Labour leadership chatter intensifies as Burnham praised amid challenge talk

LIVERPOOL, England — A cabinet minister praised Andy Burnham on Friday as the Greater Manchester mayor enters a period of heightened leadership speculation, just days before Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool.

The comments come on the eve of the party’s gathering as Burnham has refused to rule out a bid for the leadership, while accusing Sir Keir Starmer of creating "alienation and demoralisation" within the party. He also claimed a number of MPs were pushing for him to launch a leadership challenge. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has previously vowed to support Burnham "whatever he decides to do".

Nandy, speaking on BBC Question Time, dodged a direct answer on whether her support for Burnham extended to backing him to be prime minister. She said: "What Andy Burnham decides to do with his career is entirely up to him. He's my mayor, and I’m proud to work with him." She added that Burnham has been a "fantastic" mayor and stressed the broader value of devolution and diverse voices in the Labour mix.

In interviews on Friday morning, Nandy told Times Radio she was not frustrated by Burnham’s flirtation with a leadership bid and reiterated her pride in working with him as Greater Manchester’s mayor. The culture secretary also pointed to the party’s power-sharing potential across regions as central to Labour’s future, citing devolution as a pathway to broader reform.

A Savanta poll conducted for The House magazine found 28 percent of voters thought Burnham would be better than Starmer as prime minister, with 28 percent saying he would neither be better nor worse. A smaller share believed other Labour figures could perform better: 15 percent for Angela Rayner, 16 percent for Ed Miliband, and 14 percent for Wes Streeting; 14 percent also said Streeting would be better than Starmer.

The poll of more than 2,086 UK adults, conducted between Sept. 19 and Sept. 22, also showed 14 percent thought Wes Streeting would be better than Starmer. A separate assessment cited by party observers suggested Labour would overtake Reform UK in popularity if Burnham were the leader, though the scenario remains hypothetical.

If Burnham were to challenge Starmer, he would need to be re-elected to the House of Commons and secure the backing of at least 80 Labour MPs to trigger a leadership contest, underscoring the practical hurdles any bid would face.

Prime Minister Starmer dismissed the notion of personal ambitions within the party and signaled a focus on fiscal discipline. He told the BBC that he would not be drawn into discussing individual ambitions and emphasized that Labour’s fiscal rules are ironclad to protect working people, warning against tapping the bond markets in ways that could destabilize the economy. He also compared current debates to the fiscal missteps of 2020, invoking Liz Truss as a cautionary tale of abandoning fiscal discipline.

Burnham has outlined a left-leaning tax-and-spend approach, including a plan to borrow about £40 billion to fund nationalising housing development. He argued that the country must move beyond a fixation on market constraints and that bold public investment is necessary to deliver housing and growth.

The leadership question looms over Labour’s Liverpool conference, with supporters and opponents watching closely for signals about the party’s direction ahead of the next general election. The mix of endorsements, polling, and policy proposals ensures that debates over leadership and strategy will shape the conference’s agenda and the party’s path forward in the coming months.