Andy Burnham's Overtures to Reform UK Voters

LONDON — Andy Burnham has promised not to try and “out-Reform Reform” — but that hasn’t stopped him making clear overtures to Nigel Farage’s voters.

The U.K.’s newly-installed prime minister faces an almighty challenge to bring Brits who drifted to Reform UK during Keir Starmer’s premiership back to the Labour fold. POLITICO’s Poll of Polls has the right-wing populist party a full five points clear of Labour at the time of writing.

Last year, the then-Greater Manchester mayor said he’d like to rejoin the European Union within his lifetime. But then reality struck. At the outset of his by-election campaign in Makerfield — which voted heavily for Brexit — this May, Burnham said reentering the Brussels orbit is a battle he wouldn’t fight. Despite calling Brexit “damaging,” he stressed “the last thing we should do right now is re-run those arguments.” Burnham said his own calls to strengthen democracy would be undermined “if we don’t respect that vote.”

Burnham has attacked the British state, arguing real power is vested in around 50 people with “London-centric views” at the heart of officialdom. Though praising the civil service as “full of good people,” Burnham has said they’re held back by a “structure and the culture” which is “too adversarial.” Reform UK has also spent plenty of time pitching itself against the Whitehall machine. It has proposed a major civil service headcount reduction, giving ministers the power to fire civil servants and replacing the impartial top post of cabinet secretary with a political chief of staff.

Burnham wants to revive areas outside London which he argues the Westminster bubble has left behind for decades. He’s already started work on a No. 10 Downing Street North in Manchester tasked with regenerating towns, increasing public control of utilities and expanding industry, arguing that “growth cannot be ordered from the top down.” But Burnham has also called for industrial policy to “safeguard sovereign manufacturing and production capability … in critical sectors like steel, defense, energy, food and farming.” Reform UK also takes a pretty forthright tone on economic sovereignty. Treasury Spokesperson Robert Jenrick says a Reform government will “unashamedly back British firms, buying British wherever possible.” Farage also backed the nationalization of British Steel days before Keir Starmer’s government passed emergency legislation giving ministers control of its operations in April 2025.

Shabana Mahmood — who angered some in her own party with a push to tighten immigration rules — has been kept in the Home Office by Burnham to “finish the job.” The home secretary is trying to pass legislation that includes limiting how the European Convention on Human Rights applies to asylum cases, and increasing removals of people refused asylum. Though these proposals attracted criticism from some Labour MPs, Burnham voted for Mahmood’s bill during its first stage in parliament. This suggests he wants to neutralize Reform UK’s ability to paint Labour as soft on the borders.

Wait and see if this one happens: Burnham talked about creating a minister for coastal communities. Under questioning from Labour MPs before he took power, Burnham suggested a distinct role in government that covers this brief. Labour won many seaside constituencies in their 2024 landslide — but those seats, which cover the East Anglia, Kent and Cornwall coastlines, are also vulnerable to Reform UK. Farage himself has made the seaside town of Clacton his political home as an MP (and now by-election candidate).