• Andy Burnham has said he will not try to return the UK to the EU, saying Britain would be stuck in “a permanent rut if we’re just constantly arguing”.

• Keir Starmer has said that he wants to fight the next election and that he does not intend to “walk away” from being prime minister. (See 3.20pm and 4.01pm.)

• Rachel Reeves is planning to cancel a rise in fuel duty this week when she unveils a package of measures to reduce the cost of living.

• The latest estimate of the cost of HS2 and a timetable to complete construction of the high-speed railway will be set out by the government on Tuesday, including plans to run trains slower to trim costs.

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.

In an interview with ITV at the end of last week, Andy Burnham said clearly that he believed in the fiscal rules. He said:

Let me say this really clearly. I support the fiscal rules. There needs to be a plan to get debt down …

I said you can’t ignore [the bond markets] and I never would have believed that you could. Of course you can’t. And also that you stick to fiscal rules. There’s got to be fiscal discipline. I’ve run Greater Manchester for practically a decade.

Asked about his comment to the New Statesman last year about how governments should not be “in hock” to the bond markets, Burnham said: “I said that politicians have placed Britain in hock because of the way in which we lost control of our finances and public spending.”

Alex Wickham from Bloomberg says Burnham’s spokesperson has now firmed up this position. Wickham says:

Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM

At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future

But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military

He had floated that idea in a Bloomberg interview a few weeks ago but his spokesperson tonight says he won’t pursue it

This is a big attempt by Burnham’s campaign team to reassure markets who were spooked on Friday by his potential premiership

But it may risk disappointing some on the left who had hoped for a more radical fiscal policy

It may also mean tax rises are the likely main revenue raiser in the event Burnham wants to increase spending

The latest episode of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly UK podcast is out. It features Kiran Stacey and Peter Walker talking about Andy Burnham’s bid to win the Makerfield byelection, and whether his views on Brexit might pose a problem.

A reader asks:

There have been reports of many different Reform councillors resigning or being sacked from local authorities since the council elections at the beginning of June - including a situation where a council has been taken back from Reform by other parties as there was no faith in how it was being managed. Why are we not hearing about thse reports anywhere in the media - and is it something that Guardian can do some fact finding on? Thanks.

You are not reading much about these stories partly because a single councillor resigning or being suspended is not much of a story and partly because, although this happening to several councillors from the same party all at one time is newsworthy, over the last week or so political journalists have been rather busy with other stuff, as you will have noticed.

But Mark Pack, the Lib Dem peer and former party president, has been keeping a tally on his blog. He says the Reform UK have already lost nine councillors – mostly over misconduct allegations.

Pack also references a blog by Paul Webster, who is keeping a tally of councillors from all parties who have resigned or been suspended since the May elections. He has nine Reform UK names on his list, four Greens and two Conservatives.

Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, says Keir Starmer is engaged in “Olympic level straw-clutching” if he thinks the Makerfield byelection won’t end up as a vote on whether or not he should stay on as PM. In a long social media post on Starmer’s situation, Peston says:

As a tactic it reminds me of David Cameron vowing he would not quit if he were to lose the Brexit referendum.

What transpired was that Cameron resigned within hours of being trounced by Johnson, Farage and Cummings.

The Liberal Democrats have accused Andy Burnham of U-turning over his support for rejoining the EU. In a statement issued after Burnhham’s speech today (see 2.29pm), and referring to Burnham’s previous comments about wanting the UK to rejoin the EU at some point in his lifetime, Al Pinkerton, the Lib Dem Europe spokesperson, said:

I see Andy Burnham has already started U-turning before he’s even been elected. The Liberal Democrats have always been clear that Britain’s future lies back in the EU and we have a credible plan to get there, starting with a customs union.

I know that many Labour MPs agree with us that the government needs to show more ambition on Europe, so I hope they will back our amendment on Wednesday to send a message to the prime minister.

The Lib Dems intend to call a vote on their amendment to the king’s speech motion. It will call on the government “to open negotiations with the EU on creating a UK-EU customs union”.

Here is Jessica Elgot’s story about Burnham’s speech.

