Andy Burnham becomes Labour leader, pledges to end factionalism

Thank you so much, friends. What a moment.

And what backing you've given me.

All our affiliated trade unions. All our socialist societies. 379 of our MPs. And I don't need to say commiserations to Catherine West because she backed me too. Thanks Catherine!

All of them heard the call from the people of Makerfield, on behalf of forgotten places everywhere up and down this country, for a return of the Labour they once knew.

And now we answer that call.

We will be that version of Labour again.

We are united today — as Hollie said, as Lucy said, as Shabana said, and thank you so much for your words. We are united, and we put the power that comes from that unity at the service of people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to let them hope again.

That's what we are going to do, everybody. We are going to give them hope back.

A Proud and Emotional Moment

This is a proud moment you have given me and my family today — and an emotional one. But 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.

Under Keir Starmer's leadership, we went from our worst defeat to one of the best victories in our history. Keir put Labour back in a position to change people's lives, and that is what we have been doing these last two years:

• New rights for workers and for renters
• NHS waiting lists falling for the first time in years — in fact since I was Health Secretary, I think, so well done Wes
• Rail back under public control
• Britain's reputation rebuilt on the world stage
• And as Lucy said, just this week, the biggest rebalancing of the scales of justice this country has ever seen

Today, we thank Keir for his service to our Party and to our country.

A Promise Fulfilled

Ten years ago, he and I worked together, drawing up the original Hillsborough Law in my office in the aftermath of the second Hillsborough inquest. I drew on all of his legal expertise when I presented that Bill to Parliament.

To be in Parliament on Tuesday when Keir delivered on his promise to the Hillsborough families and all of the other campaigners who were part of the Hillsborough Law Now campaign — a promise to end the cover-up culture in this country, to pass power from the authorities to ordinary people, and to prevent anyone in future going through what the Hillsborough families did — it felt to me like life coming full circle.

The Journey from Anfield

My journey to this stage today began in earnest at Anfield in April 2009.

The Kop made me confront the fact that this country does not work for working class communities like the city of my birth. In fact, it's worse. It turned its back on them.

Political power was used viciously against them to protect vested interests. Economic power cruelly stripped with the deindustrialisation of the 1980s, as it was against so many places up and down the land.

And let us never forget: these are the very same places that built this Labour movement, this Trade Union movement where we are today. Those are the places, but they were the places that were done down.

This Labour movement, the Trade Union movement, was forged in:

• The steel works and iron works of Sheffield, Scunthorpe, Port Talbot, and Teesside
• The coalfields of South Wales, Central Scotland, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire
• The mills across the Pennines, west and east
• The shipyards on the Clyde and the Tyne
• The dockyards of Liverpool and here in London

The people of these proud places made Labour.

But we have to ask ourselves, just as I had to ask myself at Anfield that day: have we been good enough for them?

Honesty and Change

Change starts with honesty.

We must recognise that this generation of politicians — myself included — have failed to challenge a political culture and an economic model that simply doesn't work well enough for ordinary people.

Four decades of the neoliberalism that began in the 1980s have not been kind to the places that built our Party, nor to the communities across the UK in rural and coastal areas.

So we pledge today to them to be better.

Five Commitments for the Future

And as I accept the honour of leading this Party forward, I will tell you about five things I will do to make us so. To make us better.

First, I will work relentlessly to build a culture of one Labour team because change starts with us.

We won't beat Britain's new Right if we are consumed by infighting and pulling in different directions. That is, and always has been, an indulgence that falls heaviest on the people who need Labour most.

Fighting to eradicate it, and the insidious briefing culture that goes along with it, will characterise my leadership.

In future, when a Burnhamite walks into a bar — as many Burnhamites are known to do — I want the barman to say: "Great to see you — we don't like factional politics in here."