To ask if you watched Andy Burnham’s bloody good speech?

[Househunt2026]

As in actually watched it and didn’t just doom scroll the commentary? It was bold and honest and pragmatic and actually made me hopeful that we have someone at the helm with a vision for a better tomorrow who has Britain’s best interests at heart.

The National Care Service is a masterstroke, paid for out of scrapping the triple lock and the very real savings of reducing NHS bills on A&E and hospital beds for elderly who should be in care but have nowhere to go.

Scrapping right to buy and increasing council control of housing, boosting the technical education track for young people, pushing renewables, nuclear and energy sovereignty, public control of key utilities for water to get bills down and reduce pollution, investing in people & getting them back to work, leasehold reform by Christmas and everyone’s energy bill will be reduced by fast tracking decoupling energy prices from global gas pricing and by having no VAT on energy bills by TOMORROW!

You can watch the whole thing here and be directly informed instead of getting your perspective filtered through all the bots and misinformation peddlers online m.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjTT_55Gi0

Even Reform ran on getting rid of Starmer. So that has happened.

Really? I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed that.

I think we just weren't smart enough to see the plan at the time.
Reform picked the worst possible candidate for Makerfield because they wanted to lose so Burnham would win and get rid of Starmer!
Which means that instead of having to fight a very unpopular leader in a GE, they would instead have to fight the most popular politician in the UK. Which will obviously help them because....(Sorry. Not smart enough to know the last bit.)

Makerfield were smart though. They knew to get rid of Starmer they should vote Burnham. It was clearly known. Even 200 plus Labour MPs campaigned for Burnham not Labour, or Starmer.

Makerfield just really loathed Starmer, luckily for many others who did too.

Rightly or wrongly, Starmer was deeply unpopular with the public. There is no way that Reform would have wanted him replaced by a much more popular leader with a realistic chance of preventing Reform from winning the next election.

Don't try to pretend that their loss in Makerfield was part of some grand strategy. They lost because they failed to persuade enough people to vote for them.

As below. Starmer did the heavy lifting for Burnham. He pissed enough people off for many to want him out. Thankfully.

Nobody is arguing with the fact that the people of Makerfield wanted Burnham over Starmer. That's clear from the result.

But that wasn't what you said in your earlier post, in which you seem to imply that Reform wanted Burnham to win. Seems very unlikely to me, given that Labour are now leading the polls and Reform have dropped behind?

I said they wanted Starmer out, and some Reform voters would have wanted that too. I’m sure they would have celebrated a win and Labour would have panicked even more if they had.

The biggest political push anyone made was Starmer, just by virtue of being himself and turning people away.

I'm sure that some Reform voters would have wanted Starmer out.

I very much doubt that Reform as a political party company wanted him out. Keeping him until the best election was their very best option.

I think they wanted him out. Whilst he did cause many to go to Reform they knew a beating at the local elections would weaken his leadership.

Taking that to court and getting the results they did would cause panic for Labour re their leader.

And how do you think having Andy Burnham as leader is working out for them?

Early days, a summer of Burnham bus fare type policies. Let’s see how it works out for Labour, more to the point. They won’t change again even if the bounce dissipates.

To come back to the point of the thread, Burnham's speech, I'd say the reception to it demonstrates how well it's working for Labour. Studies on members of the public shown the speech show that positivity towards him rose by ten points after viewing it. Which is some result.
Obviously it was well recieved by conference and Labour supporters, so that shows nothing new. And the views of those who would vote for a pig in a rosette if it was a shade of blue are irrelevant, they're a lost cause anyway.
Studies of reactions of ordinary members of the electorate with no particular alliance are the best measure. And by that measure, it was indeed a bloody good speech.

Indeed, let's wait and see what happens.

There will be tough times ahead, no doubt. Burnham has inherited all of shitshow left behind by the tories as well as some messes of Starmer's making. And of course, there is the global shitshow presided over by the orange idiot. So Burnham is not going to have an easy ride.

But we still have the outcome of the met police investigation into Reform to look forward to. And the parliamentary enquiry into Farage's dodgy £5m.

And all the while, Kemi's Tories appear to be languishing in the wilderness. Never mind, there is always the hope that they might win back some votes if Farage gets arrested. Unless the disaffected Reform voters shift their allegiance to Restore, that is.

Yes, responses seem to have been great from those who have seen it, including from those who only watched short clips on the news and not the whole thing.

You can tell that some on the right are getting rattled, and understandably so!

Ha at the ‘pig in a rosette’ line. Good old Labour, usual stuff.

He’s going to need to keep Reform at bay for Labour to stay happy with the leader change.

I just get fed up of the whole panto mentality. It starts instantly. Someone comes along and offers to try to do more than anyone has done in absolutely years with some good ideas - and instant boos. At least he is recognising some of the problems which is more than many of them have ever done. Even if he does a bit of what he says in his speech it's better than nothing! Someone has got to lead us towards better times. If we never let anyone lead we will never move forward.

The signs are promising so far. I think it helps that he has not foolishly allowed Farage to set the agenda.

Burnham needs to forget about trying to win back/over Reform voters and as Mrs B says, he seems to be. Starmer tried that and he alienated Labour supporters.

It was only important because Burnham was fighting it.

As a measure of whether parts of the left will compete against other parts of the left in a general election, which was what was being discussed at the time, by me at any rate, a mid term by election result with a government with a huge majority in power is irrelevant.

And for all we know, the Greens stepped aside in Makerfield because they expect Burnham to fail and Labour to lose seats to them at the next general election. It wasn't because the left don't fight each other like the right, because they clearly do.

Well yeh. There’s plenty of ways it could go. It’d be amusing to see Burnham’s shine go after all that effort of changing leader, but beyond that there’s no way to predict.

I think this is what Burnham is trying to get at when he talks about focusing on problem solving rather than point scoring. He knows that the public have had enough of the political panto. It was so refreshing to hear a conference speech which didn't revolve around trashing the other parties.

Unfortunately, I don't think the other parties have got the memo yet. Even the Libdems, who should have been delighted to hear about Burnham's plans on social care, electoral reform and potentially rejoining the EU - that speech should have been music to their ears, but they somehow felt obliged to find fault.

I wish we could get to a different kind of politics in which there was constructive criticism and challenge from the opposition parties without all of the cheap party political point scoring. It would make for much more effective government, no matter which party was in power.

Restore is doing good work in splitting the far right vote. Farage must be fuming at the monster he created.

Amble (Northumberland) Council By-Election Result:

🌹 LAB: 38.8% (+0.4)
➡️ RFM: 33.5% (-10.9)
🌳 CON: 21.0% (+3.8)
◼️ RES: 6.7% (New)

Labour GAIN from Reform UK.
Changes w/ 2025.

Agreed. There are some people who will never vote Labour. Its a mistake to make compromises to throw them crumbs in the hope of being hated a little less. The type who moan about policy then moan about U turns if the policy they wanted changed actually changes. Burnham might as well go all in with what he believes. He has nothing to lose from this cohort, and much to gain from those who don't make hating Labour their motivating grievance.

Outstanding work by Rupert Lowe's party. Destroy the far right from within!