Andy Burnham has been Britain’s prime minister for 71 days, the victor of an intraparty coup that made him the country’s leader with no national campaign, no long list of promises and little explanation of how he would govern.
On Tuesday, he will lay out what he wants to do with the job.
In a speech at the Labour Party’s annual conference, Mr. Burnham is expected to call for an ambitious 10-year agenda of domestic renewal, including an overhaul of how the country cares for its elderly, new programs to counter youth unemployment, a crackdown on illegal immigration, a shift in power to cities and towns outside London, efforts to reduce the cost of living, and an end to homelessness.
His agenda is deeply focused on rebuilding hope in Britain’s economic future, in response to voters’ declining trust in institutions and frustration with a rapid turnover of prime ministers since the Brexit referendum of 2016. In interviews ahead of the speech at the party’s conference in Liverpool, Mr. Burnham said he was determined to reverse that feeling.
“They’ll see on Tuesday, I am here to do something. I am here to end a decade of drifting division,” he told the BBC on Sunday. “I think that’s where we get hope again because people can say, ‘OK, I understand what he’s doing, why he said that, and I can see that as a path that could take Britain to a better place.’”
So far, that message appears to be resonating. Mr. Burnham is one of the most popular politicians in the country, according to surveys, and his Labour Party, which had seen its ratings sink under Keir Starmer, its previous leader, is now leading again in the polls, albeit narrowly. The mood at the Liverpool conference that started Sunday has been noticeably upbeat.
But the hard part has not started yet. Next month, the country’s treasury chief, the chancellor of the Exchequer, will unveil Mr. Burnham’s first national budget, and with it he will begin to explain how the government will pay for all the things it wants to do. Given the country’s sluggish growth and high debt, no one expects that to be pretty.
John Healey, the chancellor, warned as much in a speech on Monday to the party’s faithful. He spoke longingly of the period after 1997, when his party, then led by Tony Blair and known as New Labour, won power and were able to deliver on a long list of promises.
“I have to level with you, conference,” he told the audience, “the money New Labour had in the ’90s is simply not there now.”
Already, there are signs that Mr. Burnham understands he can’t do everything he wants to do, as fast as he would like to do it. In Tuesday’s speech, he will call for the creation of a new National Care Service to provide free long-term care for the elderly and people with severe disabilities, patterned after the free health care of the National Health Service.
But he told the BBC that he would not seek to actually implement the changes immediately. Instead, he will make the case for doing so in the next national election, which does not have to take place until 2029. Trying to do it sooner would be too expensive and there is too little consensus around issues like taxes, he said.
Party strategists among those gathered in Liverpool said they understood the need for delay. But some also said the prime minister risks angering Britons who are impatient to see their lives improve. He may not be able to deliver on a new care service, they said, but he needs to deliver soon in other areas.
Mr. Burnham, who served as mayor of Greater Manchester for nearly a decade, also now faces international challenges that were not his responsibility in his previous job. The revelation on Sunday of a potential terror plot at a major military base used by the United States, just as the conference began, was a reminder of that reality. The police on Monday said that five men who had been arrested on suspicion of planning an attack had been released on bail, raising questions about what had happened near the base, R.A.F. Fairford.
Britain’s economy has been rocked by international events in recent years, including by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran that began in February. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has made oil and gas more expensive, caused global bond yields to rise and put pressure on central bank officials to raise interest rates. Mr. Burnham’s government has little control over what might come next in the conflict.
On Monday, British officials warned that a U.S. ban on exports of diesel fuel, which President Trump has said he is seriously considering, could make prices spike even further.
For now, Mr. Burnham appears determined to keep his message upbeat.
“Let’s not get into a position,” he told the BBC on Sunday, “where we’ve just got a narrative of doom about all of this.”
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