Mr Burnham acknowledged he and the Chancellor John Healey face a ‘challenging’ set of circumstances at the Budget.
Andy Burnham has insisted he can deliver real change for people across Britain despite the country facing severe economic headwinds, on the eve of his first Labour conference as Prime Minister.
Mr Burnham acknowledged he and the Chancellor John Healey face a “challenging” set of circumstances at the Budget, and said it was “crucial” to stabilise the public finances to put his agenda on a good footing.
The Iran War and other global turmoil has continued to push up borrowing costs and limit Mr Burnham’s room for manoeuvre ahead of the October 28 fiscal event.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of the conference, the Prime Minister said he would be able to take tough choices to maintain the public finances, but insisted he could also bring about radical change.
He told the newspaper: “The public would have more respect for us if we go and grab something difficult … and say, ‘right, we’re going to do something here’, rather than constantly playing the political game before fixing the problems.
“It’s challenging, definitely, but there are still things that you can do. 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.”
Asked about the need for a buffer against his spending plans, the so-called fiscal headroom, Mr Burnham said: “I do think it is crucial to have stability and to show that there’s a willingness to face up to the reality of some of these difficult things.
“But actually from that stability, the permission can come to make bigger change that, in the end, could put the country in a stronger position in relation to the public finances.”
Mr Burnham also spoke to the Guardian about the death last week of his father Roy.
“I’m in this job for what I can do for people, not for what it can do for me … to make the changes that my dad, for instance, long pushed me to make,” he said.
As he arrived at the conference, the Prime Minister promised to set the UK on a new course because the decade since the Brexit vote had resulted in “drift and division”.
Mr Burnham said: “We’re going to make this a really important week where we set out a new direction for the country.
“We’ve had a decade since Brexit and it’s been a decade of too much drift, too much division, and we need to draw a line on that.”
He said his vision would leave “people able to have hope again that things will improve, that life will get better – and it will”.
Dressed in black jeans, T-shirt and jacket and accompanied by his wife Marie-France van Heel, Mr Burnham said it was a proud moment to attend the Labour conference for the first time as leader.
Meanwhile, Labour’s party chairwoman said she was not complacent about its chances of winning the next election, despite having regained public favour in recent opinion polling.
Bridget Phillipson acknowledged Mr Burnham’s “real sense of connection” with the public was likely behind the latest polling, which showed Labour would be the largest party if a snap election were called, though it would fall short of a majority.
Reform UK and the Tories would find themselves neck-and-neck in their parliamentary numbers, MRP polling carried out by YouGov also suggested, with neither in the position to form a government alone.
The Prime Minister ruled out plunging the country into an early election despite the improved prospects, as he took part in a marathon round of pre-conference broadcast interviews.
Speaking to the Press Association on Saturday, Ms Phillipson said Labour recognised it had “a massive fight on our hands with Reform, with the Tories”.
She expressed caution about the latest polling, “because the only poll that will matter is the one that happens on election day in 2029”.
She added: “We’ve got a big fight on our hands come the next election, and I don’t underestimate that challenge for one second, but there’s a real sense of purpose and energy as conference gets under way.”
As the Liverpool conference approached, several Labour figures have acknowledged Mr Burnham’s leadership has reinvigorated the party’s prospects following Sir Keir Starmer’s time in No 10.
Education Secretary Lucy Powell told the Guardian the Government under Sir Keir had “lost sight of some of the politics and the purpose”.
Speaking to the BBC on Saturday, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “I think the reason, frankly, that we had a change of leadership at the start of this year is because we all felt that people need to feel the change in their lives that we promised in 2024 much more quickly.”
Ms Phillipson would not be drawn when asked if Sir Keir’s two years of leadership had been a wasted opportunity for the party.
Instead, she told PA she was “forever grateful to Keir for taking us to one of the best election results in our history”, adding: “But there is more to do, and we know that the public are impatient for change, want to see it, and they want to feel it.
“That’s why Andy Burnham this week will be setting out how we step up that change, how we demonstrate that people can feel better off, can see that sense of change within their communities.”
