He can strut around in front of Makerfield voters claiming to be King of the North, but Andy Burnham’s braggadocio will have zero effect on the harsh economic facts behind their disillusion.

Experts fear the UK is staring in the face of stagflation, a ruinous combination of high unemployment, high inflation and low growth.

The labour market figures showed a rise in the overall jobless rate to 5 per cent in the first quarter – and 5.5 per cent in March alone. 

Youth unemployment stands at a shameful 16.2 per cent, the highest for more than a decade. In the worst-affected area of Britain, the North East, nearly a quarter of working-age adults are economically inactive.

As for inflation, the International Monetary Fund expects it to hit 4 per cent by the end of the year, double the Bank of England target, making it harder to cut interest rates. 

The Treasury is so worried it is reported to be pressurising supermarkets to put price caps on essential foods.

Geopolitical turmoil is beyond the control of this government, and the trends towards economic inactivity and youth unemployment pre-date Keir Starmer’s arrival in No.10. 

But tax hikes on employers, botched reforms of business rates and misconceived workers’ rights policies can be laid at Labour’s door.

Any prime minister who does not want to share the fate of his or her immediate predecessors needs to deal with this. 

Burnham does not seem to have a credible plan. He has made vague pledges to re-industrialise – good luck with that, given UK manufacturing’s high energy costs, courtesy of Ed Miliband – and seems to think trickle-down economics means plutocrats have plundered the pockets of the poor.

He holds the bond market in contempt and the feeling is mutual.

A sense of injustice is what motivates him, he says. Perhaps this is, as he once complained, fuelled by not being offered a job by Goldman Sachs or The Guardian when he left Cambridge.

In his campaign video, he moans about Mrs Thatcher more than three decades on, like a latter-day Ben Elton with a soundtrack by Oasis, coming close to parody northernism.

All he needed was a pint poured by Glenda Shuttleworth, the barmaid in the Rovers’ Return on Coronation Street. In real life, due to Labour policies, she’d have lost her job and the pub would have shut.

Foot in mouth

A few years from now, companies may no longer be run by fallible human chief executives but by AI-powered ‘boss bots’.

Perhaps they could be designed with a ‘tact function’ to stop them saying horribly insensitive things.

Bill Winters, chief executive of Standard Chartered, must wish he could take back his description of thousands of his colleagues as ‘lower-value human capital’, ripe to be replaced with AI.

Presumably, having been paid £75million since taking the top job more than a decade ago, he considers himself to be ‘higher-value human capital’. 

What an object lesson in the perils of CEOs using dry and rather ridiculous business jargon, and what depth of dismissive attitude conveyed in one short phrase.

Staff are not seen as individuals but merely as another form of capital, an entry on a balance sheet – and one that is underperforming compared with machines.

Winters’ remark tapped into a broader fear that as AI advances, our worth will no longer be judged on character, effort, talent or virtue. 

The yardstick will be how people perform versus a machine. If they fall short, out they go, with a ‘lower-value’ label strung round their neck.

There is no point asking CEOs to emote when they wield the axe on their employees but they could try not to insult them.

Curry favour

Alex Baldock is leaving Currys on a high. Shares have performed well since he saw off an offer from activist Elliott a couple of years ago. 

He realised that customers buying high-ticket electrical goods want reassurance and help, from setting up a new telly to hassle-free repairs, through to environmentally friendly disposal. 

This feeling of dependability is even more important in his new role running Boots.

Baldock is expected to oversee Boots’ £7billion return to the stock market, boosting UK capital markets. 

He has been a forthright critic of energy and labour market policies that hurt British business.

Let’s hope he doesn’t lose his voice.

Alex Brummer is away--