Reform UK chairman Lee Anderson has criticised Andy Burnham’s cabinet choices for being cosmetic and said he will be constrained in what he can do by his backbench MPs.
He told GB News: “It’s the same old people. All they’ve done is a shuffle, just shuffled the same old faces around. Some of those faces have been around that place for donkeys’ years, and that’s all it is. It’s the same people.
“It’s a bit like having a failing football team and all you do is just swap the positions of the players. So I don’t really recognise any new faces – the odd one, the odd one to be honest. Like I said to you yesterday, the problem that Andy Burnham’s got is he may set off with good intentions, but he’s got the same 400 backbench MPs behind him, and if they don’t want him to do something, he won’t be allowed to do it.”
On the appointment of John Healey as Chancellor, he said: “I think John’s a decent guy. He is one of the decent ones, to be honest. John, I think he’s a fair-minded man. Let’s see how he goes.
“But I think one of the best bits of news yesterday was Ed Miliband, getting rid of him as Energy Secretary, putting him on an airplane, let him buzz around the world, burning those beautiful fossil fuels, and let him go finger-wagging and dictating to some of these superpowers around the globe, see how he copes with that. That’s good news, getting rid of him.”
On the VAT cut to electricity bills, he said: “That’s great news. That is a Reform UK policy, and we were going on about this months and months and months ago. You should go further, though, look at the green levies on energy bills as well, and we can easily pay for this stuff.
“This net zero madness, which by the way, the Tories, the Tory government started, and the Labour government have carried on, is crippling industries. It’s killing households.
“We try to make people’s energy bills cheaper in this country by subsidies or by grants or whatever, by pushing these heat pumps and stuff like that. The way we make energy cheaper in this country is to produce more energy. It’s that simple.”