Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has reignited the stamp duty debate by calling for a regional exemption or holiday designed to stimulate housing transactions across the city-region. The announcement, framed as a growth measure to support first-time buyers and boost construction, has been met with a sharp rebuke from at least one senior agent who accused Burnham of repeating errors made by successive Prime Ministers, from George Osborne's tinkering to Rishi Sunak's pandemic-era holiday and Liz Truss's mini-Budget experiment. The critique is not merely political point-scoring; it reflects a genuine concern among property professionals that short-term stamp duty interventions, however well-intentioned, tend to distort transaction timing rather than genuinely expand supply or affordability.