Burnham opens cost-of-living tour as old rental comments resurface

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has begun a summer tour of the UK asking voters how government should tackle the cost of living, the Independent and Mirror report. The tour follows promises to crack down on subscription traps and what the Mirror calls "rip-off discounts".

The Sun reports that months before becoming Prime Minister, Burnham suggested forcing private landlords to sell rental homes. The Express warns the move could slash the birth rate, though no mechanism for that consequence is specified. The same paper also calls on Burnham to end appeasement of Iran and help topple what it terms a terror regime - a position not mentioned by other outlets covering the tour.

The tour's premise is that policy should follow listening. The difficulty is that listening tours tend to surface complaints the government already knows about - rents, subscriptions, grocery bills - without resolving which trade-off to accept. A crackdown on landlords pleases renters until the rental stock shrinks and rents rise; a ban on subscription traps pleases consumers until services move to upfront fees or withdraw. The question isn't whether people feel squeezed - they do - but which price the Prime Minister is willing to make someone else pay.

What to watch: whether the tour produces a policy with a named trade-off attached, or a promise that costs nobody anything. The former would be unusual.