Good morning, and welcome to coverage of the Labour party conference. Or the Hope Again conference, as it is being billed here in Liverpool.
As a good Catholic, Andy Burnham (probably) believes in the resurrection and, since he has become prime minister, his party has certainly staged a miraculous recovery. When it met in this city a year ago (at a conference which ended with Burnham’s leadership ambitions becoming the subject of mild mockery from the Starmerites, and much of the media), Labour was about 10 points behind Reform UK and Nigel Farage seemed on course to become prime minister. That is not true any more. On Thursday two MRP polls showed that, with Burnham as Labour leader, Reform UK has suffered a huge setback. More in Common has another out this morning. “More in Common’s latest MRP projects Labour on 250 seats and Reform on 147, a sharp reversal from July’s projection of Reform 293 and Labour 110,” it says.
But what next? That is what the next four days may (or may not) clarify.
Burnham has given an interview to the Guardian’s political editor, Pippa Crerar, and he told her that he wants to show the public that he is willing to take “difficult but real decisions”. Burnham said:
I think the public want to see, number one, honesty about things. So not spin or putting things a certain way that’s self-serving. They want honesty, and then they want, I think, difficult but real decisions.
Not difficult decisions and making a fetish out of that, but actually grasping nettles and then moving things forward. I don’t think politics has been prepared to do that enough in recent times.
Burnham said he would show that he was willing to take these decisions.
Always in politics, there are things that you can do. The question is sometimes: Are you prepared to do them? Yeah, I am prepared to do them.
What all those things are, sadly Burnham didn’t tell Pippa. We will find out on Tuesday afternoon, when he delivers his conference speech. But he has an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg coming up soon, and we might learn a bit more from that.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, is interviewed on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Kate McCann.
9am:Andy Burnham is interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
11.20am: The Labour conference formally opens in Liverpool.
12.30pm: Lucy Powell, the Labour deputy leader and education secretary, addresses the conference. The other main speakers are Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, at 2pm, and Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, at 3.15pm.
3.15pm: Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, speaks at a New Statesman in conversation fringe event. Other fringe events include Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, speaking on preparing workers for AI at 3.30pm; a LabourList rally where Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, Streeting, and Angela Rayner are due to speak at 4.30pm; and an IPPR in conversation event with Louise Haigh at 4.30pm. You can read the full conference timetable here.
Also, at some point this afternoon Burnham is due to meet his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Støre.
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Source: www.theguardian.com