Mark Brown is the Guardian’s north of England correspondent.

Andy Burnham’s speech went down well at Great Northern Investment Summit in Leeds, but if he was hoping for full-throated backing from his fellow mayors to be the next prime minister, then it did not come.

The Guardian asked three Labour mayors would they like to see Burnham replace Keir Starmer as prime minister and all declined to say yes or no.

Kim McGuinness, the north-east mayor, said in her speech: “What a week and what a time to be speaking about northern ambition.”

But on Burnham for PM? McGuinness replied:

I’d like to see Andy Burnham win the Makerfield byelection and I think out of respect for the people of Makerfield who’ve now got a decision to make, that’s what we need to be focussed on.

David Skaith, the mayor of York and North Yorkshire, also declined the offer to back Burnham. He said:

Andy’s been doing great work over in Manchester now for over a decade. He’s one of the mayors of the north that we all look up to. He’s been around for a long period of time. He’s done great stuff over there.

Tracy Brabin, mayor of West Yorkshire, said:

I’ve got no horse in this race. I really don’t. What matters to me is delivery and speed of growth and speed of change for the public.

In his speech, Andy Burnham also called for civil servants to be transferred from central government to local government.

He said:

We can’t have this halfway house anymore, where something gets devolved, but none of the people get devolved, and they sit there marking the homework of the combined authorities and finding new ways of putting pressure on us to do, to do something that they want. It’s time to trust, trust the region’s office of this country, free them up, let them get on with the job.

It means less delivery through unaccountable national agencies, and it means more things coming under local democratic control, like our buses.

We can’t go on with a bloated national state and a malnourished local one. It is time for public servants to be transferred into local authorities and combined authorities to give them the capacity and the agency to get things done. This is how we underpin the next decade of devolution.

Back to Andy Burnham, and this is what he said in his speech to the Great Northern Investment Summit in Leeds about what his campaign in Makerfield would be. He said part of it would be proposing to connect rail services in the constituency to Manchester’s Bee network for transport.

He said:

My plan for Makerfield will be ambitious and it will show how we lift up its people and places over the next decade. It will involve action to make the basics of life more affordable, like rents, bills and fares.

All rail stations and services in Makerfield coming into the Bee network and leading to a big reduction for people in the cost of public transport and cost of travel.

It will involve the reindustrialisation of our part of the world, for instance through the work I’m doing as mayor to bring modern manufacturing to the PPG site in Hindley Green.

Changes to education to make technical education the equal of the university route and give young people new paths into good jobs.

How wrong it is that for the best part of 30 years now the debate in education has all been about the university route, and the whole system has been built to support the university route?

What about those millions of kids across the North of England who want technical qualifications, who want paths into good jobs and support to get to those jobs?

Thursday was one of the most momentous days in Keir Starmer’s premiership. As soon as it was announced that Josh Simons was stepping down as MP for Makerfield, and (later that evening) that No 10 would not try to block Andy Burnham from being the candidate to replace him, a credible – even probable – path was open for Burnham replacing Starmer as PM within the next few months.

We don’t know much about what Starmer feels about all this. In a good article for the Observer yesterday, Tom Baldwin, Starmer’s friend and biographer, said the PM has been experiencing “rage and anger”. Starmer is said to have “special venom” reserved for Ed Miliband, a former friend, because he feels betrayed by Miliband siding privately with other ministers wanting Starmer to be replaced.

Today Starmer appeared in public for the first time since Thursday, recording a short, pooled TV interview with Christopher Hope, political editor of GB News.

The obvious question for Starmer is, if Burnham wins the byelection and makes a bid for the leadership, will Starmer fight to keep his job? Alternatively, he could resign immediately or (in a slightly softer version of defeat) agree a timetable for his departure (ranging from a few weeks to a few months).

Officially the line is that Starmer would fight a challenge. He told Hope that he would not set a timetable for his departure. But no prime minister can ever say that they don’t intend to stay on without instantly detonating their authority, and so these may just have been Mandy Rice-Davies answers. Starmer did not sound like someone intent on going down all guns blazing. Asked about staying as PM, Starmer said “I do want to fight the next election” and, asked about a leadership challenge, his initial response was to say “we’re not at that position”.

