Andy Burnham vowed to create ‘hope in every heart’ as he arrived in Liverpool for his first Labour conference as PM and leader amid growing unrest among his party’s big beasts.
Speaking outside the conference hall in front of the party’s ‘Hope Again’ slogan, a defiant Burnham, in his trademark Private White VC brand all-black ‘working man’s’ outfit of £295 jeans, an £80 T-shirt and a £695 suede Harrington jacket complete with low-top Adidas £110 Topanga trainers, spoke to the press with his hands on his hips.
He promised to set the UK on a new course because the decade since the Brexit vote had resulted in ‘too much drift and too much division’ and said ‘we need to draw a line under that’.
Renewing his ‘good growth in every postcode’ guarantee, Mr Burnham said: ‘We’re going to make this a really important week where we set out a new direction for the country.’
He said his vision would leave ‘people able to have hope again that things will improve, that life will get better – and it will’.
He also said it was a ‘proud’ moment for him to walk up to his first party conference as leader and PM, saying: ‘My grandad drove a lorry for Tate & Lyle up and down these docks. I wonder what he would make of this right now.’
Everton fan Mr Burnham added: ‘I love coming to Liverpool on a Saturday, normally to support the Blues, but we’re all supporting the Reds today, aren’t we?’
With party faithful gathered to applaud him, his wife Marie-France van Heel, who has just quit her job to be by her husband’s side as ‘First Lady’ stood dutifully in the background.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to supporters on the eve of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, Britain, 26 September 2026
Burnham wore his trademark Private White VC brand all-black ‘working man’s’ outfit of £295 jeans, an £80 T-shirt and a £695 suede Harrington jacket complete with low-top Adidas £110 Topanga trainers
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his wife Marie-France van Heel in Liverpool, 26 September 2026
Eschewing her previous designer look, when she adopted a widely criticised £850 Victoria Beckham dress as Mr Burnham swept into power, she was dressed smartly in a simple burgundy faux leather midi £46 skirt from Next, and matching kitten heels and shoulder bag, teamed with a white shirt.
Ms van Heel, known as Frankie, who has been with the PM since they met at Cambridge, recently resigned as a marketing executive to support her husband’s new role and meet her counterparts on official tours.
Earlier this week, she attended a lunch hosted by US First Lady Melania Trump while Mr Burnham was on his first official visit to Donald Trump.
She also met Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife Olena and Canadian PM Mark Carney’s wife Diana in a meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York.
The couple arrived in Liverpool from their Warrington home where Mr Burnham was earlier pictured going for a run.
He is likely to need all his resilience and energy to fight off growing unrest this week from senior party figures who have challenged him and have sniped publicly at each other.
Former Business Secretary and Streeting supporter Peter Kyle said the PM was not doing enough to boost economic growth, while former Deputy PM Angela Rayner lashed out at the Home Secretary’s plans to lengthen the time before foreign care workers could claim settlement rights.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Kyle suggested the Government needed to make more short-term decisions to boost growth, like slowing the rollout of new workers’ rights.
‘We might need to look and have honest conversations with unions about how we sequence some of the rights going forward to make sure that we get growth into the economy in the shorter term,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Communities Secretary Ms Rayner said increasing the timeline for permanent residence from five years to 15 years for foreign social care workers and applying it retrospectively to all those who have come to the UK since 2021 would ‘change the goalposts’.
She has previously called Shabana Mahmood’s migration proposals, which have been welcomed by others on the right of the party, ‘un-British’.
Ms Rayner’s increasingly vocal opposition, which is supported by others within the party and the growing unrest at the Government’s economic plans – or lack of them – ahead of next month’s Budget could cause a headache for the PM, curtailing his honeymoon period.
The backbiting continued when Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy hit back at Mr Kyle, suggesting Mr Burnham was moving faster than Sir Keir Starmer did as Prime Minister.
Burnham and his wife, who wore a Next faux leather skirt, shared a tender moment
Burnham takes a selfie on the Mersey Ferry in Liverpool
Burnham poses for a photo at the annual Labour party conference on September 26, 2026 in Liverpool, England
Burnham on the new Royal Daffodil Ferry, The first new Mersey Ferry in more than 60 years, during the Labour Party Conference at the ACC Liverpool
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme Mr Burnham was ‘impatient for change, and he thinks big about the sort of change that the country needs’.
With the PM also ruling out an early snap election in pre-conference interviews, saying he wanted to ‘knock dead’ rumours of one, party chair Bridget Phillipson also sounded a note of caution about winning the next election despite Labour’s initial poll boost since Sir Keir Starmer was toppled.
Speaking to the Press Association today, she acknowledged the PM’s role in boosting polls as thanks to his ‘real sense of connection’ but said the party recognised it had a ‘massive fight on our hands with Reform, with the Tories’.
As polling showed a snap election would not give any party a majority but Labour the largest share with Reform and the Tories neck and neck, she said:
‘We’ve got a big fight on our hands come the next election and I don’t underestimate that challenge for one second, but there’s a real sense of purpose and energy as conference gets underway.’
Commenting that ‘the only poll that will matter is the one that happens on election day in 2029’, she added: ‘What we have seen with Andy Burnham is a real sense of connection with the public, taking things to the next level. That hope, that optimism, that sense that Britain’s best days lie ahead of us.’
