield against a steady line of attack from political opponents: that Burnham represents some sharp lurch to the left — a claim that those on the actual left tend to dismiss with derision.
Still, his talk — in both the Manchester speech and the LBC interview — of exerting more control over utility companies has stirred anxiety in the shadow of Britain’s large and very costly debt pile.
With little room for any broad expansion of public spending, any new priorities would need to be financed either by diverting existing resources or by shifting the tax burden. That is exactly what his pub rates cut policy amounts to: fiscally neutral in theory, but with some paying more so others can pay less. It is entirely doable — yet it sits at the demanding end of the political craft, because advancing such a reshuffle without spooking business confidence requires considerable skill.
Every government operates under resource constraints — meaning they can spend more than they have (or, more accurately, more than taxpayers have). The next British prime minister will inherit the same squeeze, the same demands, and the same politically toxic choices faced by Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak et al. Burnham argues that something has to give — but for that to happen, some apple carts will have to be upset.
The most likely flashpoint is the state pension system, and its “triple lock” formula for annual rises — a mechanism many analysts warn is a recipe for unsustainable spending.
An ageing population, a low-growth economy, and a pension model that ratchets up year after year can become a machine that wrecks public finances. Yet any attempt to change it risks not only the emotional backlash of being labelled a “granny basher”, but the electoral backlash from those most likely to turn out — pensioners.
The irony is that much of the money saved from ever-growing pension payments is meant, in large part, to be redirected towards the young: council house building, apprenticeships, technical education, psychological care — investments aimed at voters who have a far lower propensity to vote.
The long-term economic case can be persuasive. The short-term politics can be brutal.
Even the physical layout of the House of Commons – opposing rows of benches, set two sword lengths apart – is designed for confrontation
Burnham’s answer is to argue that the politics itself must change — hence his emphasis on collaborative politics, on a “politics of place first”, and on trying to soften the adversarial culture embedded in Westminster and Whitehall.
It may land well with the public. Survey data suggests voters dislike — and are turned off by — endless Westminster bickering, finger pointing and opposition for opposition’s sake. They want politicians to do something — anything!.
But for a more collaborative approach to take hold, Burnham would need to pull along a system built for confrontation. Even the physical design of the House of Commons — opposing rows of benches, set two sword lengths apart — speaks to conflict rather than compromise, as does the winner-take-all electoral system.
Consider defence: long term, national in character, and deadly serious if you get it wrong. It ought to be fertile ground for consensus, the kind of shared purpose that could nurture a less combative politics. Yet it isn’t.
From the resignations of Mr Starmer’s defence secretary and his junior last month to the raucous row over the defence financing package finally published this week.
That plan — viewed by some as a hospital pass coming Mr Burnham’s way — calls for a fifteen billion pound increase in defence spending, but offers little clarity on where most of the money will actually come from.
The result is that the new prime minster and his cabinet must now find £6.8 billion in cuts to the capital budgets for schools, hospitals, roads and energy projects over the next four years.
On top of that, they have to locate an extra five billion in new money from somewhere — likely taxes — even as the UK labours under the highest tax burden certainly since the end of the Second World War, and possibly ever.
All of it is in service of higher defence spending to prepare for a possible war with Russia — hardly an easy pitch to sell to the public.
It is far easier, by contrast, to mobilise people around a big, affirmative idea. For Burnham, that is a vast expansion of devolution: stripping power and money from Westminster and Whitehall, and pushing it out to the regions and big cities beyond the capital.
He wants to anchor that shift with “Number 10 north”, a branch office of the prime minster’s office in Manchester.
Andy Burnham, holding a copy of the UK Defence Investment Plan during an appearance on the Tonight with Andrew Marr show on LBC radio
His LBC interview supplied a little more of the texture. He said he is eyeing a site near Manchester Piccadilly station — a practical choice — and plans to work from there once a week if he can.
It would not be surprising if any new building ends up crowned with a huge, illuminated “10”, turning it into a fixture of the Manchester skyline.
Burnham also suggested welfare reform would be done in ways “different to the way it’s done down here” — meaning, not crude cuts to welfare rates that leave struggling people worse off, but support channelled into measures that save money in the long run. He cited efforts to get young people into skilled work, even to the point of offering free bus travel so they can reach jobs or training.
