The Duran Podcast - UK Burnham is Blair 3.0, UK Gets More of the Same as Britain Sinks

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

UK Burnham is Blair 3.0, UK Gets More of the Same as Britain Sinks

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the UK. What is happening in the UK post-Stommer resignation? Those stomers still hanging around. Burnham is ready to take over or maybe not? Well, maybe he will have to wait until September. Maybe not as quickly as he thought July. Maybe Burnham prefers to wait until September. What's going on in the UK?

Well, if you remember, when we last discussed this, I explained that this long interval between replacing one prime minister with another violates British constitutional conventions. There's now been articles in the British media about this, including an editorial, by the way, in the Daily Telegraph, asking, why are we having to wait so long for Andy Burnham? And in fact, the British elite, the British establishment, have indeed tried, exactly as we said in our previous programme, to extend the transition even further all the way to September. They've been trying to find some Labour MP who they can persuade to stand against Burnham in the leadership election, which would indeed, without to happen, would delay Burnham taking over. as Prime Minister until September, keeping Stama in place for all that time. So there are still factions, there are still powerful people who want the transition to continue as long as possible. But the big story in Britain is that with every single day that passes,

the clearer it becomes that Burnham is continuity-staffir. him. Exactly what we said. He's picked as chief of staff. He's chief of staff, James Pernell, a Blair-Rite loyalist, Blair loyalist, minister in Blair's government, just as Burnham was a minister in Blair's government, somebody who was, and is totally loyal to Blair, somebody who's acted as a lobbyist for all sorts of big companies, including big American tech companies. exactly the sort of person that you would look to if you wanted to continue the same policies as the ones we've already seen. And he's recommitted to all the fiscal rules that the

Stama government had. In other words, he's not going to increase spending beyond those limits, except, of course, on Ukraine, which we'll come to in a moment. So there really isn't any sign of any fundamental change in policy. And there cannot be any fundamental change. Now, there is a story that is going out there and which is all over the media, that what caused Stama to fail is that supposedly he didn't have a plan.

This is completely wrong, in my opinion. Stama absolutely had a plan. His plan was to support project Ukraine to bring Britain back into the European Union. and to execute the wishes of his globalist masters. That is exactly what Burnham's plan is. It is the same plan as always. The reason we're going from one prime minister to another

is that this plan is weakening Britain. Every year, it's creating a prolonged economic stagnation in Britain. It is making people in Britain, more and more angry. And that is why prime ministers come in. They have a brief uptick in popularity. Then their popularity rapidly falls, at which point they're replaced by someone else. But the plan itself continues to be executed in exactly the same way as before. Okay, so what's the plan for Burnham? What is the plan for Burnham? He will come in. He's still trying to find

who the EU finance minister is going to be. There were some suggestions that it might be Ed Miliband, who was the former Labour leader, who lost an election, by the way, but who is now the energy minister and who's said to be the person that the left wants. The unions don't like him. The business community doesn't like him.

Burnham is turning against him, it seems. So the most likely candidate, the finance minister, is going to be the other Blair Wright, who is, of course, West Streeting, the right-wing minister that we were talking about. In fact, this is going to end up being a more Blair-right government even than Starrmas was.

So we are going to see a further drift. Burnham himself, of course, was a minister in Blair's cabinet, which Starman never was. Pernell, his chief of staff, was a minister in Blair's cabinet. and West Treaty is the Blairite, was the Blairite candidate for being the leader of the Labour Party of the next Prime Minister. He might not be that, but he's going to be apparently finance minister instead.

That's how it's increasing in New York's. So this is going to be a more Blairite government than the one that Stama himself led, a more openly Blairite government than the government that Stama himself led. And his foreign policy? Exactly the same. He said absolutely nothing about Project Ukraine, but he's already said that he's going to increase defense spending,

which is a way of saying that he's going to continue with Project Ukraine. He's very angry, though, that Astama is representing Britain at the NATO meeting, the forthcoming NATO meeting, But of course, you can't do anything about that because he's agreed himself to wait until mid-July before he takes over as Prime Minister. It might now be September. And he's also very, very angry that Stama is moving forward with the new Defence Review and is going to make commitments as to how much Britain should spend on defence.

Burnham says that as he's the incoming Prime Minister, that should be decided by him. And Stama says, no, I'm going to decide it. I'm still the Prime Minister now. So ultimately, it's not going to be Stama and it's not going to be Burnham. It's going to be the men in grey coats whose names we don't know. They will be the people who will make all these decisions. What about Brexit? He was quite about Brexit, Burnham.

