LONDON \u2013 Andy Burnham has been appointed leader of the Labour Party, the final crucial step in his rapid rise to Downing Street. At an extraordinary Labour Party conference in London today, the former mayor of Manchester and sole candidate to succeed Keir Starmer has officially become the leader of a party he has been a member of since he was 15.<\/p>\n
Shabana Mahmood, the current Home Secretary and Chair of the Labour Party\u2019s Executive Committee, stated that Burnham had received the support of 379 Labour MPs, 95 per cent of the total, as well as the backing of the 11 trade unions affiliated to the party, and has therefore appointed Burnham as leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ready and I have a plan,\u201d said Burnham in his first speech, which was met with a standing ovation. The new leader stated that the government he will lead will be \u201cresolutely Labour in our priorities and in the decisions we take, putting people and places at the heart of everything we do\u201d. In practice, this means greater public control of the economy and a reindustrialisation programme which, he promised, will bring \u201cgrowth to every postcode\u201d in the UK, and not just to affluent London and its surrounding areas.<\/p>\n
The new leader has pledged to change course, steering the country towards \u201ca new path away from the neoliberalism pursued over the last forty years\u201d, and has criticised in particular the decision taken in the 1980s to centralise political power in Westminster and embark on privatisation. \u201cThis economic model has not worked for workers,\u201d said Burnham, recalling that the Labour movement was \u201cforged in factories, mines and shipyards\u201d and must return to its roots.<\/p>\n
Priorities<\/p>\n
Outlining his priorities, Burnham said he wants to unite the Labour Party, which is too divided into factions, because \u201conly by standing united can we defeat the right\u201d. He intends to form a government that reflects \u201call strands of Labour\u201d, to make politics \u201cless toxic\u201d, but also to bring about radical and lasting change, with reforms in sectors such as social care that have so far been neglected because they are too complex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2013 Andy Burnham has been appointed leader of the Labour Party, the final crucial step in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-696595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}