New U.K. PM Andy Burnham: ‘I Have Accepted His Majesty The King’s Invitation to Form a Government’

EXCERPT:

BURNHAM: “I have accepted His Majesty the King’s invitation to form a government. In doing so, I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last ten years to walk up this street, the seventh Prime Minister since 2016. Making this a moment for reflection and new resolution. It requires my generation of politicians to raise our game, and rise to the new challenge. Britain needs to show the world that we can regain our stability once again, and that is our challenge, to make politics work, to make it work better. I know people at home are fed up with politics. I hear you. And I want to be honest with you. We have not been good enough, and we need to be better. We will be. We will make this moment a circuit breaker for Britain, bringing forward the biggest changes in the last forty years. A new political model and a new economic model. In the 1980s, Britain took some wrong turns. Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, large parts of the country de-industrialised, and they still haven’t recovered. Many feel as though they’re still in decline, and they don’t have the ability to turn things around. And that’s why we will change politics, to make it more collaborative, more about problem solving than point scoring. We will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land so that they can do more.”