All Together Now: News from Lewes on the Burnham Bounce

A few days after the big Burnham speech in Liverpool, Bryn Griffiths, the host of our Labour Left Podcast, spent his Saturday reflecting upon what it all meant. His first stop was the Momentum National Coordinating Group and then it was on to Lewes Labour Party for a round table discussion on the Burnham Bounce.

My own response as Andy (he feels like an Andy rather than the harsher ‘Starmer’) sat down after his Labour Conference 2026 speech was a heartfelt “I think we’ve got a Labour leader again!”  I had been driving my car but I had actually cheered once or twice as Andy spoke – an event during a Labour Prime Minister’s speech – which is without any historical precedent.

I was not alone.  Former Labour Left Podcast guest, Andrew Fisher, said that Burnham’s address was the “best speech by a Labour Prime Minister in my lifetime – in terms of rhetoric and delivery.”

Another, former podcast guest Jeremy Gilbert simply said “Burnham gave the speech that I’d been calling for nearly a decade.”

On 3rdOctober, I attended the Momentum National Coordinating Group and then a Lewes Labour event on the ‘Burnham Bounce’.  I ended the day convinced that there is, at last, a new mood of optimism within the Labour Party. 

Mark Perryman opened the Lewes event by reminding those present that when they last met in the aftermath of the May 2026 council elections, expert psephologist Tim Bale had told those present that “the bad news is there is no good news”.  Today we are again ahead in the polls and taking seats off Reform in recent council by-elections. What a difference Burnham has made!

The Burnham Bounce in Lewes. Cat Arnold, Labour’s National Executive (third from the left) and Mark Perryman event organiser (fourth from the left). Photo: Bryn Griffiths

Cat Arnold, a Mainstream supporter on Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC), said in Lewes what we all knew about Burnham’s speech: “Keir Starmer could never have delivered a speech like that in a million years.”  She explained how the mood had changed against Starmer on the NEC in the aftermath the Gorton and Denton by-election.

Cat reported that the mood at Party Conference was “fantastic” and said that Burnham’s speech “grabbed my heart”.  But then striking a more sombre note, she reminded us that Labour to Win, who I would describe as the Labour right wing faction who held a candle for Sir Keir until the very end, had won the vast majority of the places on the National Policy Forum. Cat told the meeting that Labour to Win “have a lot of power and a lot of money” –  an important observation which begs the question: what should we do about it?  I return to that important question at the end of this article.

The one note of dissent raised in Lewes was an unease about the abandonment of the triple lock.  Shouldn’t those with much broader shoulders bear the burden of the much-needed welfare reforms, one local member asked?

Andy impressed us at Labour Party Conference but I would add that we mustn’t forget Ed Miliband who has done just as much to change the zeitgeist amongst the Labour membership.

We still want Ed to call a genocide a genocide, extend the scope of his much-welcomed sanctions and end any military support whatsoever to Netanyahu. But who will ever forget the moment at Conference when he said to the Palestinian movement “you were right”. 

When Ed said the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank “is a stain on the conscience of the world,” he started to lift the shame of being a Labour Party member. Who would have thought at the start of 2026 that we would have a Labour Foreign Minister who would call out “war crimes”, refer to “ethnic cleansing” and criticise “Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine?” The shift was not lost on the Palestinian Ambassador, Husam Zomlot, who embraced Ed at the Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East Liverpool fringe meeting.

One interesting aspect of Burnham’s speech was the relative absence of international policy.  A nod was made to a much-needed reset to the relationship with the European Union and there was an archaic, full-throated and problematic commitment to the British Union, but other than that silence.  Perhaps the rest of the world has been subcontracted out to Ed Miliband.

Moving back to Andy’s speech, it was hugely impressive for ‘going big’ but how can you do that without addressing a fragmenting world?  Clive Lewis on the latest Labour Left Podcast put the crisis of Atlanticism at the heart of his thinking arguing that “Britain must see being ditched by Donald Trump for what it really is: a great opportunity.” Have a listen to what Clive has to say, and while you listen remember that Ben Judah, a former special adviser to the Foreign Office, has argued that “Trump cost Starmer his premiership”.

If Andy continues to downplay the importance of a fragmenting world he may end up paying a big price.

Back in Lewes, one panel questioner felt moved to ask of the panel how are all Andy’s promises going to be paid for and I am afraid it remains a good question.

