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

Well yes plus the voting age to 16. Whether it works we’ll see. The left will have some heavy factors working against them, similar to EU countries.

It might preclude them from a massive majority but it will save democracy generally and coalitions aren’t a bad thing, they enable a proper forum for ideas - for eg if labour was in a coalition I think they wouldn’t have ballsed up the winter fuel allowance so badly - perhaps via coalition they would have come in at a more sensible threshold or packaged it as part of an overall shift rather than this one off announcement that was disastrous.

Coalitions can be very problematic. They often end up held hostage by fringe parties and can struggle to actually get anything done. They’re also often unstable.

Which racists and xenophobes?

If Burnham wants to win my vote he needs to reassure me immigration is under control, aka net zero or minus figures. I’m deeply concerned about the quality of the environment and more building or cars would be a disaster. Our flood risk is high, our light pollution is out of control and affecting nocturnal migratory birds, our air quality is poor and our massive food importation habit is disastrous for energy consumption. How is that ‘racist’?

All of the racists and xenophobes. No need to discriminate between them.

I have no idea what the rest is your post is about. If you are not racist or xenophobic, then I'm obviously not talking about you.

I’m highlighting how many people are concerned about immigration for reasons entirely unrelated to culture or race. And our points are extremely valid and never ever addressed, even by those who claim to care about the environment and all the things I mentioned. Even the Greens won’t go near it.

I didn’t allude to any cross party dream. My explanation is exactly what the FT article suggests.

OK, but I'm still not sure of the relevance of your point. I agree that it's perfectly possible to be concerned about immigration or the environment without being racist or xenophobic. So what?

My point is that immediately jumping to ‘racism’ because other posters queried his stance on immigration utterly dismisses entirely valid and non-race-related concerns such as mine!

Seriously our country is dying a death, 20% of our wildlife has died since 1970, we’re one of the most nature depleted countries globally and you want more people to live here and build over the countryside? Madness.

Thanks for sharing. That is an interesting point of view.

You can also get a different perspective on whether electoral reform will ultimately good for Labour here: /https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/polling/2026/10/electoral-reform-could-kill-the-labour-party

And a really interesting perspective of Andy Burnham as a conviction politician here (in the Telegraph of all places!) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/15/hillsborough-turned-burnham-into-a-conviction-politician/

My own personal opinion is that Andy Burnham genuinely believes that every vote should count, and that he is driven by principle on the matter. I’m also well aware he’ll need to be clever strategically, to make it work for his party. I know other takes are available though and I enjoy reading/ hearing them.

Heard bits on the news, not impressed. He needs to be sorting out the big stuff NOW while Labour is in power. Bollocks to making 10 year plans or talking about what happens after the next election. No different to all the soon to be broken promises made by every party before an election. He never talks about illegal immigration for example, which has a knockon effect on many other issues and IS a big deal for many.

I apologise - I misread your intention. Often on here, questions like that are used as a gotcha, as though you cannot recognise holes in a policy unless you have all the answers yourself. Thank you for clarifying.

The issue as from my perspective is that in tandem only works when funds exist to support it. I completely agree that people still need to live while longer-term support takes effect. But resources are limited and we we low growth, low productivity, soaring prices and rising taxes. Keeping everything as it is while funding additional investment at the same time is a luxury I don’t think we can afford.

It sounds as though we agree on early intervention. Our difference is more about the balance of support and how the transition would be funded. Either way I don't think Labour are the party to make this happen. It's difficult to respect a party who are supposed to be the party of the people who have been so divisive since they came back to power. AB has been more of the same and he still has an out of control backbench...

Unless you are self identifying as racist or xenophobic, I'm not dismissing your concerns at all.

I said that I was glad that Burnham had focused on his own agenda for the country, and not Nigel Farage's. Not every political speech has to focus on immigration, and not every political thread has to focus on the issue either - despite the best efforts of certain posters to bring every discussion back to that topic.

If you don't feel that Burnham is doing enough to address your concerns, then you don't have to vote for him at the next election.

The birth rate is falling. The ONS says deaths will outpace births every year from now on. The more plausible long term challenge is how we sustain the workforce, public services and tax base as the population ages. Some commentators think western countries will be competing for migrants soon.

A lot of the country’s problems come down to too many people. That’s not a value judgement on their race, culture or anything else. 1 person is 1 person, they will still need a roof over their head, probably drive a car, medical care at some point and so on.

Our country feels hideously crowded. Traffic is worse than ever, the heatwaves were massively driven by a lack of canopy cover. 1 in 6 species are critically endangered. Nobody seems to give a shit, they just seem to want the numbers to spiral to put 2 fingers up at the racists.

Sweden currently is an example of what can go wrong in a coalition.

Good. We need fewer people, and for our population to fall gently and over time to 40 million. I’m willing to accept whatever price we have to pay for that.

I agree that coalition’s can be problematic, but I don’t think it’s as problematic as what we currently have - which is 5 parties competing in a political system essentially designed for 2 parties. It has massively distorted the Overton window and left large swathes of the centre feeling completely unrepresented and as though they have no choice but to use their vote as a vote against something they don’t want, rather than a vote for something they do.

I am not averse to a well-run coalition. The issue in this country is the poor quality of politicians across the political spectrum.

I think we need to be creative. We need to plan to do more with fewer people, especially with the unknown impact of AI.

Yep AI will be a factor anyway for the workforce.

I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that - but for me, there’s a bit of chicken and egg in it, because I do think a lot of intelligent, pragmatic politicians and would be politicians have been put off because of how tribal, and seemingly iblack and white our politics is. There’s clearly also an issue with the level of abuse and vitriol levelled at politicians - of all political persuasions. One of the main skills a modern politician needs is a remarkably tough skin, and that doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with being empathetic and emotionally intelligent. I personally do believe we’d get a better standard of politician if our political landscape was indeed transformed to become less about party political point scoring and more about problem solving, and if we could take some of the heat and cynicism out of our political debate.

Some commentators?

Who are they?

Source?

Link?

Andy Burnham doesn't need all the answers. He just needs the will for change and to listen to those who are experts in the field. And of course, the funds. Which will be the biggest hurdle.
There are cost effective ways of delivering support and early intervention through third sector partners, where government input can be matched with input from trusts and grant making bodies, and I'd like to see this explored. There is much excellent work being done in communities, addressing financial and digital exclusion, financial literacy, job skills training. Usually done on a shoe string. A little investment there goes a long way.
I'd like to see consultation with professional experts and people themselves so measures are taken with people not done to them.
And no, we don't have limited funds as a country. But there's a great deal of wealth here nonetheless and some of those who hold it are increasing it at alarming rates. I think we do need wealth and asset taxes rather than squeezing the middle and dragging the poor into deeper poverty.
And I think we need a level of acceptance of the demographic of our population. We are aging and sick. Rates of disability and health conditions are very high, and worryingly the numbers of disabled children is on an upward trajectory. So realistically we are inevitably going to carry a high welfare burden and do need to have conversations that go beyond stereotypes of the workshy, 'cut benefits' as the cure all, and understand where the welfare budget actually goes, and how many people are actually in the group where savings could be made by support and intervention, and how much this will actually save.

He's a nice man, with a lot of obvious talents. He seems decent and genuine, which are rare qualities in a politician. Yes it was a really good speech! But I just don't agree with his policy agenda and I would never vote for him in a million years.