Instead, Starmer sounded like someone more likely to take a decision about his future if or when Burnham does win the byelection, taking into account the sort of support he retains at that point from Labour MPs.

In the interview there was no trace of the bitterness that Baldwin wrote about in his Observer article. Looking at the pictures from the event, Starmer seemed to be trying hard to smile. But in the interview he did sound rather deflated, which in the circumstances was not suprising.

Asked if he agreed with Wes Streeting that the government should commit to rejoining the EU, Starmer replied:

The way I see it is this: we inherited a really bad Brexit deal that Boris Johnson has negotiated. It was a botched deal. It doesn’t work for businesses, doesn’t work for the country.

What I’ve done in two years is to completely reset our relations with our EU partners, to already have improved on that deal, which is what I did last year.

This year we have another summit with the EU, where we’re going to take a really important leap forward in terms of the relationship, bring us closer to Europe. It’s really good for businesses, really good for some of the businesses in this room, really good for the country.

So that’s what I intend to do, not get lost in a debate about what may happen years down the line.

In his pooled interview, Keir Starmer also insisted that he still plans to fight the next election.

Christopher Hope from GB News said that, in an interview published eight days ago, Starmer said he wanted to fight the next election and serve a full second term. He asked Starmer if that was still the case.

Starmer replied:

I do want to fight the next election.

Obviously, I recognise that after the local election results, the elections in Wales and Scotland as well, that the first task is obviously turning things around and making sure that my focus is in the right place.

The last 10 days, there’s been a lot of activity which hasn’t been as focused in my view as it should have been, and I remind myself every day that I was elected to office to serve the people, to serve the country, that’s what I believe in, and that’s what I’ll be getting on with.

Asked he would fight a leadership contest if another Labour MP gets enough support to mount a challenge, Starmer replied:

Well, we’re not at that position.

But I’ve said, I don’t know how many times, that I’m not going to walk away.

I feel very strongly that I must serve the people who voted me into office.

Do I recognise that we’ve got to turn things around over after those election results? Yes, of course I do. And obviously a lot of people in the Labour party have been talking about what has to happen next. I recognise that.

But it is really important, for me at least, to remind myself, why am I in politics …

My job is to serve, and to carry out that responsibility. And that’s what I’ll do.

Asked if he would set out a timetable for standing down, if Andy Burnham does win the byelection, Starmer replied:

No, I’m not going to do that.

But Starmer also said it was a very important byelection, and that he would be backing the Labour candidate 100%, whoever they are.

Keir Starmer has rejected claims that his premiership is, in effect over.

On a visit to promote the small business protections (late payments) bill, which is being published this week, Starmer was asked if his premiership is now, in effect, over, given that Andy Burnham is tipped to replace him later this year.

Starmer replied:

No, we’ve got a lot of work to do and I was addressing Labour party staff actually, this morning reminding them, and reminding the whole team really, that we were elected into office by millions of people, to bring about change in this country. That’s our responsibility. my responsibility is to serve the people who voted us into office, serve my country.

I will post more from his pooled interview (with Christopher Hope from GB News) shortly.

Towards the end of his speech, Burnham addressed the Brexit issue.

Referring to how he thought further devolution could help constituencies like Makerfield, he said:

It will bring people back together, get places like Makerfield working and move us beyond some of the divisive debates of the last decade.

My view is that Brexit has been damaging, but I also believe the last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments.

Britain will be stuck in a permanent rut if we’re just constantly arguing and people are pulling away from each other.

It is time, surely, isn’t it, to bring people back together, to focus on what we’ve got in common, to get the growth coming to all places. That is what we need in this moment. And it’s really important that, whatever comes out of this byelection, there’s a more unifying feeling about the change that we need to work towards.

I am not proposing that the UK considers rejoining the EU. I respect the decision that was made at the referendum, and it’s going to undermine everything that I’ve said about strengthening democracy if we don’t respect that vote.

If we are to unify communities and the country, it means focusing on the big economic challenges we have – the structural problems that I’ve been talking about, the fact that we gave away so many of the levers of economic power when we deregulated and privatised.

