Last year’s Labour conference was ‘like somebody had died’. This year’s is ‘much more positive’. – interview with Neil Duncan-Jordan MP

In 2024, Neil Duncan-Jordan was elected as the Labour MP for Poole – the first time Labour had ever won the seat. Since then, he’s made a name for himself as an outspoken backbencher.

That outspoken nature saw him rub up against the party leadership during Keir Starmer’s regime. In 2025, he had the Labour whip suspended for four months following the backbench rebellion against proposed cuts to disability benefits.

With that regime now out of office, at Labour’s conference in Liverpool LFF spoke with Duncan-Jordan about the differences between it and Andy Burnham’s administration, what the future of the Labour government looks like, and how he’ll respond to future attempts to reform the welfare system that appear to be being planned by the government.

Kicking off, Duncan-Jordan makes a stark contrast between this year’s conference and the final one under Starmer’s leadership. He told LFF: “I came last year and it was like somebody had died. It was like a funeral. This year it’s much more positive. I think there’s a sense of unity in the air which there wasn’t last year. I think people are very much in the space of giving Burnham the benefit of the doubt. It’s still early days of course, but people want him to succeed.

“And he is making, I have to say, a lot of the right noises at the moment. So I think people are willing him to win, willing him to succeed. And that gives a much more buoyant approach to the conference”.

Beyond the conference, Duncan-Jordan said there were three key differences between the Starmer and Burnham operation.

First, he told LFF that Burnham is simply a “better communicator” than Starmer.

Second, he contrasted the pair’s approaches to party management, saying “the atmosphere inside the Parliamentary Labour Party is less authoritarian”, before adding that “Starmer was all about command and control – people like me were suspended for voting against the government, I don’t think that would happen under Burnham.”

Finally, it’s the substance – the policy offer. “I think he’s got some big ideas, and Miliband’s statement on Gaza a few weeks ago just before we went into recess would been unheard of under Starmer”, he told LFF, later saying: “There’s been a real shift in tone but also in terms of policy and detail. We’re in a much more progressive space I would argue than we were under Starmer.”

In terms of policy, one of the areas that has bubbled up during this conference is welfare. Both the work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden and the chancellor John Healey used their speeches in the main hall to indicate that the government intends to bring changes to the welfare system.

As one of the backbench MPs who rebelled against Starmer’s attempts at welfare reform, what does Dunccan-Jordan make of this?

“I’m all welfare reform”, Duncan-Jordan told LFF, going on to say: “If you build more council houses, then you stop giving loads of money to the private sector. If you get young people into work and with careers you start to reduce the benefits bill and they start paying NI and tax. If we take the private sector out of making PIP assessments and we bring it back in house into the DWP than we start to save money.”

He continued: “There are ways we can bring the welfare bill down. I don’t think you can do that in the next five minutes. I think that’s a long-term project. And the heart of whatever you do has to be the idea that welfare is there for a reason. You know, we’re the Labour Party. We should support the safety net for everyone universally. And we don’t want anyone to fall through it. Too many people are falling through it at the moment.”

Duncan-Jordan would then go on to explain the difference between the kind of reform he would like to see and what Starmer’s government sought to do in 2025. He warned against a ‘slash and burn’ approach to welfare.

He told LFF: “If welfare Reform is about improving the system and getting people help that they need to progress, I’m all for that. If it’s just about slash and burn and cutting benefits for the sake of it as was proposed in 2025, if it’s just about that then I’m not going to be able to sign up tot hat and lots of disabled people are not going to sign up to that either.”

Beyond potential changes to the welfare system, there is another big political moment on the horizon. On October 28, John Healey will be delivering his first budget as chancellor.

Duncan-Jordan told LFF he wanted to see a number of big policies come through that, including capping rents, and support for energy costs.

On the latter, he said: “There;s going to be a severe winter. We already know that in October and beyond energy prices are going to go up. So we need to start thinking now about what support we can give families and businesses in that shock that they’re going to face. And I think we’re talking about an essential guarantee of energy everybody should be entitled to. I think we have to talk about looking at some sort of social tariff across the system so lower income households get more support. I think we also have to maybe have short-term support for people in crisis that we haven’t had before.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward