Keir Starmer has compared Andy Burnham to Liz Truss as Labour’s bitter civil war escalated.

The prime minister hit out at the Manchester mayor’s calls for the government to scrap its strict fiscal rules in what was seen as a pitch for the Labour leadership.

Burnham set out his plans in interviews with the New Statesman magazine and Daily Telegraph on the eve of Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool.

He the water, energy and rail industries should all be nationalised, a policy which would cost billions of pounds.

The former cabinet minister – who left Westminster in 2017 – also dismissed concerns about the size of the government’s debt, saying the UK must “get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets”.

Those markets, which determine the interest rates the governm

See Full Page