On Monday, Andy Burnham became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK) and announced his new Cabinet. Acknowledging the political shortcomings of His Majesty’s (HM) Government, he used his first speech to lay out his vision for reindustrialisation, welfare reform, and building ‘a new sense of national unity’.
While Britain looks ahead to a new administration, the challenges faced by Sir Keir Starmer, former Prime Minister, still exist. With these issues demanding the attention of the new Cabinet, this week’s Big Ask poses the following question to eight experts: What should the new Prime Minister prioritise for the rest of 2026?
Professor of International Security and Co-Director of Security Research Institute, Lancaster University, and Visiting Fellow, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre
The new Prime Minister and Wes Streeting, his Defence Secretary, have inherited a Royal Navy that, despite chronic underfunding, remains a vital enabler of the national interest. The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz has demonstrated that the UK’s security and prosperity continue to depend on the stability of the global maritime supply chain and freedom of navigation.
In an increasingly volatile strategic and operating environment, the swift and efficient delivery of the Hybrid Navy proposed by Gen. Sir Gwyn Jenkins, First Sea Lord, and costed in the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) is essential. Combining crewed platforms and autonomous systems will strengthen the Royal Navy’s flexibility, versatility, resilience, and attritable mass. This will enhance its capacity to shape the global maritime order and exercise seapower in support of British interests, from protecting undersea infrastructure in home waters to conducting high-intensity operations in distant maritime theatres.
Alongside a sustained commitment to naval investment, two priorities stand out for 2026. Firstly, enduring investment in seapower requires greater ocean literacy across Whitehall, Westminster, and wider society. Burnham can play a central role by consistently emphasising the country’s dependence on the sea for both its security and prosperity, and by embracing the narrative of the UK as a maritime nation from the outset of his premiership.
Secondly, HM Government must be prepared to respond swiftly and decisively to increasingly overt and covert Russian provocations at sea, including within or near British waters. This requires an open-minded discussion about whether existing doctrines, rules of engagement, and decision-making processes are suited to sub-threshold activities in the maritime ‘grey zone’.
In the longer term, defending freedom of navigation, including in the Strait of Hormuz, will place service personnel at greater risk. Credible maritime leadership will therefore require not only investment, but political preparedness to make difficult decisions when deterrence fails.
Senior Adviser for Geopolitics, Centre for Risk Studies, University of Cambridge
HM Government’s starting point is years of national stagnation. To achieve its geopolitical goals, it must focus as much on means as on ends. There is no point in having a foreign policy if Britain lacks the power to realise it.
The task begins with greater spending on a military that has been badly degraded by years of underinvestment. Allies have noticed the gap between the UK’s international ambitions and its capacity to fulfil them. The new Prime Minister should therefore publish an accelerated, fully funded timetable for substantially higher defence expenditure. This depends on restoring economic growth, which in turn depends on removing the myriad obstacles erected by previous governments – from higher taxes and excessive regulation to industrial electricity prices that remain among the highest in the developed world.
Yet, material capability is not enough. Realising Britain’s national priorities depends on the confidence and willingness to pursue them. HM Government must be able to define the country’s interests, and not allow abstract values to substitute for strategy.
It must also foster a stronger sense of patriotism. HM Government may not be able to manufacture this by decree, but it can stop treating it with embarrassment. People will not make sacrifices for the national interest unless they feel committed to the nation.
Whether the new administration will do what is necessary remains to be seen. John Healey’s appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer may indicate greater seriousness about defence, but I remain unconvinced of HM Government’s ability to revive the economy, or of the willingness of Ed Miliband, Foreign Secretary, to prioritise the national interest over demonstrations of virtue.
The litmus test will be Chagos.
Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
Short answer: narrative. Every action should tell a story – and while that story might have subplots, side quests, and soliloquies, it has to have a clear plot and desired ending.
That is what was missing in the Starmer era. The protagonist is the British people; the antagonist is their enemies. That of course can include Russia, Iran, and their proxies, but also rip-off landlords, scammers, and mobile phone thieves.
I say this as someone focused on national security, but without a compelling story of who we are, where we come from, and where we are headed, nothing else coheres. All the trade-offs become identity battles. Avoiding that through narrative clarity has to be the focus.
Head of Policy, Octopus Energy, and Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
Burnham should give a top down order on energy strategy to Whitehall: ‘maximum production; electrification’. Or, more colloquially: ‘do a Norway’.
Norway produces oil and gas but also has the highest per capita penetration of electric cars and heat pumps. It flogs fuels to the UK and the rest of Europe while reaping the rewards of electrification at home. There is no good reason – whether environmental, economic, jobs, or security – not to produce more oil and gas from the North Sea. Britain should go ahead with more home production.
Realistically, though, the UK is more dependent on oil and gas than is good for it, especially now that serious alternatives exist for consumer uses. That has inflicted severe economic damage and hinders rearmament. Electrifying transport and heating – the biggest sources of demand for oil and gas respectively – creates options for providing important energy services.
A nuclear power plant, a gas-fired plant, or renewables all fuel electric cars. Likewise with a heat pump. Petrol cars and gas boilers are limited to oil and gas and lock in dependency on those fuels – which are lacking – for what is now relatively inefficient use.
All things being equal, electrification would free up more fuel for the British industrial base, which desperately needs revitalising, or for improving our balance of payments. The priority should therefore change from the current ‘build offshore wind at any cost’ to ‘cut electricity prices’ to improve the economics of electrification.
This means not overcapitalising the electricity grid as now, removing more electricity taxes and levies, introducing nodal pricing to cut waste and unfair windfall rents in the electricity market, and reopening unaffordable grid upgrade plans to do them more cheaply.
Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy
While throwing trinkets and baubles to the public to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis may prove tempting, the new Prime Minister should hold his nerve. Short-term, populist fixes deliver nothing of tangible value; rather, they merely expand national debt without long-term gain. Instead, Burnham needs to place supply-side economic reforms at the heart of his agenda for the nation.
After two decades of sustained population growth and underinvestment, the UK’s infrastructure is creaking. The country desperately lacks reservoirs and power stations, while its roads, railways, housing, schools, and hospitals are severely strained. Streamlining planning regulations, building new homes, and upgrading the transport network are essential to lowering costs for businesses and households alike. Defence should also be leveraged: new military facilities would help to level up peripheral regions, while Britain’s defence industrial base could provide numerous new jobs.
Crucially, physical renewal must extend to public spaces, where broken window theory applies. Widespread litter, fly tipping, and high levels of petty crime leave high streets, highways, and local parks looking dilapidated and run-down, reinforcing a pervasive feeling of national decay. A coordinated effort is needed to clear up the litter – especially along highways controlled by National Highways and Transport for London – resurface roads, and bedeck town centres with new street furniture and well-maintained flower gardens.
By ensuring that public spaces are tidied up, Burnham’s new administration can demonstrate that the state can make a positive difference. This could instil renewed confidence in the British public, driving higher productivity and economic growth – a truly virtuous circle of national regeneration.
International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
While not much is known about the new Prime Minister’s foreign policies, when it comes to Beijing, it is unlikely that he will veer away from Sir Keir’s trajectory of increased contact with the UK’s ‘most complex bilateral relationship’.
Starmer and his cabinet saw the complexities of adhering to Labour’s ‘three Cs’ policy on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – ‘cooperate, challenge, compete’. A good place for Burnham to start may be to do a mini ‘China Audit’ of his own, to see what role – if any – Beijing should play in his principal aims of building more public housing, improving infrastructure, and reducing energy costs.
As with many of Burnham’s predecessors, Beijing will be waiting in the wings to provide cheaper materials to enable these policies. The PRC views the bilateral relationship with a pragmatic lens, but at what cost? And with what small print?
Among a series of unenviable tasks that the Prime Minister will inherit from Sir Keir’s departure is the British Steel saga. When British Steel’s expropriation from Jingye was completed, only last week, the Chinese former owner demanded compensation, citing Article 5 of the UK-China Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) – a legally binding agreement signed 40 years ago last May. Article 5 permits nationalisation if it is for a ‘public purpose related to the internal needs’ of the other contracting party, accompanied by ‘reasonable compensation’.
Whether ties are currently strong or strained, it is clear that the PRC is not going anywhere. Alongside conducting his own mini China Audit, perhaps Burnham could order a review of the UK’s current investment treaties with the PRC, to consider closing any major gaps that might allow for further fallouts as Whitehall grapples with the circular question of how to achieve green and affordable growth without compromising national security.
Head of Science and Technology, The Entrepreneurs Network, and Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
The new Prime Minister should prioritise clarity and stability.
Entrepreneurs are a pretty resilient bunch; they know how to weather a storm if they can plan for it. What they find difficult is not knowing where they stand with HM Government. When Sir Keir took office, some entrepreneurs were relieved – not necessarily because they agreed with all his policies, but simply because there was a feeling that, at last, there would be some continuity for at least five years. Two years in though, it is time for change again.
The science and technology ecosystem had come to like the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT). It was not perfect (being itself the product of an overnight reshuffle) but, once settled, there was a clarity and logic to it. It was a single front door and a dedicated champion for the whole sector at the Cabinet table. Now it is being folded into a new business super-department, with no standalone science and technology secretary. Where the different parts of its portfolio will end up remains unconfirmed. The risk is that the community which cohered around DSIT will fragment too – to the detriment of Britain’s effort to secure advantage in areas such as quantum and biotech.
This is the latest in a series of machinery-of-government changes where sector leaders learnt about them from media reports instead of being consulted. That disconnect erodes trust. If they abolish the department without speaking to the people it is there to support, what else might they do? Burnham has refused to rule out an ‘exit tax’ which has unsettled founders. It is also less clear where and how the country’s research and development budget will now be spent.
The UK’s propensity for playing with the machinery of government is, as James Wilsdon observed this week, a displacement activity – or, as I have previously argued, a case of politician’s syllogism. It is hard to move forward if you are continually going around in circles.
Visiting Professor, London South Bank University
The most urgent priority must be to rebuild Britain’s defence. At the moment, the country has very little at all, making it difficult to achieve any civilian priorities.
One part of defence must be a much more stringent attitude to illegal immigration; another must be to strengthen capabilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and in nuclear fusion. Energy remains a key weakness of the UK’s economy and resilience. The grid needs serious attention, and the Net Zero obsession with intermittent sources of energy needs extinguishing.
To avoid social upheaval, Britain needs a programme of mass housebuilding. That will not happen until the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act is abolished, so that residential construction and new towns are possible in much wider areas of the country. A relaxed planning regime will make it possible for wholly or partly manufactured homes to have a guarantee of sales, making their success more likely.
A neglected area for action is to anticipate and ward off floods. Many homes and, even more damagingly, many small businesses are still regularly destroyed in the UK through resorting to sandbags rather than proper flood defences.
Under new management, the High Speed 2 (HS2) railway should be extended to Scotland. Speed limits on roads should be lifted, and output targets for Electric Vehicle (EV) manufacturers abandoned.
Above all, the country must organise for more real engineers and fewer social ones. Lack of technical knowledge should be a bar to recruitment to the civil service – enough with Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE)!
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