Shadow of Starmer lingers over Labour Conference in Liverpool

A year ago, Andy Burnham was seen scurrying away from the Labour Party Conference, scorned by loyal Starmerites who had blocked him from standing in a parliamentary by-election. Today, he makes a speech to the 2026 conference as Prime Minister.

ANDREW FISHER reports from Liverpool exclusively for Inside Croydon on other changes from 12 months ago

“Hope Again” is the slogan bedaubing almost everywhere you look at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Liverpool this year. It reflects the greater optimism ushered in by the defenestration of Keir Starmer and the coronation of Andy Burnham.

The Labour Conference was a miserable affair in 2024, as cuts to winter fuel payments divided the party so soon after the landslide General Election victory, and again in 2025 as Starmer’s poll ratings continued to fall.

This year, little more than two months since the former Manchester Mayor moved in to Downing Street, Labour are ahead in the polls and instead of the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history, Andy Burnham is the only political leader in Westminster with a positive rating.

Despite the many problems – which are no doubt causing Chancellor John Healey sleepless nights ahead of his first Budget next month – the mood among party delegates in Liverpool is buoyant.

Even Steve Reed, the MP for Streatham and Croydon North, and a loyal Starmerite to the end, conceded in an interview with the Ofcom rule-breakers GB News: “He’s got off to a good start, we’re doing better in the polls, we need that stability. We will all get behind Andy.”

Often, when Reed’s faction is behind you, it is wielding a metaphorical knife.

Peter Kyle, one of Reed’s Cabinet colleagues under Starmer, spent the opening day of Labour Conference attacking Burnham’s leadership and calling for it “to act with more urgency when it comes to economic growth”.

Kyle’s solution amounted to delaying improvements to workers’ rights, something he argued for when he was in Cabinet. He was ignored then, too. Growth at the expense of workers is not growth that you would expect any Labour government to support.

While Burnham was swept into office with goodwill, questions are now being asked about his policy programme.

As Conference opened over the weekend, policies were being announced on housing and for a National Care Service, “on NHS principles”, free at the point of use and universal.

On housing, a scheme called “Your First Home” was announced. It is similar to George Osborne’s Help to Buy scheme, with an offer of only a 2.5% deposit and a time-limited interest-free loan, for first-time buyers purchasing new-builds. Property developers have already welcomed the effective public subsidy of their homes. “This is very good news” as “a demand stimulus”, according to Steve “Build Baby Build” Reed.

The government also announced plans to reduce the period of time a house must be left vacant before it can be taken over by a local authority, from two years down to six months. Further reforms to Empty Dwelling Management Orders will also aim to protect councils from absorbing the costs of legal wrangling.

Angela Rayner, back in the role of housing secretary, had this to say at Conference: “Labour in power is putting the tools in local leaders’ hands to take over desperately needed derelict homes and put them back into use. We’re reversing the Tories’ damaging changes by supporting councils to intervene and use untapped powers to meet local housing need.

“These changes will ensure councils can intervene earlier to prevent properties from falling into serious disrepair by accelerating their return to use and simplify the process to empower local authorities to act more decisively and with greater speed.”

Rayner’s predecessor as housing secretary had, of course, been Steve Reed. Talking on GB News to the Daily Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey, Reed was less enthused about the empty homes policy. “We can’t sequester [empty homes] … it would be a bit Soviet, and we can’t have that,” Reed said.

Across London, there are 47,000 long-term empty homes.

There’s more than 2,000 empty homes in Lambeth, some of which have been empty for more than 10 years. According to its own figures, Lambeth Council, where Reed was leader before becoming an MP, has 43,000 households on its housing waiting list.

There are 1,432 vacant homes in the other borough that Reed represents in Parliament, Croydon. I’d hazard a guess many of the around 8,000 families on Croydon’s housing waiting list would quite like any empty home sequestered for them.

But while policy announcements from the top table have been permitted, delegates were barred from debating council housing as the Conference Arrangements Committee ruled out numerous motions from local Labour parties that called on the government to accelerate council housebuilding.

The top-down culture of the Starmer era still lingers, with all motions on Palestine and all of those calling for the public ownership of water also blocked from debate.

Yesterday, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband branded the suffering in Gaza as “a stain on the conscience of the world”.

In a plea to voters who abandoned the party under Starmer, Miliband said from the conference stage: “I want to say to the millions of people in this country, and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people, we hear you.

“You were right. And under Andy’s leadership, we have reset our approach…

“We call out ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank. We call out the evidence of war crimes in Gaza. We call out Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. And we match words with actions.”

The day before, just outside the Conference “secure zone”, 150 people, mostly pensioners and including some from Croydon, were arrested under anti-terror legislation for peacefully holding signs reading, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

When the government is warning of terrorist attacks by foreign state-funded proxies, it really is silly, and a colossal waste of police time, still to be arresting these peaceful activists as “terrorists”.

Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:

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From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn

Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes

Click here for more by Andrew Fisher

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