Andy Burnham has publicly backed Prime Minister Keir Starmer while calling for him to show more boldness and be more willing to accept contributions from others within Labour. The Greater Manchester mayor used a speech and Q&A in Westminster to call for unity while promoting his views on what the government’s platform should look like.
Burnham’s intervention followed comments by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, who used a round of morning media interviews to say Starmer should use his seemingly narrow escape from a leadership challenge to reshape his prime ministership and demonstrate “much greater clarity of purpose”. Burnham echoed the sentiment, saying it was time for everyone to be “facing in the same direction and pulling in the same direction around our ambitions”, but that the government should be more ambitious, notably on housing.
“I think we are at a generational moment in politics,” Burnham said. “I do feel that recent events really draw a heavy line under political culture that was too close to wealth and power and too distant from the lives of people that we’re talking about today. So the government, in my view, should, in this moment, lean completely into that theme.” He defended his decision to seek selection for this month’s Gorton and Denton byelection, an attempt quashed by Starmer and his allies, saying there was a need for “a stronger team again” in Westminster.
Asked if he fully backed the prime minister, Burnham said: “Yes, he has my support. The government has my support, and they had my support when I put myself forward for the byelection. So I do feel we are at a crucial moment, and it is absolutely right that people give the government stability in this moment.”
Speaking earlier to the BBC, Miliband described Starmer as “liberated”, 24 hours after the departure of Morgan McSweeney as the PM’s chief of staff. “I’m one of his closest friends in politics. I have had a frustration, that the private Keir we know hasn’t been sufficiently on display to the public,” he said. Miliband told Sky News: “This has got to be a moment of change for the government, a moment of change where we show much greater clarity of purpose, consistency of purpose. And my experience in politics is what gets you through very difficult days is mission and values.”