Back in November 2024, I attended a Lewes Labour event which sought to consider how to Transform an Unequal Britain. In my report of the event, I struck a worried note focusing on “an economy already weakened by Trussonomics, Brexit, the war in Ukraine and more economic shocks to come if the USA proceeds with Trump’s tariffs.” 

Guess what?  It got even worse! We can now add soaring oil prices created by Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war on Iran which has created a disaster for the world economy in the Strait of Hormuz. Both Momentum and Labour CND are arguing we cannot afford to remain the world’s third biggest spender on nuclear weapons and substantially increase our financial commitment to NATO. In the words of the old slogan, in the context of Andy’s policy announcements, we need ‘welfare not warfare’.

At the Lewes 2024 event, I argued that a Labour government which could not deliver its policies without economic growth was in danger of being a government which ended up delivering very little. The events that followed were very kind to the veracity of my dispiriting predictions and the miserabilism of Rachel Reeves went on to help crash Starmer’s government. I am afraid that nothing whatsoever has happened to change my mind and I predict that Burnham will face difficult times ahead.  The big question is what will Burnham do?  Will he slowly dismantle his exciting Conference commitments or will he seek to place a bigger burden on the shoulders of those that can afford it?

The answer to that question will depend almost entirely on the balance of forces which emerges within the labour movement. If the right and centre of the labour movement reassert their debilitating pessimism we could be on the road to lose our one chance to save the Labour Party and block Nigel Farage’s route to 10 Downing Street. It is quite possible that the hope and optimism of Andy’s speech might be extinguished, so the scepticism of some left-wing commentators is spot on, but we must not allow this to spill over into a cynicism that suggests nothing whatsoever can be done.

As the dust settles on a Burnham speech which has certainly refreshed our “optimism of the will” we must get a grip and recover what Gramsci would call our “pessimism of the intellect”!  So, for the hard-headed realists amongst us, what are the tasks we must throw ourselves into in the months ahead?

Some people are coming back to the Labour Party and I am pleased to report that Momentum is also growing. That is a good response. Others are waiting to see what happens and reserving their judgment on Burnham. But the problem with such an approach, while understandable, is that it reduces socialists to passive observers when what we need to do is get stuck in to shift the balance of forces leftwards within the party. Socialists have never won a struggle by sitting back, watching and waiting to see what happens.

Firstly, we must beat Nigel Farage to dodge the bullet of what would be the most extreme right United Kingdom government of all our lifetimes. Across Britain, largely speaking, that means campaigning and voting for Labour. It also means that we must back Andy’s commitment to deliver a commission on electoral reform and a 2029 General Election commitment to deliver proportional representation. We cannot continue to risk the election of a far-right government with its own ‘wide but shallow’ Downing Street majority. Let’s make 2029 the last General Election ever to be fought under first past the post.

Secondly, we must be prepared to forge new coalitions to shift the balance of forces within the Labour Party.  If we do not do that, the right-wing Labour organisations, such as Labour to Win, who gave us The Fraud that was Sir Keir Starmer, will determine the course of Burnhamism. In the latest episode of the Labour Left Podcast Clive Lewis MP argues that we need a new confederation of the Labour left which brings together the Labour left to work together on all the issues where we agree – most notably the fight to restore Labour democracy.  In a confederation, each organisation retains its sovereignty but they all work together when they agree. I am with Clive on this issue and I want us to throw everything we’ve got behind any such initiative that emerges.

Thirdly and critically, we must build a distinct socialist current in British politics which becomes Andy’s critical friend but resolutely refuses to join his fan club! It is undoubtedly very difficult to influence the course of events within the Labour Party.  So, we must work with comrades across the whole of the Labour left to increase our weight, but we also need a current that places difficult issues, such as Gaza, at the centre of what we do. We need to have a foot firmly in the Labour Party and our other foot outside in both the extra-parliamentary movements and the trade unions. That means we must have our own distinct voice.

If you want to join the struggle to determine what happens in the Labour Party, click here to join or re-join.  But in the struggles ahead it is very difficult to win battles alone so click here to join Momentum and join the fightback.

Andy’s speech ended with a well-chosen playing of Farm’s All Together now.  That is the spirit with which we must all move forward.

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast. You can find all the episodes of the podcast on You Tube or if you prefer audio platforms (for example Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple, etc,) go to your favourite podcast provider and just search for the Labour Left Podcast. You can also follow Bryn on Substack just search for Bryn H Griffiths @LabourLeftPodcast.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Official_portrait_of_Andy_Burnham_MP_2026_(cropped_3x4).jpg. Source: https://members.parliament.uk/member/1427/portrait. Author: House of Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.