Burnham plans Manchester power shift and rough sleeping pledge

In his first speech in Downing Street, Andy Burnham made ending rough sleeping in England his first policy pledge as prime minister, saying his first instruction would be to end it. The move reached back to 2017, when he pledged as Greater Manchester mayor to end rough sleeping in Greater Manchester by 2020, a target he later acknowledged had not been met because the number of rough sleepers had gone up.

Burnham planned to use Manchester to set out a broader power shift. He planned to announce a "No 10 North" plan, a Downing Street team based in Manchester that would oversee what he called the "biggest rebalancing of power our country has ever seen". The speech would also set out a "10-year mission" to raise living standards and proposals on youth employment, with the aim of helping "lift Britain back up to where it should be".

Burnham has tied his domestic agenda to a larger redistribution of authority away from Whitehall. He has argued that Greater Manchester and other city regions should be given more power. The Manchester speech put mayors, regional government and city-region leadership at the center of his pitch.

Donald Trump called him an "extremely liberal" politician who "probably won't open up" the North Sea for further oil and gas drilling, and dismissed him as "the mayor of a town". Burnham's team declined to comment on those remarks.

Sir Keir Starmer compared Burnham's economic proposals to Liz Truss's "disaster" after Burnham told the Daily Telegraph he had been contacted by Labour MPs over the summer urging him to stand.