The Re:View 7 August 2026

Quote of the week:

“You can’t run a world-famous nightlife district with a village-hall mindset.”

Sadiq Khan on Westminster City Council’s move to restrict patrons standing in pubs in Soho.

It’s been less than three weeks since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister. Feels like much longer, right? It is remarkable how quick the new leadership have been to act and launch new policies.

Cost of living measures to cut VAT on energy bills, cap bus fares, and cut business rates on pubs, clubs and music venues – these are all more retail politics. But behind the scenes there’s been a serious policy blitz on remaking the State which has left our team at Re:State pretty pleased with the take-up of many of our policies.

So for our final Re:View before we sign off for a few weeks I wanted to do a roundup of the highlights:

• A model for fiscal devolution based on business rate retention and a move to retained income tax revenue, in line with the findings of our report Taxing for take-off.

• Setting up a new No10 North to spearhead the next stages of devolution and public service reform along a similar model to the one we set out in Building No10 North.

• Bringing forward the publication of Louise Casey’s review into social care by a year, where the Government are reported to be considering the model for a pre-funded social insurance scheme which we called for in our report Beyond caring.

• Announcing changes to procurement policy to take smaller companies out of the ‘social value’ procurement regime and target more contracts at high-growth companies, which were key recommendations from Procure and simple.

These are all big changes, and very welcome. But when Parliament comes back in the autumn, the realities of governing will start to feel even more real to Ministers. The public finances are still in peril, and we’re months out from the first Budget of Andy Burnham’s leadership, where he will have to work out how to pay for lots of the policies he has already announced and more. The Labour manifesto’s pledge on taxes still applies, and leaves little wiggle room.

It’s already reported that Chancellor John Healey may use the additional flexibility Rachel Reeves created to borrow for capital spending, but there’s no guarantee the markets will support it – particularly if the schemes the money would be spent on aren’t genuine investments, but just more social policy measures. Remaking the State is still the only way through...

Graph of the week:

One of the biggest challenges for devolution is the imbalance in our regional economies. London and the Greater South East pays much more in tax than many other parts of the country. Nothing shows this more clearly than this graph from the London Centric newsletter, which compares individual London boroughs to other major cities.

That’s a wrap from us at Re:State, and we’ll be back in your inboxes with the Re:View on the 28^th of August.

Enjoy the break,

Joe Hill

Director of Strategy

Over the weekend, our model for funding later-life social care, set out in our report Beyond caring, was featured in The Telegraph and our Director of Policy and Research, Dr Simon Kaye, was quoted.

Also over the weekend, our model for fiscal devolution was covered by The i Paper, where Simon was also quoted.

On Wednesday, Director of Strategy, Joe Hill, wrote a Re:Act in response to the publication of the Government’s public procurement reforms. He discusses why the changes look good on the surface, but in the detail there are some causes for concern.

Also, on Wednesday, our work on devolution was featured in the Financial Times' analysis of Andy Burnham's proposals for devolving power, with our recent devolution paper highlighted as part of the wider policy debate.