Burnham starts Labour conference as top dog – but there’s still plenty to prove

Andy Burnham has the prime seat on stage for Labour’s conference this year (Picture: Peter Byrne/PA Wire)

This time last year, it looked like he’d blown it.

After launching a broadside against Sir Keir Starmer’s government, Andy Burnham spent the 2025 Labour conference gradually retreating in the face of criticism from across the party.

The consensus was that he had gone too far too fast, catastrophically misjudging the mood and inadvertently shoring up support for Starmer.

Few people would have predicted then where he would be this year: sitting in the leader’s seat on the stage at the Liverpool Experience Campus.

The soft coup...