He argued, too, that building more council houses could reduce the overall housing bill while also delivering less tangible gains for younger people — helping with household formation, mental health and wellbeing — pressures that could become explosively expensive if left to fester.
So, even beneath the easy bonhomie of Burnhamism, the contours of hard politics are already visible: welfare reform, defence spending, and wholesale political change.
Turning it into reality would demand relentless “political communication” — the kind of sustained public argument needed to win the popular support his main policies would require if they are to survive the grinder of Westminster.
The past week has shown how carefully curated that communication can be. His Manchester speech drew criticism from journalists because he took no questions afterwards — but the upside was reams of analysis focused on the substance of what he actually said.
And political speeches should matter. They are meant to be carefully constructed arguments and coherent narratives — not a string of off-the-cuff answers that become the story instead of the idea the politician wants to land.
Much the same was true of the LBC interview: a respected but Labour-friendly interviewer, probing but not too deeply, drawing out and amplifying the Manchester themes rather than chasing the issue of the day. There will be time for that later — assuming Andy Burnham remains unchallenged in the party leadership race.
Above all, Burnham keeps returning to the F-word.
Which is of course “feeling”. As in: “I don’t have a fully costed, highly detailed plan, but I do have a feeling that if we do this, things will be better”.
If the electorate feel it’s the right direction, they will vote for it.
Feeling- or vibe-based politics are in vogue across the Western world.
The ability to conjure a feel-good atmosphere around a leader or party has become a prized political asset.
On the right, that emotional pull is often reinforced with a familiar phrase: “it’s common sense”.
It is especially beloved by Reform UK. People tend to label the views they already hold as “just common sense”, which makes it a powerful — and frequently overused — tool in popular political argument.
But “common sense” is not always a trustworthy guide through the undergrowth of policy. From the psychology of Daniel Kahneman to Simon Kuper’s ‘Soccernomics’, there is ample evidence that instinct and numerical fact often fail to line up.
Banks profit handsomely from that gap. Politicians can exploit it for far less time.
Still, feelings — empathy, compassion — do matter in public life.
Will Burnham’s ‘pub-o-nomics’ work out?
An online article by The Observer’s Political Editor Rachel Sylvester this week traced the influence on Andy Burnham of the late Tessa Jowell, the former Labour grandee and minster in the Blair and Brown administrations.
Jowell hired Burnham as a political researcher in 1994, then encouraged him to stand for election, which he did in 2001.
According to Sylvester, David Lammy, the current deputy prime minster, and James Purnell, the PR man Burnham has tapped as his No 10 chief of staff, are also proteges of Tessa Jowell.
Wes Streeting is another figure shaped by Jowell’s approach. She was known for putting humanity, empathy, collaboration and optimism at the centre of her Westminster politics — qualities many would not typically associate with the palace by the Thames.
Sylvester writes: “At Westminster, intellectual ability is valued above emotional intelligence, and political strategy is prioritised over personal empathy. There have been more PPE than English graduates in Number 10. But voters are increasingly driven by their hearts as well as their heads.” (Burnham studied English; PPE is an Oxford course in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, sometimes derided as “Pretty Poor Education”).
Nigel Farage has turned pints down the pub into a political trademark
Emotion matters — and emotional intelligence versus plain old intelligence is not a trivial distinction. Keir Starmer may have the latter in abundance, but his perceived lack of the former has cost him his kingdom — to the point that even granting a very late-night extension to every pub in England has attracted more carping than cheering.
So will Andy Burnham’s “pub-o-nomics” work out? Who knows.
It does, at least, help him stake out territory as a left-of-centre leader trying to take on Nigel Farage — who has turned pints down the pub into a political trademark. Much of Reform UK’s canvassing and Mr Farage’s appearances in Makerfield took place in pubs.
And there is an argument that Burnham’s approach is worth trying, as anyone who has ever ended up thirsty in a village with no pub will attest.
It is common sense that the death of pubs, shops, libraries and coffee shops is diminishing life in towns and villages — and even in city centres.
It is also the kind of “feeling” both Mr Farage and Mr Burnham can recognise — along with the voters they are competing for.
What to do about it — for our souls and humanity as well as for GDP — is a bigger, harder, and evidence-light question. But it is one that is becoming ever more pressing.