This is quite a forceful way of shutting down claims that, if he were to be elected MP for Makerfield and then Labour leader and PM, Burnham would put Britain on a journey to rejoining the EU.

Wes Streeting make this a Labour leadership election issue on Saturday when he said he would like the UK to rejoin. Burnham is not as pro-EU as Streeting, but at Labour conference last year he said: “I’m going to say I want to rejoin. I hope, in my lifetime, I see this country rejoining the European Union.” Burnham is now 56.

Burnham’s comments today are compatible with what he said last autumn. He is not ruling out the UK ever rejoining. But in saying that he does not want a rerun of the Brexit arguments, that he wants to unify people, and that the government needs to “respect the decision that was made at the referendum”, he is kicking the issue quite far into the long term. This is not the sort of language likely to come from a leader planning a bold statement about EU membership in the next manifesto.

Streeting, by comparison, takes a different approach; he has indicated that he does want to have an argument about this.

Makerfied voted 65% for leave in 2016 and, by closing down the “Brexit betrayal” line of attack, Burnham will be boosing his byelection chances. But his statement today may disappoint Labour party members who are much more aligned with Streeting’s view on this.

Burnham went into more detail about how councils have been deprived of their powers to improve residents’ lives. (See 1.56pm.)

If politics can’t fix something as simple as a pothole, you’ve got a very big problem. Why should people have faith in the ability of politics to do anything if it can’t do something as simple as that?

And how unfair is it on those councillors who work hard in their communities and then just get swept away because of the failure of national government to protect local government and give them the ability to make basic improvements in their communities.

It’s just not right. It needs saying that it’s not right, and I’m here to do that.

Burnham says there should be “a completely different relationship between national and local government”.

What we’ve got at the moment across large parts of the north of England - as good as the last decade has been in terms of the start we’ve made with devolution – underneath the combined authorities, sadly, we have hollowed out councils and we have an unaccountable state where too much is delivered by arm’s length or outsourced agencies that local councillors can’t control.

So many crucial services like housing and energy, delivered by fragmented agencies outside of local democratic control.

As an example, he cites the way he and Josh Simons, the former Makerfield MP, had to “to move heaven and earth” to get agencies to deal with flooding in the constituency.

Burnham sets out what he calls his “core argument”.

My core argument is this.

Britain has been on the wrong path, 40 years on the wrong path, a path that has damaged communities across the north.

The deindustrialisation of the 1980s was devastating for places across Makerfield like Ashton-in-Makerfield … You know exactly what I am talking about. The draining away of economic, social and political power from these places left adrift. That’s what happened.

That deindustrialisation was then compounded by deregulation, privatisation in the 90s and austerity in the 2010s. It all adds up to 40 years of neoliberalism that have not been kind to the north of England – 40 years of trickle-down economics that did not, in the end, trickle down very much at all to Platt Bridge or Hindley.

In fact, that system has siphoned wealth out of those places and into the hands of people for whom life was already very good.

It created an economy that didn’t work for most working people. It led to the loss of good jobs, the decline of our high streets, and the neglect of our towns. It led to people paying over the odds for the daily basics energy, housing, water, transport.

And in the 2000s, and particularly in the 2010s, our councils across the north of England were stripped of the resource and power to do anything about it.

They just don’t have the agency that they should have to protect people from these changes. And that’s the broken state of local government in England that we see right now, particularly felt in councils across across the north.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, is speaking now.

He says they are celebrating a decade of devolution in the north.

But he says more, big changes are needed.

And he turns to Makerfield.

Makerfield is no ordinary by election. I’m getting plenty of advice about what I should do – the main piece being, ‘For God’s sake, get some new running shorts.’ [See 12.59am.]

I believe the byelection is very necessary.

In my view, the time has come for a much bigger debate about how politics needs to change if it is to work properly for the north of England, because it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And this is what we’ve got to focus on.

People are losing faith in politics more than anything. That’s what people’s votes were saying on Thursday 7 May.

They deserve a bigger response than politicians have given them before, and that’s what I intend to provide in this by election like no other.