Andy Burnham reads my emails

So, it looks like Andy Burnham reads my emails. Three days in and he’s already nicked part of my manifesto (see last week’s musing in case you missed it).

Donna may have vetoed my vision to bring a manifesto for Britain to life, in which I said we should cut business rates, lower the cost of energy, move power out of Whitehall and start treating the electorate like intelligent adults.

But then this week, a bespectacled hipster became Prime Minister, and three days later he announced business-rate cuts for pubs, clubs and live music venues.

Coincidence? Almost certainly. But, “Hi, Andy…” if you are reading this… “The rest of the manifesto is available on request. Mum has already approved it…”, which is one more democratic mandate than most government consultations seem to achieve.

To be fair to him, he has got moving fairly sharpish:

• VAT off domestic electricity bills from October, worth about £45 a year to the average household.

• A £2 cap on many single bus fares outside London from January.

• Extra funding and 1,200 homes to tackle long-term rough sleeping.

• Business-rate cuts aimed at nearly 32,000 pubs, clubs and live music venues.

• And a “Number 10 North” in Manchester, which I assume is exactly like the London one but with better music and a proper cuppa.

Now, £45 a year is not exactly going to have the family WhatsApp group booking the Maldives, and the bus cap does not arrive until January - The extra business-rate relief begins next financial year - And much of the money has been found by cancelling or moving spending from somewhere else.

[Every pound a government gives you has usually been borrowed from you, taxed from you, or quietly removed from another pocket in the same pair of trousers.]

The fashionable response is to sneer at all of it. Too small. Too late. Wrong priority. Wrong person. Wrong tie. The right will say it is reckless socialism. The left will say it is timid managerialism. And on social media, a troll with a profile picture of a bulldog wearing sunglasses, will declare the entire country finished by tea time.

But I’m not doing that. If somebody does something sensible, give them credit. Taking tax off electricity is sensible. Helping pubs survive is sensible. Making it cheaper for people to get to work is sensible. Moving decisions closer to the people affected by them… is sensible.

Announcements, however, are the easy bit.

You know my 10-80-10 rule? Of course you do. The first 10% is the speech outside Number 10. The promise. The plan. The glossy photograph of somebody in a hard hat pointing at a wall.

The middle 80% is the unglamorous bit: procurement, delivery, measurement, awkward trade-offs, sacking the people who cannot do the job and resisting the temptation to form a task force whenever a decision becomes uncomfortable.

The final 10% is honesty. Which is where I am hoping for real change.

That last 10% is where British politics mysteriously develops a diary clash. Governments love launching things. They are less enthusiastic about returning two years later with the receipts. Success gets claimed, failure gets renamed, and the rest is sent for an independent review due shortly after the next election.

So Andy’s first week gets a cautious thumbs-up from me. The real test is whether he can do the 80% without being swallowed by the machine he has promised to rewire… and whether he has the courage to give us the final ten percent, honestly… warts and all.