Efforts of campaign groups, supporters and party figures coalesced after May elections as MPs’ views began to change The third coming of Andy Burnham began in earnest on the dancefloor of the Ministry of Sound. It was the annual conference of the centre-left pressure group Compass on an unusually hot spring weekend in May 2025. Keir Starmer, a year into his premiership, was deep in the trenches of the welfare battle, and the event’s keynote speakers were Burnham and Louise Haigh.