By Alex Wickham, Chloe Chaplain and Joe Mayes Andy Burnham will tell the Labour Party faithful next week that he’s the leader who’ll deliver the hope and change they so badly want. The underlying message is slightly more nuanced: stick with me because things might get worse before they get better.

Fresh from a surprisingly cordial encounter with Donald Trump, the new UK prime minister will give the keynote address to his party’s annual conference on Tuesday. It’s one of the most important stages for him since he ousted Keir Starmer in July, and he’ll use it to spell out his project to shake Britain out of an unhappy period of low economic growth and political turbulence. He has also set himself an arguably greater task: making the country feel good about itself again.

Aides say his conference speech and a 10-year plan slated to arrive in December are the two set-piece events he will use to counter the charge that he’s a good communicator but lacks transformative policies to match. “Nobody will be in any doubt about what I’m trying to do,” Burnham told Bloomberg in an interview last month. “Whether they agree with it or not is another matter.” While most of the policy agenda is still a work-in-progress, Burnham’s aides think they’ve arrived at the right story to tell about his vision. Allies who requested anonymity to speak freely about internal preparations said he’ll forge an optimistic but honest narrative about Britain. As one put it: a balance of hope and reality.

The prime minister is frustrated by suggestions he wasn’t prepared for the suboptimal economic situation he finds himself in. He is ready to acknowledge that problems are coming down the track in the next six months, such as rising inflation, energy bills and a tighter monetary policy stance largely caused by the Iran war. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said on Friday that it was getting harder to avoid interest rate hikes.

There has been internal debate about the conference message, but officials have settled on projecting optimism in the face of those constraints. The current challenges are short-term and global, Burnham and his cabinet will argue, and once the situation in the Middle East stabilizes they’ll be able to move faster in transforming the country. Being ambitious and hopeful is part of good leadership, an ally says. The conference slogan will set that out plainly: “Hope Again.” Another supporter says Burnham is eager to restore a sense of pride and patriotism to a country that’s gotten gloomier over the past decade. Burnham wants to defy the moaning, as they put it, learning lessons from the mistakes they perceive Starmer and former chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves made in embracing downbeat rhetoric, to make sure his language helps rather than hinders economic sentiment.

For all the problems with the country that Burnham talks about, from train cancellations to left-behind northern towns and a failed “neoliberal” consensus, there is still nowhere else in the world you’d rather live than Britain, and if you give us a chance over the next decade we will make it better, the supporter says.

Beyond the conference hall, the question for Burnham’s Chancellor John Healey is whether that will resonate with a series of high-profile tax payers who’ve recently chosen to do the opposite. This month it emerged that hedge funder Chris Rokos was among a number of wealthy investors leaving for Greece, a nation that has previously seen its own wealthy elite flock to London.

The matter for the electorate is whether they’ll give Burnham the chance to see his promise through, especially when things get rockier over the next few months. Both the Labour Party and the wider public quickly lost patience with Starmer. Will they give his successor the benefit of the doubt?

Inside Labour, at least, the consensus is building around a yes. Burnham has his critics, not least the Starmerites who point out that his message promising a decade of change while navigating through immediate global challenges sounds very similar to the one Starmer tried and failed to sell. The irony is compounded because it was Burnham and his supporters who didn’t give Starmer the time to try to make it work, an ally of the former premier said.

But this conference is likely to show that, for the foreseeable future, Burnham is unassailable, with even critics accepting they cannot change leader again before the next election. Labour officials report an improved internal culture and better engagement with the party, even if the new administration is something of a one-man band, with Burnham center stage. A trade union official said the mood is better than in previous years and — dismissing the charge of empty vibes — said it’s amazing what a positive mental attitude can do.

Where voters stand is less certain. Burnham has enjoyed a poll bounce since taking office, but that’s only left Labour very slightly ahead of Reform UK and the Conservatives, and still short of an overall majority in a hypothetical election, according to a comprehensive YouGov survey this week. Essentially, those three parties stand within the margin of error, leaving an election outcome highly uncertain. That’s why, for now, most around Burnham insist they are strongly opposed to calling an early vote. It’s longer-term that their ambitions for change are focused.

“You’ve got to be optimistic, and I am optimistic about Britain,” Burnham said in last month’s Bloomberg interview. Recalling his conversations with voters on the streets of the Makerfield constituency he won over the summer, he said: “People keep saying: keep taking about hope, keep talking about it, don’t stop talking about it, keep being positive. I knew there was a mood about people wanting to be more hopeful, but I didn’t realize quite how deep that sentiment was.”