Andy Burnham latest: New Labour leader plans policy blitz – including revived oil and gas drilling in North Sea – UK Times

Labour’s 2024 manifesto, which the new leader has said he would follow – pledged to not issue new licences but to honour existing ones.

The fate of two oil fields in Scotland – Rosebank and Jackdaw – which regulators approved in 2022 and 2023 under the then Conservative government, but were overturned in 2025 after a legal challenge, have become a controversial topic within Labour.

Some MPs calling for more drilling to help keep energy bills down, while others have insisted increasing renewable energy is the way to improve energy security. The BBC reported that an announcement could be made as soon as Monday.

It is believed the announcement will form part of a glut of new policy measures, including plans to take public control of water and energy companies and fresh council house-building programme.

Nigel Farage has demanded an immediate general election as he claimed Andy Burnham had no mandate to run the country.

The Reform UK leader said his party could produce a “historic upset” but Mr Farage claimed that if he failed to enter No 10 Britain risks “turning into a third world country” within 10 years.

He said that “nothing will get better under Andy Burnham”, and “he says he wants to have the biggest change of direction in politics in 40 years, outside of 25,000 voters in Makerfield he has literally no mandate for this at all”.

Nigel Farage will face a record 33 rival candidates in the by-election he triggered in protest at media and parliamentary scrutiny of his finances and backers.

The main Westminster parties are boycotting the Clacton by-election, dismissing it as a stunt by the Reform UK leader, leaving joke candidate Count Binface and actor-turned-politician Laurence Fox as his highest-profile opponents.

Mr Farage wanted the contest to be a “people versus the establishment” showdown but he is now facing opponents including three from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party and an array of independents.

Tendring District Council said a total of 34 candidates are standing in the August 13 by-election, which is believed to be a record for a parliamentary contest.

Andy Burnham will spend the weekend preparing to become prime minister with allies saying he intends to make a “dynamic start” with measures to ease the cost-of-living squeeze.

He said he is still “finalising” his cabinet after feverish speculation in Westminster over his choice of chancellor, with allies on Labour’s left favouring Ed Miliband but reports suggesting home secretary Shabana Mahmood will get the crucial role.

Mr Burnham said there had been “too much” speculation and he would announce his ministerial team on Monday.

“I am finalising those decisions, and I will come to conclusions very shortly, and then I will announce those on Monday,” he said.

An optimistic Andy Burnham declared he was “ready to lead” after being crowned as the next leader of the Labour Party yesterday.

The next prime minister promised to return “the Labour Party they once knew” and said today was the most significant change in our politics in the last forty years.

But he also admitted this was his party’s “last chance for change” after his party hadn’t been good enough.

He laid out five party promises, vowing to build a new Labour culture, a new politics, be a leader for all of the UK, change Labour’s “political direction”, and decentralise Whitehall and Westminster.

Mr Burnham also promised to lead a party that is “distinctively Labour” and not out-Green the Greens or out-Reform Reform.

He revealed that he has not picked his chancellor or the rest of his cabinet, but said the reshuffle would “lift up a more united Britain”.

Mr Burnham paid tribute to Sir Keir Starmer for taking Labour from its worst defeat to “one of our best victories in our history”, and singled out Lord David Blunkett, Baroness Margaret Beckett and Lord Neil Kinnock as the people who got him to where he is today.

Insisting he is ready for government, the new Labour leader said that taking over as prime minister is a “proud moment”.

“It is one for which I am ready. I am ready, ready to lead and to build on the foundation laid by one person more than any other”, he said.

Nigel Farage has demanded an immediate general election as he claimed Andy Burnham had no mandate to run the country.

The Reform UK leader said his party could produce a “historic upset” but Mr Farage claimed that if he failed to enter No 10 Britain risks “turning into a third world country” within 10 years.

He said that “nothing will get better under Andy Burnham”, who will become prime minister on Monday after being confirmed as the new leader of the Labour Party.

Mr Farage, who is fighting a by-election in Clacton after resigning as an MP in protest at parliamentary and media scrutiny of his finances, said: “The only certainty with Burnham is we’re going to get more of the same, but they’ll go further to the left than they already are.”

He said “nothing will get better under Andy Burnham” and “he says he wants to have the biggest change of direction in politics in 40 years, outside of 25,000 voters in Makerfield he has literally no mandate for this at all”.

Chief political commentator John Rentoul writes:

It is said of Andy Burnham that he talks left and acts right. In his acceptance speech to the Labour Party, though, he talked backwards – and we have to hope that his actions will take him forwards.

It was the most backward-looking speech I have heard from a front-rank politician. It was an explicit call to return to the 1970s, before everything went wrong in the 1980s.

He talked nostalgically of steel works and iron works, the coal fields, the shipyards of Scotland and the north-east and the dockyards of Liverpool and London. He even spoke of “the mills across the Pennines”. It was as if Blake’s “Jerusalem” had been turned into a manifesto.

His buzzword, “reindustrialisation”, cropped up a couple of times. So far it has been a feel-good notion, conjuring up images of high-tech precision engineering, reinventing our manufacturing past in a modern setting. But today, it sounded like a threat – to send teenagers down the pits and destroy Ed Miliband’s net zero plans that way.