Andy Burnham left no one in doubt – he intends to be PM
Andy Burnham does not currently have a seat in parliament and has not even been selected as a candidate to run in the Makerfield by-election. But make no mistake: the mayor of Greater Manchester has stepped up to become prime minister.
During a speech in Leeds on Monday, Burnham made little secret of her ambition, speaking confidently to tell her audience that she wanted to talk about “big changes” to how she believes Britain will be run.
And if he is elected in the by-election, he said, a vote for him is “a vote to make life more affordable again… to strengthen places… to re-industrialize.”
“This is the choice in this by-election,” he said. “Do you want Makerfield and the North to stay on the path it has been on for the last 40 years, or do you want a new path that will bring the country back together and work for everyone?”
Speaking at the Northern Investment Summit in the city, Trump referred to the “wrong path” Britain has followed for four decades.
He argued that deindustrialization was combined with privatization in the 1990s and austerity in the 2010s.
This, he said, led to the “drainage” of wealth from the North and elsewhere, leaving a dysfunctional economy for most working people. He said there were good jobs and high streets lost, leaving behind people “paying for basic daily needs” including energy, housing, water and transport.
He did not hesitate to challenge his own party in his speech.
A vote for him, he said, was also “a vote that will change the Labor Party, because the Labor Party has to change if we want to regain people’s trust.”
And he called on his own party not to undermine the Brexit debate.
Some of his own supporters accused his rival Wes Streeting of fueling them in a bid to derail Burnham’s bid to return to Westminster.
“In what will be seen as an attack on Streeting’s call this weekend for the UK to rejoin the EU, he said he believes Brexit is damaging, but I believe the last thing we need to do now is to bring these discussions back to the agenda.”
He added: “If we argue all the time and people drift apart, Britain will be stuck in a permanent rut.”
Burnham will face questions about her role over the last 40 years, including when she was health minister in the last Labor government. He won’t be able to contest the pro-Leave seat of Makerfield without facing more questions about where he stands in the EU.
He will face a challenge to convince voters in the area, many of whom have rejected Labor and favored Reform, in local elections held earlier this month.
Over the weekend, YouGov published a poll showing voters were split on whether Burnham should be prime minister. He spoke like a man who absolutely believed that he was.
It is now clear that Burnham has made a bid to replace Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, after Streeting followed suit on Saturday.
