Andy Burnham delivered a scathing assessment of Downing Street’s political tactics on Thursday and even compared them to Donald Trump’s time in the White House.
Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was attacking the government’s “levelling up” agenda during BBC Question Time when he accused No.10 of “dishonesty”.
He claimed that the government creates “legal directives” for councils – for instance, introducing clean air zones – but then removes the funding for it.
Speaking directly to the Tory MP Jake Berry, who sat on the Question Time panel with him, Burnham said: “Your government’s policy, your policy, is to place the directives on local councils and we’ve worked in good faith to try and implement it.
″But I went back to your government and said to them, ’this isn’t going to work because you refused the hardship fund for people on the lowest incomes and actually there’s now actually inflation in the vehicle market – it’s not going to work.′
“But this is the point, the dishonesty of this. It’s a national government policy and then you campaign against it.
“What you do is, you impose housing targets on local councils, then you campaign against the green belt level take on local level, your councillors.
“You cut councils in their budget then you campaign against council tax rises when councils have no other choice but to do that.
″You impose this directive on clean air, then you walk about saying ’scrap the clean air [fund].
“The dishonesty of the modern Conservative party is playing from the Trump handbook.”
Donald Trump, the previous US president, developed a reputation for passing the buck when it came to anything bad which happened under leadership.
The government has attempted to promote its levelling up agenda for some time. But, after watering down transportation plans for the north of England, increasing tax for those on lower incomes and not reducing the impact of the cost of living crisis, the scheme has fallen far below expectations.
Unsurprisingly, Burnham’s assessment was widely praised for its accuracy on social media.