Colin Fox responds to Andy Burnham’s first conference speech as Labour leader and Prime Minister.
The 2026 Labour Party Conference booklet handed out to delegates had a full page colour photo of Andy Burnham emblazoned with the word Labour. Their morale this year in Liverpool in such stark contrast to where it was last year under Keir Starmer: the theme was ‘Hope Again’, a reference to the misery of the second and final year of Starmer’s premiership.
TV viewers were primed to expect significant announcements on social care provision, the pension ‘triple lock’ and ‘tough choices’ on addressing the national debt.
The ‘Burnham bounce’ seen in all the polls has been interpreted as gratitude from the electorate to the member for Makerfield who ‘slayed’ the Starmer ‘dragon’.
The new Labour leader strode onto the pink and purple stage after a three-minute video set to the tune of The Farm’s ‘Altogether Now’ and to applause insisted ‘There is nothing we [Labour] cannot do. We are unstoppable.’
Then without any sense of irony he announced ‘Today we end a decade of division’.
A rather jarring and clumsy way to dismiss the past 5 years of Starmer’s party leadership I thought.
Did Burnham intend to offer such an inference? Probably not, but it was there nonetheless.
He went on in the same vein: ‘The powers that be had been pulling against the people for too long’ he added. Again, the record of Starmer’s Downing Street implicitly targeted, surely.
Burnham also adopted the Trumpian theme that ‘Washington/Whitehall is a swamp’ that must be cleared, adding ‘Britain has been on the wrong path for a long time.’
Clearly, he had to establish the core message that he represents a break from the past, but this was a clumsy way to frame his message.
It was also fundamentally dishonest because Burnham’s politics are NOT a break with the past. His central pledge to deliver ‘Good growth in every postcode’ is as empty as any Rachel Reeves [or indeed all UK Chancellors over the past 40 years] made. The UK is slithering along in dismal levels of economic growth and has been for some time.
‘Taking Back Control’
The ‘Soft-Left’ Burnham talked of ‘Taking Back Control’ like some Brexit tribute band but made no pledge to take the bankrupt Thames Water into public ownership for example although it was widely anticipated.
He did announce however the establishment of ‘Great Britain Grid ltd’ to accommodate the equally limp ‘Great Britain Energy’ company which amounts thus far to little more than a brass door plaque in Aberdeen.
The most concrete announcement he made was to reveal that ‘VAT on electricity bills will disappear from Thursday’. This small contribution to keeping down energy bills will be welcome, but it is small beer compared to the soaring price of diesel for example.
On the national debt he reassured the bond markets, which he once famously pledged to challenge, that borrowing will be cut and the overall debt reduced. But he did not remind his audience that the UK’s national debt is so high because of three important decisions: one to bail out the banks and financial institutions which collapsed after 2008/9; two the impact of the COVID pandemic; and three the crippling amounts paid out in the scandalous PFI contracts signed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown 25 years ago.
Nor did he point out the national debt could also be paid down by taxing the bankers, by scrapping the £300bn earmarked for Trident of reducing the vast sums spent warmongering in Ukraine and other NATO battles.
‘National Care Service’
Without doubt the most moving section of Burnham’s speech was that dedicated to the memory of his late father Roy who recently died with Dementia. He described the current social care arrangements as ‘not worthy of the name; care’ and indicted both himself and other politicians for having failed to address the scandal over the past 30 years. ‘The situation is worse now, in fact’ he conceded. And yet whilst his passion was sincere his proposed solutions will make little difference.
‘A high-quality care service is required, free at the points of use, with no care charges paid out of the basis state pension’ he concluded. And I was reminded of how Nicola Sturgeon promised the same thing for Scotland in 2020 and didn’t deliver. Nor will Andy Burnham, he is all over the place on the issue.
He claimed this week for example the cost of his national care service in England would be £18bn. But Professor Andrew Dilmot, who wrote the definitive Government Report on this subject for Tony Blair 30 years ago, argued on Radio Four this week Burnham’s plan would merely provide ‘free personal care’ – equivalent to what exists in the failing Scottish system today.
Andy Burnham went on to suggest the cost of any improved social care provision would come from reducing the pensions ‘triple lock’, and that would be sometime after the 2029 General election!
What he did not admit was that the UK state pension is amongst the lowest in Europe.
Honesty? Not Quite.
So, when he ended by insisting ‘I have given you honesty’ the fact is even this was not true. He does not represent a break with the past. He will not deliver a national care service free at the point of use. He will not deliver ‘good growth in every postcode’ and will not interrupt Britain’s historic economic and social decline. Moreover, he knows that full well.
This time next year his popularity will likely be nowhere near what it is now. And Chancellor John Healey’s cuts, which will detrimentally impact the lives and aspirations of working-class people across Britain, are round the corner.