Andy Burnham has said Labour was “too negative” and “too factional” under his predecessor Keir Starmer, arguing that the party cannot succeed unless every part of it has a voice.
Speaking on The Rest Is Politics podcast, the prime minister said: “I don’t think you can run a successful Labour government without all parts of it feeling they’ve got a place in it or a voice in it.
“For all of the criticism of the New Labour era that you [Alastair Campbell] and I were involved in, all voices were heard, weren’t they? You know, Dennis Skinner would play his part and John Prescott.”
Of the party under Starmer, he said: “I felt that wasn’t where it was. It was too negative. It was too factional.”
Burnham said he was trying to bring “a new approach”, with a style “different, if you like, in the way that I speak to the country”.
He stated: “I’m trying to talk honestly about things, face big things that perhaps haven’t been faced, talk about problem solving, not point scoring.”
Addressing The Rest Is Politics hosts Rory Stewart and Campbell, he joked about the expression, adding: “I don’t know if you both are getting sick of that phrase, but I’m going to keep using it.”
Burnham has been a consistent critic of Starmer’s approach to party-management as prime minister and Labour leader.
During Labour’s annual conference in September 2025, Burnham criticised a “climate of fear” in the party, which he suggested had been imposed by the leadership through recent suspensions of the Labour whip.
Burnham, then the mayor of Greater Manchester, argued that internal debate was being “closed down”.
Since entering Number 10 as prime minister, Burnham has attempted to make good on his vow to end factionalism within Labour. He appointed three members of the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group (SCG) as parliamentary private secretaries (PPSs), namely Olivia Blake, Mary Kelly Foy and Steve Witherden.
A PPS is an MP appointed by a government minister to act as their unpaid assistant, providing a link between the senior frontbencher and backbench MPs. The role is widely regarded as the first step on the ministerial ladder.
However, not everyone on the left of Labour has been convinced by Burnham’s approach. Speaking to the Labour Left Podcast in September, former frontbencher Clive Lewis argued that the Burnham’s administration “isn’t a government of all wings of the party. The left were firmly kept outside of it.”
Lewis said: “Andy Burnham feels more tolerant. But I don’t want to be in a party where I’m tolerated. I want to be in a party where I’m an integral part of it, and our views are an integral part of it, and our values are an integral part of it. And I don’t think we’re there yet.”
He described Burnham reaching the door of Number 10 with the left behind him, only to be told he could come in but his allies must stay outside. “He’s gone, ‘all right, done’”, Lewis said. “We’re kind of at the door banging: ‘Andy, are you coming back out?’”
“Is that a terrible thing? Yes, it is. He’s ghosted us. But at the end of the day, mission achieved. Starmer has gone.”
