Labour Conference 2026: Will Andy Burnham pass his first test of leadership?

Andy Burnham will be received in Liverpool by a party in buoyant mood – having given itself a new lease of life in the polls, and full of hope and expectations about its new leader.  

But therein lies the danger. At party conference any leader is subject to days of lobbying, pressure, and demands by party members and lobbyists keen to shape his or her agenda. A new prime minister whose policy agenda remains relatively undeveloped, and who hasn’t even presented his first budget, represents a tempting blank sheet onto which thousands of conference goers will be anxious to paint their own priorities. Like any leader, Burnham is keen to be popular, but this is the moment in his premiership when it is most crucial that he avoids the temptation to please and actively sets his party’s expectations for the difficult choices ahead. The welcome will be warm and the mood will be optimistic in Liverpool, but the next few days represent the biggest test yet of Burnham’s leadership.

The prime minister has made a series of well-received, low-cost announcements and avoided a blow up with President Trump. He has also had some luck – riding the wave of his unopposed election and benefiting from controversial revelations about Reform UK’s funding. But things only look likely to get harder from here.  

“Hope Again” is the slogan of this year’s Labour conference, but, as Keir Starmer discovered, hope can rapidly fade. With just over two years to make an impression before he must go to the country, this is the moment for Andy Burnham to take some difficult choices – or at least spell out to his party what those choices will be. Political leaders can inspire moments of hope, but a truer mark of political leadership is the skill to build a consensus for – and then deliver – lasting change.  

1.Prepare the ground for tough budget choices

The budget is shaping up to be a defining early test for the government. The economic and fiscal outlook has deteriorated since the last forecast in March, largely due to the Iran war. Lower growth will increase projected borrowing. Higher inflation will make existing spending plans less deliverable. Higher government borrowing costs demonstrate market scepticism.

The chancellor might try to hide the true scale of the problems he faces by delaying decisions over areas like defence until next year and allowing borrowing to increase within the fiscal rules, so avoiding the need for tax rises now. This would be a mistake, as it would mean missing his best opportunity, when political capital is highest, to put the public finances and public services on a stronger footing. We have argued Healey should use that budget to take, and then sell, those difficult choices which will be needed at some point.

Of course, we would not expect budget measures nor overall budget strategy to be pre-announced at conference. But only a month from the big day, Burnham and Healey should be setting expectations now – among MPs, the wider party, the public and markets – about what the budget will entail. If they do not use this conference to roll the pitch for challenging decisions ahead, it will be an opportunity missed.  

2. Don’t duck decisions on public service reform

With the 2029 election less than three years away, Burnham will have to balance the need to show voter-pleasing performance improvements against his ambition to substantially reform services, where the benefits may only be felt years after the 2029 election. Juggling those priorities will be difficult.  

His devolution-first reform agenda – which would give mayors far more control over services – could have radical consequences. He has made clear that will start with employment support services and technical education budgets for 16- to 19-year-olds. But beyond that, details are slimmer. Conference is an opportunity to build out that vision.  

Some services face more immediate issues. Most pressing of all is the capacity crisis in prisons. Burnham rowed back on some parts of Starmer’s early release scheme, giving himself even less time to find space for a growing prison population. In the courts system, he needs to clarify if he wants to go ahead with Starmer’s reforms of jury trials.  

On the NHS, the Starmer government aimed to shift care away from hospitals towards a more-preventative, community-first model. Progress towards that has been slow, with the system consumed by Wes Streeting’s ill-thought-through decision to abolish NHS England. Burnham and Yvette Cooper have not laid out their own hopes for the service, including whether they are committed to those goals. With the Health bill coming back to the Commons, they may be forced to take a decision soon

The start of the conference has seen Burnham confirm that there will be no substantive reform to adult social care before the next election, but he has said his conference speech will say more about how he will fund his promised national care service. He would, of course, be following a well-trodden path if he over-promised and under-delivered social care reform.

3. Shape public opinion on health and disability benefits reform

Health-related inactivity is a major challenge facing the UK. Helpfully, Burnham inherits from Starmer two reviews tasked with proposing reforms to the health and disability benefits system: Timms on disability benefits, and Milburn on youth employment. Difficult choices have been postponed until these reviews conclude later this autumn – but soon, decisions will be needed.  

