Report by a conference delegate: Only eight organisations submitted motions to Labour’s Regional Conference in the North West, held over the weekend of 24-25 January 2026, but some of those that did enabled the conference to take clear positions, and ones quite different to the current government.

Motion Two (Bury North and Oldham East & Saddleworth) called for Serco to be stripped of its contract for asylum accommodation in the northwest, and for the funding to be returned to local authorities to undertake this duty within the public sector. The motion also supported those who had taken part in counterprotests to the far right over the summer and supported safe and legal routes for refugees.

Speakers from seven different CLPs and unions spoke for the motion, as well as the two moving CLPs, with a delegate from Stockport calling the front bench to account for language used against migration and delegates from Altrincham & Sale describing how they had taken part in opposing far right demonstrations at an asylum hotel in their constituency. One delegate referred to ‘refugees from capitalist wars being exploited by capitalists once reaching refuge in this country’.

Not a single delegate spoke to defend the national government’s position of retaining asylum accommodation in the private sector. The motion was passed with no votes against.

This experience shows that the conference delegates were very willing to speak and vote for positions demanding a different approach from government – as long as a CLP or union had taken the initiative to submit. This is similar to the experience in 2024 when the NW conference voted for public ownership of water.

Other motions passed raised the SEND crisis in NW schools, the party’s failures in messaging, screening for cervical cancer, the effect of AI on workers, the safety of retail workers, and the threat by Reform-led Lancashire County Council to close ten care homes and day centres.

Of course – just like the motions passed at national conference – what matters is what happens next with them. National conference voted in 2024 and 2025 for a wealth tax, for example, but that vote has hardly been mentioned by the national party or even the trades unions that successfully submitted it – when of course it should feature in their campaigning. The CLPs like Bury North and Oldham East & Saddleworth need to follow up their conferences successes.

Similarly, efforts will be needed to ensure that the Regional Executive follow the instructions to them in the motions passed. Whether they did or not after 2024’s conference is entirely unknown, as the Regional Executive once again failed to submit a report to conference. The omission of a report was raised as a point of order on the second day, but CLPs and affiliates need to press on this, demanding a report and the chance to question it. CLPs and unions do not even know if the executive has met in the past year, and if so what decisions it has taken.

One such unknown decision is why United Utilities – condemned by the conference in 2024 – were invited to sponsor a fringe meeting in 2025.

Much of the conference time was taken up – as at national conference – with guest speakers and panel discussions, though some of these were useful. A panel on taking on the far right was far better (and in fact far more ‘left wing’) than you might hear from Stand Up to Racism, for example, in focusing on defeating the far right through workers’ policies, workplace organising and mobilisation of the labour movement as a movement.

LLI gave out 200 copies of a four-page bulletin for delegates which was well-received, and LLI supporters joined other Mainstream people in distributing general publicity leaflets for that – still relatively new and undefined – organisation. Mainstream should maintain a regional network to enable those people to continue to work together. Other than these, the only other leafletting was by the ‘Justice for the Cammel Lairds 37’ campaign and an individual SEA member promoting policy on Education and Training for Green Jobs. No other left currents in the party had any presence.

The debacle of Keir Starmer’s blocking of CLP members in Gorton and Denton having a free choice of local candidates broke only towards the very end of conference. The chair of Gorton & Denton CLP was applauded loudly on the Saturday when he referred to the importance of the CLP being able to make its own choice, as was Angela Rayner on the Sunday saying the same thing. LLI people circulated Mainstream’s petition for a free and open selection.

The issue with this election is not the figure of Andy Burnham, but how the national party approaches this by-election in the face of a very real threat from Reform, who have been growing in the Tameside part of the constituency in particular. Andy Burnham has no left-wing or particularly positive record from his time in parliament or in the Blair and Brown governments – and indeed rarely mentions that record – but has built up considerable support across Greater Manchester since. Following what was seen locally as a stronger challenge to the Boris Johnson mishandling of Covid-19 than that provided by Starmer, Burnham’s support grew. In the 2021 mayoral election he achieved the rare success of winning not only every ward in Greater Manchester but even every ballot box. There are many many thousand people who have voted for Burnham whilst not voting Labour for local councils or even parliament; there is no doubt that – if selected by members in the CLP – Burnham would have a better chance than anyone else of beating the very real challenge from Reform.

The Starmer-McSweeney faction’s actions – rightly called cowardly and weak by John McDonnell MP for example – have risked Labour losing the seat for the sake of keeping a possible challenger of Starmer out of parliament. (The argument about resource, whilst real, being used dishonestly. Resources – whether funding, party members’ time on the doorstep, or local support – become in shorter supply when the party is treated in this way by its controlling faction.)

These are the facts that animated LLI supporters and friends at the regional conference, rather than some sense that Burnham is ‘ours’ – in fact LLI people in Greater Manchester constituencies have been combining agitation for reversal of the NEC decision with practical organisation to take party members to Denton to campaign (and have already started on the doorstep).

Burnham’s politics are far from ours, and indeed we have been critical of his role in the recent disputes at Transport for Greater Manchester among others things. But it is undeniable that he has become seen as someone articulating a need for a different approach from the party nationally – on housing, right to buy, public ownership of water and energy, living wage and so on. His local reputation is very much linked now to his actions in securing public control (not public ownership) of Manchester’s bus services and cheaper fares. (A pale thing of course in comparison with the GLC or South Yorkshire buses of the 1980s, but nevertheless seen – rightly or wrongly – as something different to the Starmer style). In the situation of the Starmer-McSweeney drive for a narrow, managed, one-faction party, we are able to recognise that figures showing independence from that faction can be inspiring to other party members, and indeed witness that inspiration in many of the local membership around us.

A challenge to Starmer by Burnham can create space for the left – if we are strong enough to take openings to organise members into a drive for party democracy and class-struggle politics. Our efforts in the NW may be pitifully small in comparison with the size of the task, but – just like ensuring that our CLPs submit motions, that the regional exec is made accountable, etc. – they are a necessary part of a drive to democratise and politically rearm the movement.

LLI will be organising at the other Regional Conferences too (whenever any of the other regions get it together to hold them). Join us there.