From 24 Sept 2025Burnham says Britain needs 'wholesale change' - as he urges Starmer to show he has plan to achieve thisAndy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, has said that Britain needs “wholesale change” – implying that Keir Starmer has yet to show how Labour will deliver this.He was speaking in an interview with the New Statesman in which he dismissed reports that he is actively plotting to replace the PM. At the same time he set out his personal, and more radical, policy platform.Burnham said that his experience in Greater Manchester had taught him the importance of public ownership of utilities. “Public control is everything,” he told Tom McTague, the New Statesman’s editor, who has written the 7,000-word interview.With some Labour MPs despairing of the party’s electoral prospects under Starmer, there has been speculation that he could be replaced by Burnham, who has higher approval ratings than any of his potential rivals in the party.Burnham told McTague that reports claiming he was in talks with Manchester MPs who might stand down to allow him to replace them in a byelection, or that he was planning to criticise Starmer at the party conference, were wrong.But Burnham also made it clear that he thought the government could be doing better. He said: