IT’S late in the day for Labour to try to win back working-class communities, but “it needs to be done and immediately,” Durham Miners’ Association chair Stephen Guy told the Morning Star at the weekend’s Big Meeting.

The biggest celebration of labour movement culture in Europe takes place against a backdrop of a County Durham dominated politically by Reform, which has also taken over councils across much of north-east England.

Guy is not complacent about the threat from Reform, which continues to lead in national polls. But a turnaround is not impossible, he argues.

It’s true that the talk in the pubs of Sunderland and many former mining communities is “Reform, Reform, Reform,” as his colleague Alan Mardghum had told us earlier, but “that’s because Labour have turned their backs on working-class people. When you look at the turnout in these elections that Reform won in County Durham in 2025 and Newcastle and elsewhere in 2026 the turnout was poor. So I think it’s the Labour vote not turning out, rather than traditional Labour people voting Reform.”

Polls largely support this assessment, showing Labour nationally lost far more voters to the Greens and Liberal Democrats than to Reform in May’s local elections.

“So there’s an opportunity for Andy Burnham now — he needs to change, change radically and introduce policies that working people want.”

Burnham himself makes much of being an incoming prime minister from the north of England, and one whose record running a devolved authority in Greater Manchester gives him a greater sense of what people in regions far from London — many, particularly former pit communities, having suffered decades of underinvestment and neglect since their economic lifelines were severed by Thatcher — want and expect from government.

But Guy is wary. “Look at history… in 1997 we had a prime minister from the north, or at least representing a northern constituency,” (Tony Blair represented Sedgefield in County Durham) “and he didn’t necessarily deliver — he didn’t restore mineworkers’ pensions” (long effectively appropriated by the state through a reserve fund set up from profits on the Miners’ Pension Scheme set up on the privatisation of British Coal in the 1990s) “or workers’ rights” (the anti-union laws passed by the Thatcher governments remained — and remain — in place).

“Let’s hope that Burnham is different. He’s done some really good things in Manchester, but let’s not be fooled, it’s a different kettle of fish what you do when you become prime minister.

“He’s got a huge geopolitical task ahead of him, especially with the likes of [US President Donald] Trump in America and the genocide he [Trump] is supporting with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. I think we’ve got to give him a chance.”

Burnham was not at the Gala — “I think that’s a missed opportunity, you don’t have to be invited onto the platform, come here and meet the crowds.” Will he be a speaker next year, as many Labour leaders before him — but not Keir Starmer — have been? “Well, let’s see what he delivers!”

For the Gala remains fiercely political, despite some local Tories after the 2019 election and more recently Reform councillors whingeing about a failure to invite them, hinting it should become a depoliticised regional festival.

“The message of the Gala is internationalism, socialism, working-class solidarity. It has been that for 155 years.

“It would be wrong for anyone to address the Big Meeting who did not share those principles. It is the very heart and soul of the event.

“Of course we celebrate our history; and of course many of those on the streets will be here to listen to the brass bands and admire the beautiful banners.

“But it’s getting bigger — the crowds in recent years have been bigger than back in the 1990s — and I think that shows its appeal is still as a political and trade union event. It’s not primarily about celebrating history, that wasn’t why it was founded in 1871.

People come here from all over the world — we have people on the streets here today from Norway, Poland, Sweden, Spain — and Cuba,” he says, noting the Cuban ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter addressed the pre-Gala dinner the night before. The year before, he recollects, the Palestinian ambassador was present — and extending the hand of solidarity to peoples under relentless attack is part of what the Gala is. Indeed, Unison leader Andrea Egan would finish her address to the crowds with the cry: “Free, free Palestine and hands off Cuba!”

“Showcasing the oppression people face at home and around the world is part of changing hearts and minds. Hopefully including Andy Burnham’s!”