Whether he wants to admit it or not, Andy Burnham is readying Labour for an election.
Sweeping change is coming on pensions, social care, and electoral reform.
“I am ready to do things my predecessors wouldn’t,” the emotional Prime Minister said.
“I will make a break with the direction of the past 40 years and put Britain on a new path.”
While Sir Keir Starmer might not have always stuck by the pledges made in his 2024 manifesto, Mr Burnham is flagrantly driving a coach and horses through it.
He added: “What I am outlining is a more serious and thought-through prospectus for the future of Britain than people have been offered in a generation.”
And there was plenty of theatre to go with the message.
Mr Burnham did not wear a tie, which is, in many ways, exactly what we expect from the King of the North.
But the Prime Minister didn’t even want to deliver the biggest speech of his political career from behind a lectern.
He was back in his natural habitat, pacing the stage and speaking directly to the Labour faithful.
It was strikingly personal to see the Prime Minister so visibly emotional as he spoke about his late father, Roy, who died earlier this month.
But the sentimentality did not last forever.
While Sir Keir Starmer might not have always stuck by the pledges made in his 2024 manifesto, Mr Burnham is flagrantly driving a coach and horses through it.
It would be unfair to omit the fact that the Prime Minister made these commitments while explicitly looking ahead to 2030.
However, without promising a series of policies for the here and now, it appears increasingly likely that Labour will need to get a new mandate.
Mr Burnham announced a national commission on electoral reform and explicitly stated proportional representation will be included in Labour’s manifesto.
And the Prime Minister managed to use his speech as an opportunity to extend an olive branch to all of Labour’s potential coalition partners.
The Greens will undoubtedly welcome Labour’s shift on Israel, while the Liberal Democrats have a history of chewing over electoral reform with coalition partners.
However, in some ways, the sweeping changes Mr Burnham spoke about might not do as much as Labour might like.
The Prime Minister’s social care pledge is narrower than it first appears.
“Some may not realise it, but older people with nothing more than the state pension, or only a little more, can find themselves paying care charges today from that small income,” Mr Burnham told delegates.
“Under my plan, this will no longer happen.”
While strikingly personal given his father’s experience of care, the Prime Minister’s pledge only protects those living solely on the state pension while leaving millions of other Britons to shoulder the costs of care themselves.
But Mr Burnham is also forcing Brexiteers to return to the battlefield.
Mr Burnham, who has already flip-flopped on Brexit three times in 12 months, said: “I will take the opportunity around the summit to lay out to you, to lay out to the country, what I believe the different options are for Britain’s long-term relationship with our European partners.
“And there are different options. And I will see if we can find consensus around one.”
And Deputy Prime Minister Louise Haigh ruffled Eurosceptic feathers further by refusing to rule out rejoining the EU while speaking to GB News just moments after Mr Burnham’s speech.
Despite lashing out at the architects of the Brexit project, the Prime Minister couldn’t resist borrowing Vote Leave’s slogan.
Mr Burnham spoke about taking back control five times during his maiden conference speech as Labour leader, although he also appeared to give his own take on Jeremy Corbyn’s slogan.
“The common wealth we had created for the many was seen as an opportunity for the few,” he said.
By the time Mr Burnham walked off the stage, he had done something considerably bigger than deliver a conference speech.
He set out Labour’s clearest political programme since 2019 and reignited one of the most divisive debates in British politics.
Mr Burnham will continue to insist the next election won’t be held until 2029, but if the polls start shifting, the temptation for the King of the North to seek his mandate a little sooner could prove impossible to resist.