HEAVY COPE
Burnham delivers a sophisticated, sincere political economic vision for Britain — blaming 40 years of Thatcher-era deindustrialisation, deregulation and privatisation for why 'the country isn't working.' He offers public ownership of energy, water, buses and housing as the remedy, framed through the success of his Greater Manchester 'new politics' model. But this entire diagnosis is built on a ghost: the automation and AI displacement structurally hollowing out labour demand in 2025 is never named, never engaged with, and would render the employment economy he's promising to rebuild fundamentally unworkable regardless of who controls the buses. Blaming Thatcher's policies for problems that now have a technological cause isn't just incomplete — it's a sophisticated misdirection.