Labour Party Conference: Burnham’s emotional speech

The staged walk was traditional. The speech he promised would be different.

Conference, please welcome the Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party, Andy Burnham.

Andy Burnham promised a break with the past. His acknowledgement of the Prime Minister he brought down was brief.

The 2024 election victory acknowledged, but nothing that followed it. He promised a new direction, unwinding the Thatcher-era privatisation models.

He said the first move would be on water.

Exactly how far the government could afford to go tackling water companies sounded a bit less dramatic than the rhetoric suggested. Patience would be required because money was tight, he said, echoing the Chancellor's reassurance to gilt markets yesterday.

The promises were on a bigger scale the further off they were into the distance. Free personal care at the point of use would be in the next manifesto. The general election is due by 2029.

The pain he was speculating about would come from the policy he then announced to contribute money towards free care. The triple lock for the state pension, as currently devised, would go.

There would be a link to a fraction of earnings growth to be devised nearer the time. Government figures acknowledged tax rises would be needed to do the heavy lifting and boost the contribution from these savings. He said he still believed in electoral reform and hoped to put a commitment to it in Labour's next election manifesto. On the European Union, he initiated a debate about what comes next for Britain. It would kick off around the time of an imminent EU summit.

And then he stalled. Andy Burnham could see on the autocue he'd come to the section of his speech invoking the patriotism of his father, who died two weeks ago after suffering with dementia. They clapped to steady him. Cabinet members caught up in the emotion of the moment.

By the end of the speech, his next election manifesto, potentially three years from being printed, is already bulging with major policy shifts. Vastly different from Keir Starmer's 2024 manifesto, which said change on the front cover but for many bold policies so as not to frighten the voters. Andy Burnham is calculating the voters are tired of caution, want new directions, and will join him on the political journey and tolerate the long delay before departure.

And Gary's with me now. Of all the speeches we've watched on those stages over the years, this was different.

It most certainly was. It was very different from his predecessor. Of course, one of the reasons the party got rid of Keir was they thought he didn't show emotion — well, that was brimming with emotion — but also that he didn't paint in bold enough colours on policy. And what you've got potentially here from Andy Burnham is an absolutely seismic programme for government. On the EU, it would appear almost everything is up for grabs in terms of a future relationship. On the electoral system, the next election in theory could be the last one fought on first-past-the-post — an extraordinary change, though I did note not everybody got up and applauded that one in the hall. On the triple lock, it's gone, although the government is preferring to say it's adjusted in this plan for government. You get a more active, bigger state in this plan for government — it just happens to be not this government. It's for a government that could be three years away after the next general election. And it's a very odd way to do politics, and it leaves you sort of slightly scratching your head, thinking: with a majority of 160-plus and potentially three years to run, what is Andy Burnham going to do with this government? Is it just going to be like a plane sort of taxiing round and round the airport, waiting for the liftoff in three years' time? Will it be small ameliorative measures? That's one of the puzzles going away from the speech. But you have to say that was a bunch of excited people who left the hall — they feel they got what they were kind of hoping for, a lot of them, in this change of leader. One thing nobody got, I think, in this speech or in the Chancellor's speech yesterday, was a clearer vision of how you get economic growth, because Andy Burnham's still talking about the Manchester model. I think a lot of people feel that doesn't really apply everywhere. They didn't get that much out of John Healey yesterday. Businesses going around saying that could still be the thing that blows this entire thing off course.

Thanks, Gary. Matt.

Thanks, Chris. Well, as we just heard from Gary, that announcement on reforming the triple lock was at the very centre of his speech. The economics editor Helia Ibrahimi is here. Take us through the numbers.

Well, Matt, you know, the state pension has been this holy relic that politicians haven't wanted to touch, even though it's been completely fiscally unsustainable. If I take you back, the triple lock was brought in to try and avoid the kind of pensioner poverty that we saw under Margaret Thatcher. The Resolution Foundation reckoned that over the last two decades, pensioner incomes have risen three times as fast as working people's. Now, that raises all sorts of questions about fairness and indeed cost, because over the last parliament, the welfare bill has gone up by £30 billion. We talk a lot about disability payments and sickness payments — that's £12 billion — but it's the state pension, Matt, that is almost half of that increase.

You talk of a smoother pension. I've never heard that before. How does this smoother pension actually work?

Well, it is fiendishly complicated, but the IFS has put up a chart, and we're going to look at the first green line. That is earnings growth. The shaded bit, Matt, is when inflation goes higher and earnings flatten. Now, if we take the old triple lock — that yellow line — you can see when inflation goes higher, the triple lock protects pensioner incomes and keeps it at an elevated level. But here's the change, Matt. See if you can spot it. The new triple lock still protects pensioners when incomes are flattening, but when earnings start to go up, it kind of smooths down and doesn't ratchet up higher and higher.

It's the very definition of smooth. So, how do all these numbers add up then?

The three things I would take away, Matt, are: first of all, Labour has to win the next election to make this happen, because it's baked in until then. Two, most economists agree that this is very welcome news, very sensible, but it's not radical. It's not as generous as the last scheme, but it is still generous. And three, in the short term, this doesn't save huge amounts of money, but over 10, 20 years, it makes the public finances more sustainable.

You mentioned the holy relic. What about the holy grail of social care for Andy? How does that pay for the holy grail?

Oh, that is the key question. We know how much that costs. If you want it to be free at the point of use, it's £18.5 billion. And Matt, there's no indication — however welcome, however sensible this is — that it's going to raise those kind of sums.

