Allow Exco Player content
This content is provided by Exco Player and may use cookies or similar technologies. Please click 'Allow and Continue' below to load the content.
Andy Burnham pledged to be “distinctively Labour” as he took over as party leader - raising fears of more tax rises in the pipeline.
He was installed in a “coronation” at the helm of the Labour Party at a special conference on Friday, after no other candidates entered the contest.
The former Mayor of Greater Manchester said he was “ready” to lead, to govern for the whole country, and promised to give people “hope back” and “the Labour they once knew”.
Mr Burnham has vowed to deliver the “biggest devolution of power in modern times” which could see tens of thousands of government jobs moved out of Whitehall.
Before delivering his new leader speech in central London, he posted on X: “The next few days are about more than changing who governs Britain.
“They’re about changing how Britain is governed.”
Andy Burnham ahead of making his speech as Labour leaderGettyOn tax, he has said he may want to “ask for a little” more at some point, as he stopped short of ruling out a wealth levy.
He has suggested that raising taxes will not be an imminent step when he takes over from Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister on Monday.
But responding to Mr Burnham’s blueprint for Britain, shadow minister for London Gareth Bacon, MP for Orpington, said: "After two years of a Labour Government in Westminster and a decade of Sadiq Khan at City Hall, Londoners already face sky-high taxes that are driving people and businesses out of our city.
"Any new wealth tax proposed by Andy Burnham would only exacerbate this. We cannot allow that to happen.”
Gareth Bacon MP In his speech at the Trades Union Congress headquarters, Makerfield MP Mr Burnham set out plans to focus on economic renewal, more public control and reindustrialisation.
Read More
He pledged to “set a direction that is distinctively Labour”.
He added: “We won’t try to outgreen the Greens or out-Reform Reform, or doing what we’ve done in the past of wearing too many Tory clothes.”
He is promising to offer the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected” and the “conviction to argue for our plans”.
He said that Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralised and economic power privatised”.
Making the economy work for people across the UK will require “a new path to the one we’ve been on for the last 40 years”, he believes.
He vowed to unite the party under his leadership and paid tribute to Sir Keir for returning Labour to government.
“We are united and we put the power that comes from that unity at the service of people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to let them hope again,” Mr Burnham said in his leadership acceptance speech attended by Labour MPs, grandees and mayors including Sir Sadiq Khan.
“That’s what we’re going to do, everybody. We’re going to give them hope back.”
In a video posted on social media on Thursday night, he also said he was going to “expend quite a lot of political capital” on social care and spoke about his own family’s experience with the system as his father has Alzheimer’s.
Mr Burnham was the only candidate to get the required support to replace Sir Keir as party leader after his resignation.
He was backed by 379 of the party’s 403 MPs, far surpassing the 81 needed, and secured the support of eight of the 11 unions affiliated with the party.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood who is expected to become ChancellorPA WireAs he finalises his Cabinet, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was reported to have overtaken Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband in the race to replace Rachel Reeves as Chancellor.
Questions remain about how far the former mayor’s plans will differ from Sir Keir’s agenda.
Mr Burnham has spoken about how he wants to push powers to local leaders outside Westminster as part of his devolution agenda and to create a “No10 North” outpost of Downing Street based in Manchester.
He has said he will stick to Ms Reeves’ fiscal rules as well as manifesto pledges not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance.
His close ally, Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram, hinted that a wealth tax is under consideration, saying voters must be shown what the levy would “achieve” for a particular “sector or area” so it was not seen as punitive towards people who have “got a few bob”.