Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledged on Tuesday to revive Britain by tackling its deepest problems such as social care, housing and utilities — issues, he conceded, would take time to fix in what he described as an “honest” speech to the nation.
In an emotional address to his Labour Party in which he imagined the country his father, who died this month, would have wanted to see, Burnham set out a long-term vision, promising greater public control of utilities, reform of the so-called pensions triple lock and the construction of more social housing.
Yet, the former Greater Manchester mayor, 56, said he could only start setting out the groundwork for resolving those priorities, constrained in the near term by stretched public finances and the previous government’s tax pledges.
Any results would only come after the next national election, due by mid-2029, and some in the next 10 years. For the time being, he asked the party at its annual conference in the northwestern English city of Liverpool to keep the faith.
BURNHAM PROMISES ‘NEW PATH’
Walking on the stage to “All Together Now” by Liverpool band The Farm, Burnham said he had ignored his first instinct to give “the usual tub-thumping conference speech”, instead deciding to offer “a more serious prospectus for Britain than people have been offered in a generation”.
It was a pitch decidedly aimed at the long term — aware of not only the lack of public money available to his new government but also the need to placate the bond markets, which have sent Britain’s borrowing costs to high levels.
His team said Burnham’s speech and plan came from the heart, the culmination of his upbringing, his years spent at the centre of British politics in Westminster and those as Greater Manchester mayor.
Burnham’s main message of drawing “a line on a decade of division” to put “the country on a new path … with hope again” was delivered with passion and well received by attendees.
PROMISES TO STICK TO FISCAL RULES
Labour lawmaker Peter Prinsley said he was optimistic. “I think it was a great boost to everybody, full of ideas and hope, but above all honest,” he told Reuters.
But even his most vocal supporters said a lot of his new prospectus, which included plans to change Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system and to see if he could build a consensus around a better post-Brexit relationship with the EU, would come after the expected 2029 election.
Promising to boost social housing, get more of the around 1 million young people in unemployment back into work, tackle the social care crisis and possibly to bring water firms under public control, it was an ambitious plan he conceded would be held back in the short term by fiscal constraints.
He called on Labour and Britain’s voters to stick with him, saying he had worked hard since coming to power in July to offer them immediate “breathing space” by capping bus fares and removing value added tax from electricity bills.
“I hope you will see it as a sign, a strong one, of our intent to get your bills and fares down as you wait for the bigger changes to come,” he said.
“I would love to go quickly, but I have to be honest about what the country can afford. I will stick to our fiscal rules to get borrowing and debt down,” he said, referring to the rules that require the government to balance day-to-day spending with revenue by the end of the decade.
EMOTIONAL OVER CARE SERVICE
On housing, he promised to prioritise the construction of social housing and to empower local councils to seize unoccupied private homes, while on youth employment, he vowed to create a balanced education system for academic and technical routes.
He promised to repeal a ban on the public ownership of water companies, saying people should no longer have to pay to clean up private firms’ failings, when sewage is routinely dumped into the country’s rivers and seas — something that would require legislation and could take some time.
But it was on social care where his passion came through. He recounted his father’s and his grandmother’s experiences, describing his despair at his grandmother’s treatment, especially when her “engagement ring (was) ripped from her finger and stolen in a care home”.
He said he would set up a National Care Service funded by altering the triple lock — which guarantees a state pension rise each year by whichever is highest among inflation, wage growth or 2.5% — a cornerstone of the welfare offer to older people.
The populist Reform UK party seized on that, asking why pensioners were being “asked to be the first to make sacrifices”.
But it was the description of his ultimate vision for Britain that caught in his throat. He described being told by Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, that he “would be the last prime minister of the United Kingdom” on the day his dad died.
“The United Kingdom my dad represented is the one I believe in,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “So I’m going to use this job to build the kind of Britain my dad wanted to see.”
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper）
