Starmer ally Kyle urges Burnham to accelerate growth push

Peter Kyle, who until recently held the business secretary portfolio in Andy Burnham's government, has broken ranks to argue that the administration is moving too slowly on economic growth. Speaking to the BBC just two months after being removed from the cabinet during Burnham's reshuffle, Kyle framed his intervention not as criticism but as an appeal to ambition—a distinction that carries its own weight in the careful language of internal party disagreement.

Kyle's argument is straightforward: if the government's goal is prosperity, freedom, and security for families, then the path to those outcomes should be traveled faster. He suggested the administration needs to be willing to absorb short-term pain for longer-term gain, specifically proposing that conversations with unions about the timing of workers' rights expansions might need to happen. The Employment Rights Act passed in December 2025, but some provisions won't take effect until next year—a sequencing Kyle implied could be reconsidered. He also proposed a "tax growth test," a mechanism to measure how each new tax affects economic performance, and called for government experts to systematically identify obstacles to growth.

The timing of Kyle's remarks is pointed. Labour's annual conference opens in Liverpool this week, with Burnham scheduled to address delegates on Tuesday. Burnham has previously emphasized his experience as Greater Manchester mayor, arguing that his tenure gave him a "clear theory of growth" centered on devolving power to local areas. He has said that giving regions more control would create conditions for "good growth in every postcode." His conference speech, he has promised, will make clear what he is trying to accomplish in his role.

Kyle's intervention reflects broader anxiety within the government about economic performance. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development forecasts UK growth of just 1 percent annually, down from a previous estimate of 1.1 percent. Chancellor John Healey is preparing his first Budget for October 28, but he will do so against a backdrop of rising debt costs and warnings of slower expansion. The economic headwinds are real, and they appear to be sharpening disagreement about how quickly and aggressively the government should respond.

Kyle is not alone in his concerns. Darren Jones, another Starmer ally now on the backbenches, recently told the New Statesman that the prime minister should have been given more time in office, criticizing what he called "this modern approach of getting queasy and then just changing [leader] too rapidly." Jones noted that historically, governments expected to be unpopular in the middle of their term because difficult structural decisions take time to bear fruit. He added that backbenchers in the Parliamentary Labour Party are looking to Burnham and his team to "get that right," a formulation that suggests both hope and conditional support.

What makes Kyle's intervention significant is not that it represents a dramatic split—his language remains measured, his framing collaborative—but that it signals real tension over the pace and priority of economic policy. A former business secretary, removed from office two months ago, is now publicly arguing that the government he recently served lacks sufficient urgency. That gap between his previous position and his current one, between the cabinet room and the backbenches, is where the story lives. Burnham will have his chance to respond on Tuesday, but the question Kyle has raised—whether the government is moving fast enough—will not disappear.