He didn't want to talk too much about Brexit. He would even hint at not trying to reverse Brexit. That's what he would hint at. But then there were many, many analysts who saw through that. And they understood that he can't go at the moment, as he was campaigning for the prime minister. He wasn't able to just come out and say, no, I'm going to reverse Brexit. So he kind of played that line. Now that he's going to become prime minister, most likely going to become prime minister,

do you think that's going to change it? He's going to start to come out with statements saying, oh, yeah, I'm going to get the UK back into the EU. So Stama was a fervid pro-EU person. I mean, he was one of the major advocates and the most public advocate of the second referendum. You remember the second referendum that we went through? The second referendum, he openly campaigned for it during the Brexit war, which of course, eventually the remain people lost when Boris Johnson won the general election. But up to that point, Stama had been a major advocate of a second referendum designed to take Britain back into the EU. and he has moved Britain significantly closer to the EU

in the two years that he's been Prime Minister. Burnham, if possible, has been even more outspoken on this. He's saying in the past that leaving the EU was a mistake. He said that rejoining the EU is an absolute objective and it's one that should be followed. He was saying that until just a few months ago. then of course he had to be re-elected to parliament the constituency that was opened up for him was a working-class community in greater Manchester makerfield which had overwhelmingly voted leave

so he had to reassure people there that he was not going to reverse Brexit so suddenly he said that he would not reverse Brexit now of course he's won that by election, he's in Parliament, he's about to become Prime Minister, he will change course and he will take Britain further and more quickly towards rejoining the EU. Given that we're going to have a Blair right government, an openly Blair right government, and Blair himself, by the way, reappeared, resurfaced about two weeks ago. He published a 5,700 word statement charting what the future direction of the government ought to be, giving a message, given that we're having a very Blair-right government now,

I think we're going to see an acceleration towards the EU. One of the things that isn't being discussed much in the media is that now that it is certain that Burnham is going to become the next Prime Minister, you're starting to get increasing signs that the British people are cooling on him. And instead of the euphoria that many predicted would come when he took over from Stama, who, to be clear, is the most unpopular prime minister we have ever had. There's been little sign of that euphoria. And on the contrary, no real sense in the country that things are changing.

or that things are going to get better anytime soon. Okay. I'm going to give, there was a statistic, actually, that came out. It was in the financial times, which basically set out the reality of how bad Britain's economic situation is. And it said that if the British economy, after the 2008 crisis, had grown at the same level, that it did between 1970 and 2007, it would now be 40% bigger.

So, I mean, we're basically flatlined since 2008. In fact, the reality is that living standards have fallen over this period, which is the longest single stretch of decline in living standards in Britain. since the early 19th century. In other words, since the time of the Industrial Revolution. So that gives you a sense of how bleak the situation for people is. And to the extent that we've managed to get economic growth at all, it's been done by importing labor or importing people, if you like, from overseas.

And, of course, they come in and they create a certain degree. of economic activity. They are able to do poorly paid jobs, and that creates a degree of economic activity. So some parts of the economy like it, the health system, for example, relies very heavily now on imported labor. And of course, to the extent that these people spend money

or earn money or do things, that causes a kind of economic uptick. But what I think a lot of people don't realize is that importing labor, immigration, in other words, now plays, it's difficult to say exactly how big a role, but a role, at least, in giving the impression that Britain still has had a growing economy over this time. So that makes it even more difficult to stop it, because if you do stop it, you're going to lose that upward. blip in the GDP. And it will become even more clear that basically since 2008, Britain has been in a kind of continuous recession. And on top of that, we have, because we're in continuous recession, we have steady increases in debt, public debt, private debt, that leaves very little funding to spend on the economy itself. That means that the pressure to increase taxes continuously

grows. One of the things that the Burnham people are talking about is increasing taxes on property, on houses above a certain value, given that another major driver of the economy in Britain has been house prices. Not a good thing in itself, but nonetheless, it has been a driver. It has also contributed to ticking up the GDP figures. If you start taxing the value of properties, that is going to cause property prices to fall, which is further going to create depression, a recession in Britain. And of course, it's also going to suffocate the economy even further.

So what do you do in this situation? The only thing they seem to be prepared to do, other than push towards the EU, is spend still more money on Project Ukraine. Because the amounts of money that they can still spend, they can give to Ukraine, and it does keep some people in Britain happy. but that's basically the priority of the moment. All right.

Not a good outlook. Anyway. No, I mean, by the way, there are lots of things that can be done. I mean, I think this is the other thing to say. A really dynamic government could do lots of things at this time. I mean, they could stop this staunch of money

going to Project Ukraine. They could do real trade deals with real countries. They could make systems to increase inward investment into Britain. They could conduct a genuine tax reform, a real tax reform, which would open space for entrepreneurial activity, which, by the way, there is a residual significant amount here in Britain. If you really wanted to get the economy moving again, there are lots of ways you could do it here. But doing all of those things,

would come up against various very powerful interest groups in Britain. And nobody's prepared to do that. So the result is that we continue as we are. We continue to have this policy of a very open economy still, functioning in the way that it is. And we continue to see a prolonged decline. things are going to have to get a lot worse and worse before they get better. All right, we will end the video there,

the durand.locos.com, we're our next round rubble, we're on telegram, go to Durant Shop, pick up some merch. Check us out on Substack as well. The links are in the description box down below. Take care.