Burnham has emphasised prevention as central to a “fair and sustainable way to bring the welfare bill down”. Achieving this will require coordinated activity across government. Further devolution of employment support (as we have recommended) and 16–18 education budgets are part of this plan. Getting the NHS and DfE behind this agenda will also be necessary. Expanding the support offer could lead to savings down the line, but will inevitably cost money in the short-term. Conference speeches and fringe discussions may give us a better idea of how much political capital – and hard cash – this government plans to throw behind this agenda, alongside other priorities.  

But Burnham cannot avoid the need to reform benefits. The Timms review has said disability benefits are “not fit for purpose”. A recent IfG report found the health and benefits system must better personalise support to match people’s needs.  

The challenge is that any substantive changes will see some people losing out – for example, more young people facing sanctions if they do not engage with support. Changes aimed at curbing the forecast rise in health and disability benefits spending over the next few years will be particularly contentious.

Starmer’s and Reeves’s welfare reforms were crude and rushed - and failed. This is an issue where government – and the prime minister – must lead public opinion, not be at the mercy of it. If the Milburn and Timms reviews are to be catalysts for reform, then Burnham should use conference to acknowledge the need for change – and soon begin setting out a clearer vision of what he wants the health and disability benefits system to achieve for different groups of people. Only having done this can he then make the case what support the system will provide to help people get there.

4. Explain how devolution plans will become reality  

Devolution, Andy Burnham’s big, bold idea for “rewiring” the governance and economy of the country, is expected to be a theme woven into the fabric of this conference.  

Details will follow at the budget, and the publication of a fiscal devolution roadmap and white paper over the coming months, but Burnham should use the next few days in Liverpool to explain how his vision of a rewired government can be achieved, quickly, in the context of tight budgets and local resistance.

There is genuine excitement at the local level about devolution of income tax revenue and control of large welfare and technical education budgets, reforms that the Institute for Government welcomes. But the speed of rollout will have to be calibrated to the capacity and readiness of different regions to take on these powers.

The plan to create a complete tier of mayoral governance across England is likewise a positive step, in line with our longstanding call to ‘complete the map’ of devolution. But unless the law is changed, ministers lack the power to create new mayors or strategic authorities without local council consent, which has derailed past devolution processes in many places.

The government has in the past managed to overcome local government scepticism by offering extra cash to places that embrace mayoral devolution, in the form of no-strings investment funds plus extra money for transport and other local growth priorities. This would probably work again, but it is less clear where the money for this will be found, given wider fiscal pressures.

This crucial task of securing the support of council leaders for his reform plans has also been complicated by the recent decision to pause the process of local government reorganisation launched nearly two years ago, and Burnham will need to to reassure local leaders about what comes next   – and how a reorganised tier of local government fits into his vision of a rewired state.

Conference is Burnham’s chance to maintain momentum on all fronts of his devolution agenda.

5. Spell out constitutional reform ambitions

Since coming into office, the prime minister has shown himself willing to tackle some of the structural problems in the UK state – articulating a greater level of ambition over devolution, restructuring the centre of government by creating an Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and establishing a twin of No.10 in Manchester – tasked with leading the government’s regional growth and devolution agenda. It is still early days to see whether these structural innovations will be more than political signals – the key test will be whether they are able to demonstrate meaningful improvements in the ability of the centre to drive the PM’s priorities and become sufficiently established by the time of the next change of government that a subsequent administration finds it unthinkable to dismantle them.  

But before becoming prime minister, Andy Burnham was vocal about the need to make other substantial changes to the way the UK’s political system works. Among his targets were the switching the electoral system to PR, reforming party funding, reshaping the House of Lords, reducing the power of the whips in the House of Commons and codifying the constitution.  

Of these, only the practices of the Labour party whips are fully in the prime minister’s gift to deliver. At the other end of the spectrum, electoral reform or a written constitution would require substantial political time and effort, public engagement and probably ratification through an election or referendum. In the middle ground are reforms to the Lords and party funding that a prime minister with a substantial Commons majority – as Burnham has – could choose to drive through if he thought they were a sufficient political priority.  

Burnham needs to make clear to his party how he intends to approach constitutional reform – how he ranks structural reforms alongside the many other pressing priorities of voters, what he will attempt to achieve during this parliament and where he intends to develop proposals and commitments for the next manifesto.