Reeves tells BBC: Burnham needs worked-through plan to govern from the start

Image caption, "I want [Burnham] to be a success and I am sure he will be," Rachel Reeves told Laura Kuenssberg By Laura Kuenssberg Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg Published 5 minutes ago Rachel Reeves has warned the incoming prime minister, Andy Burnham, that he needs to be properly prepared to govern when he arrives in Downing Street in a little more than a week. Speaking exclusively to the BBC in what is likely to be her last major interview as chancellor, Reeves told Laura Kuenssberg that "it is important that when Andy walks through that door he has a worked-through plan, because governing is hard in Britain, and lots of challenges and shocks will come his way". She said Burnham and his team coming into Downing Street must be "really clear about what they want to achieve", and that "he needs to stay laser-focused on those things that have always motivated him, have always driven him". Asked why Sir Keir Starmer's time in office was coming to an end, she said: "People are impatient for change - I'm impatient for change and I totally get that people want to see their lives changed faster." Image caption, Rachel Reeves is likely to leave No 11 and its lavish state rooms We sat down in one of the lavish 17th Century state rooms upstairs in No 11 Downing Street - exactly the same room where she gave her first full interview as chancellor in July 2024. She would never have suspected then that she and her next-door neighbour would be moving out just 24 months later. Reeves wouldn't explicitly say who should be the next chancellor, or even if she would like to stay. She has always told us that being chancellor is her "dream job". She and her team clearly do not expect to stay in No 11, but with the incoming No 10 team tight-lipped about its cast list, we just don't know. Reeves said that she had returned "stability and trust" to the economy over the past two years, and that "Andy will take over an economy that is much stronger than the one I inherited from the Conservatives just two years ago." In the interview, Reeves wanted to focus on what she described as the "big picture" - government borrowing costs that have gone down, inflation way down from its peak, increased investment in infrastructure like roads and railways, and the economy growing faster than the UK's nearest competitors. But by other measures, there are still big problems in the economy. Inflation is still above target and is expected to rise, growth has been slow, and just this week, the Bank of England warned that interest rates might have to go up again . The country's debts are due to be higher at the end of this parliament than they were when Labour moved in. And more than anything else, firms and families' spending power is still under pressure, with the latest ONS figures showing disposable income falling. Image caption, Reeves has remained a close ally to Starmer One former senior minister told me Reeves had "spent a lot of time and energy painting a picture of her grim inherita