Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has warned the Prime Minister Kier Starmer that unless he changes course he risks an ‘existential’ defeat to Reform at the next general election.
In an interview with the New Statesman magazine just days before the party convenes in Liverpool for its conference, Burnham he told the magazine that a ‘wholesale’ reset is necessary if an ‘existential’ defeat to Reform is to be avoided at the next election.
‘I’m going to put the question back to people at Labour conference,’ ‘Are we up for that wholesale change? Because I think that’s what the country needs.’
Burnham as well tells the magazine that the Home Office’s scheme to resettle asylum-seekers is ‘atrocious’ and that ministers should decry Brexit as a ‘mistake’ and adds that business as usual – Westminster politics, ain’t gonna do it. The plan has to change quite radically.”
However he insists he is not plotting a return to Westminster despite all the runours and rejected accusations that he has spent the last two weeks since Angela Rayner’s resignation plotting against Starmer
Much of the week he was actually locked in discussions with the Hillsborough families trying to negotiate a package they would find acceptable
In the interview he describes his politics in Manchesteras a form of business-friendly socialism that seeks to retake public control of all essential services, from housing to transport, in order to make life “doable” for those trapped in the insecure world of Britain’s outsourced Serco economy.
Most important of all, he says is reclaiming public control of housing. “To me, if you’ve not got control of housing, you’ve not got control of the costs the country is facing.”
“When you’ve lost control of housing, energy, water, rail, buses, you’ve lost control of the basics of life, but you’ve also then lost control of costs and public spending.” He told the magazine
Backing Manchester MP Lucy Powell for the role of Deputy Leader he said that a victory for Powell would be crucial to loosening No 10’s grip on the party.
