Andy Burnham has suggested that a programme of mass renationalisation would be at the centre of his policy platform if he succeeds Keir Starmer as prime minister.
The Greater Manchester mayor is seeking a return to Westminster via a byelection in Makerfield. He has been widely expected to challenge Starmer for the Labour leadership if elected and is seen as the favoured candidate of the party’s soft left.
Labour has yet to officially select its candidate, but Downing Street has indicated it would not block Burnham’s attempt to stand as it did in the Gorton and Denton byelection in east Manchester earlier this year.
The party has been in turmoil since its poor performance in last week’s local elections, with several government ministers, including the health secretary Wes Streeting resigning this week. Others have privately advised Starmer to set out a timetable for his departure.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, Burnham said the “deindustrialisation and privatisation” of Britain had left areas like Makerfield “without good jobs and people unable to afford the basics.”
He said: “We need a different path completely. What is that path? Put more things back under stronger public control: energy, housing, water, transport.
“I’ve done that with buses in Greater Manchester. I was the first to do it. Margaret Thatcher deregulated them …and then they just work for the private shareholders and not for the paying public.
“I put them back under public control with the £2 fares, so you take that principle and apply it to energy and apply to the water, that’s what I think we need to do.
“The country gave away its control with basic things that people depend upon every day and that was a big mistake in my opinion.”
Burnham previously represented the neighbouring constituency of Leigh, before being elected as Greater Manchester mayor in 2017. He has been trying to plot a route back to parliament for months, with supporters approaching several MPs in the north-west in an attempt to reinstate him in the Commons.
A possible path to Westminster emerged on Thursday when Makerfield MP, Josh Simons, announced he would stand aside to enable Burnham to contest a byelection.
Burnham said he and Simons had “both felt the frustration of facing a Westminster system that just does not have answers for these streets, these communities.”
Burnham added: “We both feel a big change is needed and I wouldn’t have just gone anywhere [to] carpet bag, you know, any old constituency. It matters to me that I have a connection – I live literally on the edge of this constituency my kids went to school a few hundred yards down the road.
“I know people here, I know how they think, how they feel. I want to do whatever I can to make Labour a party that they can believe in again, a party that’s solidly on the side of working class people.”
However, if officially selected as Labour’s candidate, Burnham faces a strong challenge from Reform UK, who won nearly 50% of votes in the constituency’s eight council wards in last week’s elections.
He said: “Our party needs to do better … I’m going to be really honest about that on doorsteps.
“I’m not going to spend my time point scoring. I would say no, I’m hearing you. We’re going to really change things and put the country on a different path.
“We’ve got to talk seriously about reindustrialising the north-west, getting those good jobs, changing education so it’s not all about the university route but it’s also about the technical paths for kids to get into those good jobs.”
In a separate interview, Burnham told the BBC that deindustrialisation had begun in the 1980s when some central figures in Reform were “arch Thatcherites.”
He said: “That was devastating all of those years ago and communities were left with nothing.”