EXCLUSIVE: Prime Minister Andy Burnham tells The Mirror he’ll be spending the month ‘out of Westminster and into your town’ to ask people ‘what would actually make your life better?’
Andy Burnham is set to kickstart a summer tour of the country this week and ask voters directly: “What would actually make your life better?”
The new Prime Minister, who returns from a short holiday abroad this week, is expected to spend the rest of August on the road visiting every nation and region across Britain. In the coming days he is also set to outline measures to tackle misleading discounts and rip-off prices while promising action to get high streets thriving again.
Mr Burnham told The Mirror: “This month I’m out of Westminster and into your town. Not for the photographs, but because I want to hear directly from people in their communities. I’ll be asking one question: what would actually make your life better?
“We know a lot of the issues. People have been saying it for years and no one listened. Bills that land like a threat. A high street of shuttered units and rip-off prices.”
He added: “So here is what’s coming. A third off bus fares. VAT off your electricity bill. Action next week on misleading discounts and pricing tricks. We’re putting money back in people’s pockets and giving communities the power they need to thrive. Good growth in every postcode. Hope in every heart.”
As he returns from a short summer holiday this week, Mr Burnham is expected to renew his focus on the cost of living and travel around the nation before Parliament returns in early September. Insiders confirmed among the places the new Labour leader will visit will be Port Talbot, south Wales – an area reeling from over 2,000 job losses after the closure of a final blast furnace.
Reports have previously suggested Mr Burnham could head to parts of the country where his party has lost support in recent years including areas that voted Reform in 2024. No10 said he will sit down with families, shop owners and workers during the tour.
The visits will ultimately inform his work on a new 10-year plan for the country that Mr Burnham promised later this year in his first speech as Prime Minister. He said at the time it would lay out a “path from where we are now to where I believe we all want Britain to be” later in 2026.
It follows a policy blitz in his first week in Downing with measures designed to give cash-strapped families breathing space on the cost of living. This included a promise to remove the VAT charged on electricity bills from October 1 – estimated to cost £850million – to knock £45 off the average bill.
There was also the decision to reintroduce the £2 bus fare cap to slash day-to-day travel costs for millions of passengers across England from January. The £2 cap was first introduced by the Tories in 2023, but funding was only put in place by Rishi Sunak ’s government until the end of 2024.
Ex-Chancellor Rachel Reeves hiked it to £3 as she battled to balance the books. The current cap, which applies to around 5,000 bus routes across England, was planned to last until March 2027.
In his second week as PM, Mr Burnham also began to grapple with some of the thorniest issues facing Britain including the broken social care sector, defence spending, and the staggering number of young people out of work, education and training. The PM has established No10 North in Manchester which Downing Street said was set up to get the government out of the Westminster bubble.
The summer tour – expected to begin this week – also comes amid evidence of a “Burnham bounce” in the national polls and closing the gap on Nigel Farage ’s Reform UK. Elections expert Professor Sir John Curtice told the BBC last week it was confirmed by Labour’s comfortable victory in the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election, where Reform had been hoping for a major political upset in Labour’s traditional heartland.
Sir John added: “Polls conducted in the last week put Labour on average in the mid 20s. It is the party’s highest standing since the beginning of last year and compares to their rating of 19% in late June when Sir Keir Starmer announced he was standing down. But with Reform polling only narrowly behind Labour, Burnham’s party still has a long way to go before it can face the prospect of fighting a general election with confidence.”