LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledged Tuesday to give Britain “a new social contract for the 21st century," reform the country's electoral system and reset its relationship with its European neighbors. But he acknowledged that economic constraints make delivering his sweeping plans a big political risk.
“Small things will not get us through what are difficult times,” Burnham said in a tough-love speech to the center-left Labour Party’s
annual conference.
He set out a crowd-pleasing vision of more social housing, better education and more affordable care for the elderly. But he warned that money would have to come from welfare and pension spending to deliver the changes.
Anticipating opposition to his plans, Burnham said: “I have given you what you often say is missing from politics: honesty, ideas and a clear direction for the country we all love.”
Some of Burnham’s announcements in the hour-long speech will spark big political fights. Burnham said he would stake his political legacy on establishing a “national care service” to fix what he called a “ broken” social care system. He said that like the much-loved but overstretched National Health Service it would be free to use and paid for through taxation.
Burnham held back tears as he spoke about his experiences of the care system with his father, Roy, who died earlier this month.
To help fund the care service, Burnham said he would water down the long-unassailable pensions triple lock, an expensive policy that guarantees pensions rise each year by the annual increase in consumer price inflation, average wage growth, or 2.5%, whichever is higher.
“I accept I may pay a political price,” he said. “But someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off.”
Burnham vowed to “move beyond a decade of drift and division” and end the economic and political turmoil that have made him the U.K.’s seventh prime minister since the country voted in 2016 to leave the European Union.
In a major move on that front, he said Labour would contest the next election on changing Britain’s winner-takes all electoral system to a form of proportional representation.
He also promised a rethink of Britain’s relationship with the EU, saying “Brexit has done more harm than good” and the U.K. needs “clarity about our position and the future of the continent that we live in.”
Also on Burnham’s ambitious agenda: ending street homelessness, cutting youth unemployment and exerting more control over Britain’s privatized utilities.
At the same time, he said the government would “stick to our fiscal rules to get borrowing and debt down.”
“I would love to go quicker, but I have to be honest about what the country can afford,” Burnham said.
Burnham’s relaxed, social-media friendly confidence has been a tonic to his party as Labour held its conference under the slogan “Hope again.” As the sun glinted on the River Mersey beside the conference center in Liverpool, the mood was a world away from last year’s downbeat gathering, when delegates despaired about then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s dire approval ratings and the seemingly unstoppable rise of the anti-immigration opposition party Reform UK.
But as delegates gathered, terror arrests near a U.S.-run air base in England brought home the daunting global situation and unexpected challenges facing the neophyte prime minister, just two months into the job.
Five men were arrested Sunday on suspicion of explosives and terror offenses outside the RAF Fairford base in western England. They were released on bail Monday as police probe lines of inquiry including a link to a hostile state. That meant Burnham and his Cabinet were peppered during the conference with questions about security lapses and potential state threats from Iran or Russia.
Burnham and others also acknowledged the gloomy economic backdrop against which Treasury chief John Healey will deliver the government’s budget on Oct. 28.
The U.S.-Iran war continues to choke shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring and pushing up inflation and the cost of government borrowing. The price of diesel in Britain hit a record high of just under 2 pounds a liter on Monday, according to figures compiled by the Royal Automobile Club.
The next general election does not have to be called until 2029, but Labour’s revival has sparked talk of a snap election.
Burnham insists he won’t go to voters early, and John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said that’s a wise decision.
Curtice said Burnham had given Labour “a halo effect from a popular leader.”
“But the challenge for this party now is to change that halo effect from the leader to the party,” Curtice said. “This party needs to make much more progress before it can contemplate the prospect of an election.”
