Dear Prime Minister Andy Burnham,

You are the seventh unelected Prime Minister in the last decade. You are successor to Keir Starmer’s incredibly unprincipled Blue Labour government. And you are no doubt aware the UK needs a genuine alternative to the status quo policies that have been driving the country’s growing inequalities since the 1980s.

Will you offer a genuine alternative, or more window dressing while allowing corporate lobbies to continue extracting profit from the UK’s land and people? And, if a genuinely alternative politics is in your sights, will it be a comprehensive vision or will you zero in on small slices of the problem without addressing the major structural challenges we face?

New wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have threatened our food, energy and economic security. These are just some of the problems global instability has exposed. Britain has, in the past, shown its pioneering spirit with respect to industrialisation and colonialism, both of which have caused irreparable damage to the planet. Climate change will amplify and exacerbate these challenges while creating new problems, yet you have been noticeably quiet on this topic.

Will you be a pioneer for the equalities and justices we need - social, environmental, economic, racial and gender justices - or will you sit back and let business carry on as usual?

Green House Think Tank sets out here where you have so far made positive noises, but do not go far enough. You have even begun leading us further down some wrong paths. Below we propose how to start responding to the structural problems threatening our society.

Climate Action Starts with Oil

Climate change is the number one threat to the UK’s stability. We must prioritise removing our dependency on oil and gas. That means managing existing UK oil and gas reserves for legacy domestic use while we restructure our economy to different energy sources.

Fossil fuel exports should be prohibited. Oil and gas extraction licences need to be based on fixed price sales of production: at costs with a fixed percentage on top as a profit incentive. This is the only way to reduce our dependence on global markets and take control of the cost of living crisis.

Allowing AI speculation to push up domestic energy prices is the opposite of good. Instead, you must insist all data centres either reduce demand when energy is expensive or pay a tax.

It doesn’t end there, however. The climate emergency underlies every aspect of British society.

Briefing: Managing the UK Economy in times of the Climate Emergency

Close the Wealth Gap

Reducing Inequality requires big interventions. You need to define what doing ‘good in every postcode’ means. Growth, as in GDP, is a bad (and dangerous) proxy for this.

There maybe some universal good applicable to all postcodes, such as reducing social housing waiting lists, but in most cases no one size fits all. The real benefactors of national, centralised decision making are those with the greatest influence in Westminster.

That means you need to clean house: get private businesses and ultra-rich individuals out of politics. Step one would be to adopt the Canadian model of political funding regulation, with strong independent enforcement. Step two would be to Introduce Land Value Taxation. Around half of wealth is land, and is impossible to hide, so it must be progressively taxed.

Dipping into the rich jar - How much money could the UK raise from wealth taxes?

Real Devolution

Creating an extension of 10 Downing Street is a helpful symbolic gesture, but needs to go hand in hand with a real transfer of power to local authorities. Successive governments have stripped local authorities' fundraising abilities, while applying austerity to shrink budgets and increase inequality.

Instead of yet more inadequate, centralised measures that ignore the super-wealthy, why not immediately hand local authorities the power to set their own, progressive bands? Universal rates based on 1991 valuations in England make little sense today. With house prices soaring, the current system effectively hands tax breaks to people living in £5m or even £25m mansions, which also burn the most energy. Until a Land Value Tax comes into effect, this will empower local authorities to level inequality across postcodes.

A Green Vision for English Devolution

Fix our Democracy

You have made some excellent recent statements on electoral reform, such as considering a proportional voting system for national elections. The UK’s first-past-the-post system is a dangerous anachronism that means millions of people feel their votes are wasted.

In May this year, your colleague Alex Sobel MP brought an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill calling for a national commission on electoral reform. This amendment has the backing of hundreds of MPs from across all parties. The Bill will return to the Commons after the parliamentary recess. This amendment deserves your full support.

Written Evidence for the Modernising Elections Inquiry

Guarantee Jobs for Young People

The Milburn Review contains shocking statistics about youth unemployment. This is exacerbating already existing generational inequality. We know your government wants to tackle this, but current proposals are far from sufficient.

At the same time, the UK needs to both mitigate and adapt to climate change, for example by ramping up retrofitting of houses, and encouraging work in agro-ecological farming.

Combining these issues, your government should offer young people guaranteed employment through apprenticeships and training opportunities focused on critical sectors. They should last a minimum of 12 months to build skills and should be paid at a living wage. This will ensure positive future prospects for people, country and planet.

Why do green jobs plans need a different politics and economics?
A Real Green Future for Yorkshire and the Humber

Occupy Empty Homes First

We applaud your new government’s focus on council housing. However, new builds add to carbon emissions and damage the climate further. And, as you know, there are competing demands on land for growing food and providing green space for people and nature.

Your housing strategy must start with a serious and imaginative effort to refurbish and retrofit empty homes while converting other disused buildings into living accommodation. In holiday hot spots and London, this means tackling the issue of second homes.

Addressing under-occupancy, primarily empty-nesters, offers a real opportunity to maximise good (in every postcode) provided by existing housing space. You could incentivise downsizing & lodging to encourage intergenerational living and new models of home care.

Rethinking Energy Demand / Heating and Cooling of Buildings

Make Social Care Free

Beveridge’s oversight of the vital role of care in our society haunts us to this day. We endorse your long term commitment to reforming adult social care so that it is free at the point of use, removing the false divide between health and care.

Reforms should ensure that service design is needs-based and ends unsustainable pressure on Council budgets. They should also avoid individualistic options that place the financial burden on families whose relatives require care. Consider funding this from a real wealth tax, as well as shifting provision away from the neoliberal model, which prioritises shareholders not care.

If you truly want to put caring for people at the heart of everything you do, you need to embrace a shift to making care a primary, organising principle of the economy in a context that recognises our dependence on our planetary home.

Consensus not Conflict

We were encouraged to see your acknowledgement that the government’s response to the horror in Gaza ‘has not been good enough’. But when you say that ‘it must be for the international courts to determine’ whether war crimes have been committed, this suggests a reluctance to engage with the grim reality of genocidal violence. At the same time, you have also approved the use of UK military bases for further attacks on Iran by US forces.

Despite this, the most urgent threat to national – and global – security is the accelerating pace of global heating. War and climate change massively heighten global instability, forcing increasing numbers of desperate civilians to flee their homelands. Instead of replacing grants for international climate projects with loans, you need to invest in climate adaptation and mitigation in the Global South.

You Never Give Me Your Money

All these interventions are within your remit now as Prime Minister, and all are achievable with political will to back them.

Green House Think Tank