Helia, thanks very much. Let's go back to Christian in Liverpool. Chris.

Well, shortly before we came on air, I spoke to the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, and asked her about the Prime Minister's speech. Lisa, Andy — a lot of people feel Keir Starmer's big mistake was to say things are very bad and to hit pensioners. Hasn't Andy Burnham just said things are really bad and pensioners are going to have to pay?

No, I don't think he has at all. Actually, people have talked about reforming the triple lock for a long time. Nobody's ever grasped the nettle and done it. And what Andy's proposing today will not only mean that the state pension will continue to rise year on year and we protect people's incomes — not in the jumps that we currently see, but at a steady pace — but it will also mean that for every family in the country who goes through the heartbreak of people not being able to stay in their own homes, not getting the care they need, and often paying out of the state pension in order to try and fund that care themselves, that we really will make a huge inroad into tackling that crisis.

It's being reported that the proposal is not for the National Care Service to cover residential costs. Is that correct?

Yeah, that is correct.

So it would just be care costs, not the residential costs?

So the system that we currently have at the moment, where people can apply to councils for help with residential costs, which is means-tested with payments deferred if you have to make them during the course of your lifetime so that you don't lose your own home — that will remain as is. What Andy is proposing, with the money that we're able to free up from the adjustments that he's making to the triple lock, is that we'll be able to fund basic care at home. So things like washing, eating, using the toilet — those really basic things that often, for lack of people, end up having to go into a care home or into hospital against their wishes.

Right. But Sharon Graham at Unite, as you know, said it was morally wrong to scrap the triple lock, and you know, why are you hitting pensioners again? They are the only group identified in today's speech for whom there is pain.

Look, I genuinely believe this is better, and I agree with Sharon that we shouldn't scrap this triple lock, and we're not. But we are making an adjustment. So the triple lock will continue to go up in line with inflation or at 2.5% a year, whatever is higher. But what you often see is these big jumps in wages followed by big falls in wages. And because of that, the triple lock has meant that the state pension has risen very sharply at times. What we're saying is the state pension should continue to increase every single year. But we have to deal with...

You know, that ratchet effect is really hard to explain. Nigel Farage is already out there saying Andy Burnham will cut your pension, which is not true, as you've just explained, but that will be the argument. That's why people think this is electoral suicide.

Well, I think it's brave, but I think Andy is a brave politician. You know, lots of politicians are going to weigh in and they're going to say things that are not true. But we've been here before, Krishnan. We've been here in 2017 when Theresa May proposed reforms to social care and we called them a dementia tax and killed them off. We've been here in 2010 when Andy Burnham, then Health Secretary, proposed reforms to social care and the Tories called them a death tax and killed them off. And we can't keep going around in this endless loop of politicians politicking about something that is a crisis for every family in the country.

I mean, what we know is that ending the triple lock as it is now will not pay for this new National Care Service. There's going to have to be a lot more money from somewhere. You are looking at the next election saying, you know, pensions lower than they would have been — let us raise your taxes if we need to. These are all things that were not in the manifesto last time for a reason, because they're unpopular.

Well, no, look, we committed in the manifesto, for example, to keep the triple lock through the lifetime of this parliament because we wanted to give people certainty. But Andy is absolutely committed to fulfilling the terms of the manifesto. We made those promises. He intends to keep them.

But you've framed the next three years of politics now, haven't you? As we need to do big things, they're going to be very expensive, and we're going to have to change what we said last time.

And he will set us on that path, but he will seek permission from the electorate to make those changes at the next election.

I mean, the other really big one he wants to broach is the relationship with Europe. And he says he's going to look at all the options and then come back to us with his proposal if he can get agreement. Is rejoining the European Union potentially one of those options?

Yeah, I mean, look, the question of Europe was never settled forever. We settled it through the Brexit referendum. We decided to leave. We left. And now we're 10 years on, and those big promises about more control over immigration, more control over the economy, more control over people's lives — they just demonstrably have not been met. And I think he's right to say we've got to be honest here: this has not worked for us. A lot of the public, I think, have come to that view as well.

So he is taking on these really big ideas. And it was very clear from that speech what he cares about. He was very passionate and emotional. But what he didn't spend a lot of time doing was fleshing out the growth agenda and the economy. And basically what he said was we're going to allow public ownership of things like water and we're going to leave mayors to do what I did in Manchester. That's not really big enough as an economic vision, is it?

What he talked about at the centre of the speech was a theory of growth that I've watched him develop as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, which was the fastest-growing city region in the UK under his watch. And it's about taking control of assets and public services so that you're able to then make the big calls and big decisions to get the country moving and get the country growing by investing in housing. He was talking about building council housing, which means that you then cut the housing benefit bill. The Tories keep talking about cutting the housing benefit bill, but you don't do it by...

You spend a lot to cut benefits.

Well, look, we used to spend more on council housing and building new housing than we did on housing benefit over the course of my lifetime. Those two things have completely reversed. And it's crazy, because as Andy was saying rightly in the hall just a few moments ago, it means that we're putting a lot of money into the pockets of private landlords, some of whom have never set foot in those communities, don't take care of their properties, and bring down the whole neighbourhood. And we think we can do better than that.

You know him as well, and you probably knew his father. I mean, he got very emotional.

And we've not really seen that before, I think, in this kind of speech.

What do you think the power of that is?