Starmer dismisses ‘personal ambitions’ of Burnham amid leadership speculation

Sir Keir Starmer has dismissed the “personal ambitions” of Andy Burnham amid speculation his premiership could be under threat from the Greater Manchester mayor.

In a series of headline-grabbing interventions which have been widely seen as a pitch for a future leadership bid, Mr Burnham proposed a 50p top rate of income tax and a tax cut for lower earners.

The Prime Minister appeared to attack his potential leadership rival’s economic agenda by drawing parallels with Liz Truss, adding that he is “not prepared to let a Labour government ever inflict that harm on working people”.

Sir Keir insisted he will “lead from the front” into the next general election as he spoke to regional broadcasters before the party’s annual conference in Liverpool this weekend.

The Labour leader said the next election would be a head-to-head between his party and “cowardly” Reform UK, branding the Conservative Party “basically dead”.

He told reporters his political project was a “10-year” endeavour and defended the Government’s record a year into office in a series of interviews.

Sir Keir went on to say he was “proud” of what ministers have achieved since their landslide general election victory last summer and refused to “get drawn into” reports of plots against him.

Speaking to BBC North West, Sir Keir said: “I’m not going to get drawn in to commenting on the personal ambitions of the mayor, but I do want to be really clear about our fiscal rules because economic stability is the foundation stone of this Government.

“It was three years this week ago that we had the Liz Truss experiment where she abandoned fiscal rules, in her case for tax cuts, and the result was a disaster for working people.

“The same would be true if you abandoned fiscal rules in favour of spending. And I’m not prepared to ever have that inflicted on working people again.”

He told ITV Anglia he had defied those who doubted he could change the Labour Party, adding: “They said, you can’t win an election in 2024 – I said yes we can, and we did with a landslide victory.

“Now people (who) are saying to me you can’t change the country (are) getting the same answer. We can and we will.”

Asked whether he was to blame for a sense among some that Labour was a sinking ship, Sir Keir told ITV Meridian: “Let me take a different view, because in the first year of a Labour Government, we’ve delivered five million extra NHS appointments.

“We had an ambition for two million. We’ve done five million.

“We just rolled out childcare. This is from nine months to four years: very good for parents and carers who can get back to work.”

He said the Government was “cutting through” challenges in education as well as working on plans to “build the houses we need for our country, better rights for workers”.

“We’ve got four interest rate cuts in a row, three trade deals that we’ve struck which other governments couldn’t do.

“So we’ve made real progress in the first year of a Labour Government,” the Prime Minister said.

“I accept the challenge that we need to continue, and we need to do more, but there’s a considerable amount that has already been achieved and I’m very proud of it.”

Asked whether he could guarantee he would lead the ruling party into the next general election, Sir Keir said: “Yes. I’ve been very clear that this is a project of national renewal – patriotic national renewal – I was clear about that when we launched the campaign, as we did last year.

“I’m very clear that that is a 10-year project. I led from the front into the last election, I’ll lead from the front into the next election.”

Pressed on potential plots against him, Sir Keir told BBC West: “I think all prime ministers have a degree of praise and criticism. My job is not to get drawn into that. My job to fix the problems in this country.”

The Prime Minister intensified his criticism of Reform UK, ahead of a speech on Friday in which he is expected to pledge a progressive fightback amid concerns within his party that he has not been passionate enough in his attacks on Mr Farage’s outfit.

Asked whether he was more afraid of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch or Mr Farage in May’s local elections, Sir Keir told ITV Anglia: “I think the Conservative Party is basically dead.”

There was a choice between “patriotic national renewal” under the Labour Government, and “the politics of grievance, of toxic divide, which is what Reform are all about,” he added.

“It’s about the vast majority of reasonable, tolerant, decent people who want their country to be rebuilt and renewed, which is what we are,” he told ITV Calendar.

When asked whether he meant Reform voters were not decent, Sir Keir clarified: “No, of course they are, and they want the very best for their country. But Nigel Farage is interested in the politics of grievance.”

Sir Keir called Mr Farage’s party “cowards” after the Reform UK leader of Nottinghamshire County Council appeared to ban councillors from speaking to journalists at a local newspaper.

He told BBC East Midlands: “Let me take that opportunity and call it out. It’s cowardly. It’s the complete opposite of free speech.”

The Prime Minister heads into the Labour conference after a bruising few weeks in which the departures of both Angela Rayner and Lord Peter Mandelson from Government and a sustained lag behind Reform in the polls sparked questions about his political future.

Mr Burnham said MPs had privately urged him to mount a challenge to Sir Keir.

The former New Labour minister and ex-MP for Leigh in the North West accused Downing Street of creating a “climate of fear” as he set out his vision for how to “turn the country around” in a string of interviews which fuelled speculation he could be seeking a return to Westminster.

He said returning to “the old way of doing things in Westminster with minimal change” was an unattractive prospect but he was ready to “work with anybody who wants to… put in place a plan to turn the country around”.

Senior party figures urged Mr Burnham to tone down his leadership ambitions ahead of the party’s conference, where the Government will seek to reset following a challenging few months.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed downplayed the criticism, saying people had “taken potshots at Keir Starmer before”, while Labour peer Baroness Thangam Debbonaire told Sky News it was not “helpful for anybody to start sticking their oar in about who should or should not replace Keir Starmer”.

Meanwhile, Sacha Lord, a former Labour donor and Mr Burnham’s former night-time economy tsar for Greater Manchester, said Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves had lost his support and new leadership was needed.

“I think somebody really needs to take leadership. Somebody needs to start being what the Labour Party is all about,” he told Times Radio.