Rock star Andy Burnham takes on Keir Starmer at Labour conference

Labour’s party faithful eye Manchester's mayor as economic woes and soaring immigration put pressure on Keir Starmer's grip on power.

Keir Starmer's leadership is under threat from Andy Burnham. Picture: Getty Images.

When Andy Burnham turns up for the British Labour Party’s conference in Liverpool this Sunday he will be feted by some on the far left of the party as the rock star, the leader apparent.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in contrast, will be the man desperately trying to salvage his reputation, and in doing so ward off the treachery lurking so near to the surface.

Under pressure from the Labour grassroots Sir Keir has recognised the state of Palestine, will revisit the current two children cap on child benefit and will make grand promises about housing and welfare and immigration.

Anthony Albanese is due to join the conference on Monday, providing Sir Keir with some backslapping support a day before the British leader’s annual address.

But will Sir Keir move the dial on his unpopularity? Unlikely.

Appeasing the party faithful and keeping the nation ticking over are two different things and after 14 months in power of a five-year term the British economy is painfully stagnant, the population is restless, taxes are at a post war high and Labour policies are hammering the middle class, pensioners and those aspiring for a better life.

But is he about to be rolled? Unlikely in the short term; after all, a leadership battle in the United Kingdom is nothing like the ruthlessly fast decisions made in Australia.

Mr Burnham, the long-serving mayor Manchester, faces several significant hurdles before he can even think about a contest. Becoming an MP is one.

The 55-year-old father of three left Westminster in 2017 after two failed tilts at the Labour leadership. There are suggestions he could be parachuted into parliament by way of a by election in one of the 25 Labour seats around the Greater Manchester area.

But with Reform surging there is no guarantee Mr Burnham could win such a contest, even though some seats, like Gordon & Denton or Blackley & Middleton South have big majorities. Convincing a sitting MP in a safe seat to retire or move on is no easy task.

Even if he does manage to become an MP, Mr Burnham requires 20 per cent of Labour parliamentarians to back him in challenging the prime minister in a contest for which other contenders will be invited. A ballot of the wider party membership is then held, including Labour Party members and affiliated trade union supporters.

It has been suggested a spark for such rebellion may be at the May local council elections where it is anticipated Labour will face a trouncing. But will Mr Burnham – whose ideology is more extreme than Sir Keir’s – gain the support he needs to overthrow Sir Keir?

He has called for 50 per cent tax rates, a mansion tax on homes in London and the south east of the country, a graduate tax on university leavers, nationalising rail and energy utilities, and somehow expanding the bloated National Health Service which is collapsing under the strain of free medical care for 70m people to include social care.

Another of Mr Burnham’s headline grabbing promises – to borrow an extra £40bn for council housing- has already sparked further economic warnings about gilt yields and the pound exchange rate.

To pay for all of this Mr Burnham won’t reduce government spending in other areas: he intends to raise taxes even further.

Sir Keir on Friday (AEST) compared Mr Burnham and his policies with those of former, short-lived prime minister Liz Truss, saying her chaotic premiership “shows what happens if you abandon fiscal rules.”

Economists have been warning Westminster of the Laffer Curve, that the country has already passed peak tax collection and any further attempts will be counter productive. According to New World Wealth the UK lost 10,800 millionaires in 2024 many attributed to Labour’s changing tax rules.

But the daily struggle here is not confined to the poor. Many find there is little incentive to work harder or put their savings into a pension. Businesses are closing, investment has collapsed, the housing sector is paralysed and Britain has the highest inflation of its nearest trading partners.

Labour is attacking working professionals: it seems entrepreneurs, teachers, managers and anyone earning more than £30,000 (A$70,000) a year is fodder for Labour’s policies of envy.

And this plays heavily into the country’s increasing resentment of the boat arrivals.

Asylum seekers get warm hotels and free meals, a weekly stipend, free gym classes while British pensioners have had their heating allowance withdrawn and could be taxed on their pension money of £11,000 (A$25,000) a year.

The Home Office says as of June 2025, taxpayers are supporting 106,075 asylum seekers, with more than 35,000 housed in hotels at an eye watering cost of £15.3 billion over ten years.

Mr Burnham has argued that councils bearing the burden of pressures on schools, and hospitals with high asylum seeker numbers, should get even more government funding. While he has called for some restrictions on the benefits the illegal migrants are able to access, he hasn’t expressed any view about slowing the high migration levels.

The new far left party, Your Party, created by Jeremy Corbyn, whose co-founder Zarah Sultana says membership is limited to people who are “pro-trans, pro migrant,” may attract the extremes of the Labour membership over the coming months, resulting in Mr Burnham’s own pitch being deemed too high risk for the party and too close to that of Corbyn’s views.

Mr Burnham’s central theme is that “public control is everything’’. In a 7000 word interview in the New Statesman this week, he said: “To me, the issue of the conference is not who is the deputy leader of the party, who is the leader of the Labour Party. The issue for the conference is: where is our plan to turn the country around?”

Mr Burnham stressed that what was needed was not just “a changing of the guard” – although he conceded others were encouraging him to challenge Sir Keir.

Instead, he insisted the “whole culture” had to be transformed. “I’m going to put the question back to people at Labour conference: are we up for that wholesale change? Because I think that’s what the country needs,” he said.

Most would agree with him on that, but whether Mr Burnham’s high tax philosophy is the appropriate response is the critical point.