Andy Burnham warns UK needs 'wholesale change' in challenge to Keir Starmer
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham warns the 'challenge we've got in front of us cannot be met by a very factional and quite divisive running of the Labour Party'
Andy Burnham has warned Britain needs "wholesale change" to face off an "existential threat" in a challenge to Keir Starmer on the eve of Labour's conference.
The Mayor of Greater Manchester, who has been tipped as a future successor to the Prime Minister, insisted he was not plotting an immediate return to the Commons.
But in an interview with the New Statesman - just days before Labour members gather in Liverpool - he appeared to criticise the direction of Labour's leadership. Mr Burnham warned the "challenge we've got in front of us cannot be met by a very factional and quite divisive running of the Labour Party ".
He told the left-wing magazine: "To me, the issue of the conference is not who is the deputy leader of the party, who is the leader of the Labour Party. The issue for the conference is: where is our plan to turn the country around?”
Mr Burnham added: “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.” If you’re asking me, am I attracted to going back into my old world and the old way of doing things in Westminster with minimal change, well no, I wouldn’t find that attractive.
"[But] am I ready to work with anybody who wants to sort of put in place a plan to turn the country around? I’m happy to play any role. I am ready to play any role in that. Yes. Because the threat we’re facing is increasingly an existential one.”
The Labour Mayor also used the interview to highlight his work of "rolling back the 1980s" privatisation with Manchester's bus network back under public control. And he suggested bringing the "basics of life" - housing energy, water, and rail back - into public ownership.
Mr Burnham's comments will be seen as unwelcome intervention by Downing Street as Mr Starmer attempts to regain the political agenda at Labour's annual conference after a bruising few weeks in No10. A string of resignations have knocked "phase two" of his government off course.
Just weeks ago, Angela Rayner was forced to resign as Deputy PM after admitting not paying the correct amount of tax on her seaside home in Hove. Her departure has led to a contest for the deputy leadership in the run-up to Labour's conference.
Mr Starmer was also forced to sack his Ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, over his links to disgraced billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And one of the PM's top aides in No10, Paul Ovenden, resigned over a leak of messages where he made sexually explicit jokes about veteran MP, Diane Abbott.