Andy Burnham to promise an ‘unashamedly Labour’ government as details of first speech as leader revealed

The Makerfield MP is set to promise a ‘distinctly Labour future’

The first details of Andy Burnham’s first speech as Labour leader can be revealed as he is set to be crowned at a special conference tomorrow (July 17).

The Makerfield MP is set to appear at the Party’s special conference tomorrow (July 18) where he will officially be named as the party’s new leader.

His official coronation as Prime Minister will follow on Monday (July 20) after Sir Keir Starmer’s last PMQs took place yesterday.

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A Labour source has revealed that Burnham is set to pay tribute to Starmer in his maiden speech, crediting him with returning Labour to government and delivering ‘one of the largest election victories in [its] history’.

He is also expected to praise Starmer’s government for its achievements including improvements to the NHS, investment in public services, and the passing of the Hillsborough Law – a campaign of which Burnham has been a prominent supporter.

He is to set out his vision for a ‘renewed’ Labour government that will focus on ‘driving growth in every postcode’ and ‘returning power to communities’.

He will say it will be a government that will have the ‘courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected’ and the ‘conviction to argue for our plans’.

He is also set to argue that only a ‘confident’ Labour government can ‘lift Britain up’ by ‘putting people and places back at the heart of national decision-making’.

Looking to recent history, he is expected to say that Britain ‘took a series of wrong turns in the 1980s’ and that a ‘new path’ is required to build a country that ‘works for all people and places’.

The government he leads will be authentically Labour, sources claim, and will offer a ‘confident alternative’ with a ‘distinctively Labour’ programme of economic renewal, more public control, reindustrialisation and power back in the hands of local communities.

He is expected to promise that the party under his leadership will be ‘unashamedly Labour’ in its priorities and decisions, and that the party will become ‘more united’ and open to working with other parties ‘rather than internal division’.

He is also set to commit to leading the entirety of ‘this great country’ including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the north and south of England.

He will praise the achievements of the Labour government, including stronger workers’ rights, NHS improvements, investment in public services and the passing of the Hillsborough Law.