Labour Conference 2026 News Briefs

Electoral reform could be a gamble too far for Burnham – but so far he’s on a winning streak| Zoe Williams. Though proportional representation poses risks for Labour, it’s a change that feels necessary for today’s volatile politics A number of people have admitted to tears during Andy Burnham’s Labour party conference speech , and most of them mean when he talked about his father, who died very recently. But then there were a few (not me) who welled up when he announced a commission on electoral reform . It was just the sheer shock of it: that we may.

Do parents make the politician? Find out on the Today programme’s psychotherapy couch | John Crace. Dad’s the word for Andy Burnham, so maybe all party leaders should be seen afresh through a Freudian lens Is this the sketch my father would have wanted? Not something I have previously given much thought to. He died 15 years before I even started this job. But my guess is that it is. He was the loveliest of men who only ever wanted for me what I wanted for me. He was stupidly proud of even my most forgettable successes. I still see.

I heard one thing loud and clear in Andy Burnham’s landmark speech: the left has won the arguments | Owen Jones. The PM’s stated trajectory is a rebuke to past Tory and Labour governments. The challenge now is to make his project progressive in word and deed As Andy Burnham delivered his conference speech to the Labour faithful yesterday, it was hard not to recall Jeremy Corbyn’s words after the party’s shattering 2019 election defeat. “I am proud that on austerity, on corporate power, on inequality and the climate emergency,” he wrote for this publication, “we have won the arguments.