Candidate seeks to rebuild ‘the people’s party’ (From The Northern Echo)

Candidate seeks to rebuild ‘the people’s party’

LABOUR leadership contender Andy Burnham was in an upbeat mood when he visited the region on Sunday after learning a poll placed him in a strong third position.

LEADERSHIP HOPEFUL: Labour contender Andy Burnham in Lanchester

Mr Burnham, who says Labour has to reconnect with ordinary people to be reelected, hit out at attempts by media pundits to characterise the leadership elections as a two-horse race.

Speaking to the Durham Times as he prepared for a question and answer session in Lanchester, Mr Burnham said: “A Labour poll came out yesterday (Saturday) which is encouraging from my point of view. It puts me in third place – and a strong third. And based on the last poll, it is a much improved third.

“We have come from a standing start after the general election, but we have made up huge ground in the past two to three months our campaign has been running. Now it’s about turning that third into something better.”

Mr Burnham’s visit to the region was the first on his Battle Bus tour. He said his key message to members was his desire to “reconnect Labour”.

He said: “That is what we have got to do – top to bottom – we have to rebuild the people’s party.

“And we have to put ourselves back in touch with people who lost faith in the party.

That means being really honest about where we got it wrong.”

One of the problems of New Labour was that that it was “born of a mistrust by its own members, the grassroots and trade union, in that it was felt a small elite had control of the party and in a very top down London-centric way”.

He said, under his leadership, there would be no more parachuting of candidates into constituencies.

Mr Burnham said he would be a leader with an ordinary background that people could relate to.

He said having begun life as an unpaid journalist and once being an agency worker, he could relate to the aspirations of young people and those in difficult financial straits.

He said: “I also talk a lot about the care of old people as my grandmother had to give away her life savings.

“It broke her heart to do that because she desperately wanted, as many working class people do, to give us a better start in life.

“That background shapes my passions, my convictions and my principles in politics.”