The Prime Minister is embarking on a nationwide cost of living tour this week, promising voters some breathing room. Number 10 has already clarified that ‘room to breathe’ is metaphorical, since actual room requires space, and space costs money that nobody has.
Burnham will visit eight cities over fourteen days, each stop featuring a carefully curated photo opportunity with a struggling family. The logistics alone—security detail, advance teams, media handlers, catering trucks—will cost approximately £3.2 million. This money was previously earmarked for local authority funding. The irony is so thick you could heat your home with it.
Opposition figures have predictably called it hypocrisy. They are correct, but not for the reason they think. The real absurdity isn’t that Burnham is touring while cuts continue. It’s that he’s announcing a tour to tell people he understands their financial suffering while the tour itself demonstrates he doesn’t. He’s spending millions to drive through neighborhoods and nod sympathetically at problems his government’s own policies created.
Number 10 insists the tour will ‘listen to communities and develop solutions.’ Translation: they’ve already developed the solutions (austerity, freeze wages, blame energy companies), and now they need footage of listening so the solutions look collaborative.
The first stop is Manchester. Burnham will spend four hours there, which is exactly long enough to have lunch and leave before anyone asks a follow-up question.