Opinion: Congratulations Andy Burnham – now it’s time to hit the ground running

NEW PRIME MINISTER: Andy Burnham. Picture credit: House of Commons

By Councillor Daren Hale, leader of Hull Labour Group

Today Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, following a meteoric return to Parliament and an unopposed leadership contest in the Labour Party.

It is no secret that May’s election results in Hull were very bad news for our Party. Myself and other Labour colleagues here had already recognised the problems with our national policy beforehand, and had been calling for a change of leadership for some time, more vocally than many others did.

My colleague Sharon Hofman, who thankfully kept her seat in Bricknell in May, was one of, if not the first, Labour politician to call for Keir Starmer to step down after the elections. We understood that the moment was existential for the Labour Party, and it still is.

We are, therefore, glad that Andy Burnham has become Prime Minister today. Many of us came from Hull to campaign for him at Makerfield and are happy to have seen him succeed (even if a full, open leadership election might have been preferable).

However, we must also recognise that this change in leadership is no silver bullet for Labour’s situation. Andy Burnham has become Prime Minister on a tidal wave of hopes and expectations, and these will need to be met if we are to turn this situation, and the country, around.

Andy Burnham is, I believe, a fundamentally good man, has been a good mayor [of Greater Manchester], and I hope will prove to be a good leader of our Party. But it is the material impact his government will have on ordinary people’s lives that will be the test.

Keir Starmer’s government introduced some very welcome and positive reforms, and he should be thanked for his work on these. But at the same time, many of these reforms were brought in too slowly, often watered down, and did not have a radical vision and project underpinning them.

Quite simply, people in Britain voted Labour back in 2024 because they wanted change, and many of them, justifiably, do not feel that that is what they got.

We will see Andy Burnham’s policy programme take a clearer shape in the coming weeks, and it is true that he will not have long to make his mark.

Some of the noises coming from his pitch to MPs in the last month have been encouraging. He has spoken about expanding council housebuilding, ending the crude cuts to welfare, restoring the Labour Party’s “broad church”, improving transport links, and taking stronger action over the genocide in Gaza.

These are all exactly the right priorities, but we need the right politics underpinning them to make them a success.

‘WE NEED BOLD, RADICAL ACTION’: Councillor Daren Hale. Picture credit: Neil Holmes

In Hull, we desperately need improved transport connections: there has been a long-standing cross-party consensus here on the need for electrification of the Hull to Selby railway, and Andy Burnham has supported me on that in the past when we both sat on the Transport for the North board.

Similarly, we desperately need more council housing. Not just more housebuilding, but an end to the Thatcherite Right to Buy policy as well, so that we aren’t forced to sell off homes quicker than we can build them, as is currently the case.

These, and other priorities, cannot happen overnight, and they cannot happen with small policy fixes and tweaks to the way government works. “Number 10 North” may be a welcome culture change, but it will not be enough on its own.

Transport cannot be improved by small reforms to a still partly private rail network; housing cannot be fixed with a hollow focus on “YIMBY” (“Yes In My Back Yard”, a pro-developer reaction to the so-called “NIMBY” movement) and “build, baby, build” rhetoric, as we have seen recently from government ministers and some Labour members.

These issues can only really be resolved by taking on the vested interests in our society that have always been an obstacle to real change. We cannot leave the private developers to solve the housing crisis, the private rail companies to sort out the network, or the private water profiteers to clean up our rivers and beaches.

These crises can only be addressed by bold, radical action, by an activist state as the leading force, and by a government with the courage to do what is truly needed.

In the past, we have heard about governments making “tough choices” on issues like welfare and spending cuts. These were never tough choices: they were always easy choices. The real tough choices are the ones that take on the entrenched private racketeers who have been allowed to run our economy for far too long.

Andy Burnham has one chance – and one chance is all he will get – to make a real, populist pitch to the country, and to take on these vested interests. We need a positive, authentic Labour alternative to Reform, who are led by a wealthy commodities trader but pretend to represent ordinary people.

There will be pushback against this, and pressure to water down his programme. Some people, powerful people, will tell Andy Burnham to not go too far, too quickly. He should not listen to them.

Last September, Andy Burnham said that Britain was too “in hock to the bond markets”. He has shown that he understands the challenge we face, and that his programme contains the spark of a potentially radical, reforming government.

This new government can be a real force that takes on the establishment and fights for ordinary people. Here in Hull, we know that is what he needs to do, and we hope he will succeed.