ON Friday, Andy Burnham became Leader of the Labour Party, and I am proud to have nominated him. On Monday, he became our Prime Minister

First, a word of thanks: Sir Keir Starmer has led a life of public service and, over the past six years, he changed our party – taking it from its worst electoral defeat in a century to one of the largest election victories in our history – and changed our country for the better. His careful stewardship took the first crucial steps towards rebuilding a fractured country and reversing years of decline – providing macroeconomic stability, stronger workers’ rights, improvements to our NHS and public services and finished, last week, by passing the Hillsborough Law. I thank him for that service, and I mean it.

But the buck stops at the top and, with too much at stake to not accelerate on our economic growth and housing delivery missions, there cannot be hope without delivery. But there also cannot be delivery without hope. Andy's win in Makerfield brought back our voter coalition – of working class people and left-leaning voters - and gives our party a second, and last, chance. We must now move from the politics of consultation to the politics of action, of building and doing.

Andy is a builder. That is the whole of my case, and it is why I think this matters more in Mid Cornwall than almost anywhere else.

Consider what we have been asked to accept here. That the “new” 40-year old trains won’t stop at every station. That the bus timetable is what it is. That our young people will have to buy their first home elsewhere, or not at all. That the Clay Country will just have to stumble on, drawing the shortest straws. That Newquay's economy should run hot for twelve weeks and hold its breath for forty. None of that is axiomatic: It is the accumulated residue of decisions taken by people who have never had to live with them.

In Greater Manchester, Andy did not accept the equivalent. He made major interventions on transport, on housing, and on regional identity. He brought the buses back under public control when he was told it could not be done. He understood that the people who know an area best are the people who live in it, and that they should be empowered to make decisions about their services, their businesses, and their homes. The result was the fastest growing city and region in Britain.

Cornwall has been asking for exactly that trust for a generation. We have a Plan for Cornwall: A growing critical minerals industry underwritten by a genuine national security case, a floating offshore wind opportunity in the Celtic Sea already starting to create jobs in our local supply chain, and a China clay sector that has been the bedrock of mid Cornwall for two centuries. What we have too often lacked is a government prepared to treat those as assets to be built on rather than problems to be managed at a distance.

Andy has proved he means devolution. Not as a communiqué, but as buses, homes, and decisions made closer to the people they affect.

With Andy leading, we can take the wind back into our sails, embrace the plurality of ideas in our party, and refocus Labour's message of hope and renewal.