Professor Brian Cox discusses ‘Science, Society and the Public Good’ at Labour conference 2026
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TV physicist and former popstar Professor Brian Cox has expressed his support for Andy Burnham’s “excellent” Labour conference speech in its “message of hope and potential”.
Speaking at a Total Politics and University of Manchester fringe event on Tuesday, Cox revealed that he was attending his first Labour conference since 1997 – the year his former band, D:Ream, was put at the fore of the party’s election victory.
Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream was used as Labour’s campaign theme during the election that gave Tony Blair’s New Labour a landslide majority for the first time.
The keyboard player, now a professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester, was asked for his verdict on the keynote speech that had just been delivered by Burnham that afternoon.
“I really enjoyed that speech,” he replied. “I thought it was excellent, actually – this message of hope and the potential of the country.”
Asked whether he now feels that “things can only get better”, Cox said of the Prime Minister: “For me, being in the hall, he captured some of that energy and optimism that I haven’t seen for a long time.”
Recalling D:Ream performing live at the Labour Party victory rally at the Royal Festival Hall on 2 May 1997, he said: “I was there, obviously, playing Things Can Only Get Better in 1997 in the South Bank. We actually did Top of the Pops that night.
“It was this kind of military operation… because you’re not allowed, obviously, to play the Labour Party’s election theme tune on the day of an election on the BBC. But Top of the Pops was broadcast after the polls closed, so we were allowed to do it. We had red roses coming down onto the stage.
“Then we got put in a hotel overlooking the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, and we had to wait there and watch. So, we watched all those moments – the Portillo moment, and all this, everyone remembers.
“Someone from the Labour Party came in and said, ‘Right, you can come now and do the song. We went and did the song, and that’s that famous shot of people like Neil Kinnock and John Prescott and everyone dancing, and Robin Cook, trying to dance to Things Can Only Get Better.”
Cox continued: “We need reminding that this country, as the Prime Minister said correctly, has got tremendous foundations – second to none, I would say.
“I suppose the discussion we’re going to have is how you make sure you don’t damage them, first of all. But that’s not the only remit of government, is it, not to fuck things up? It’s also to do something positive!”
The warm words Cox used for Burnham come after Things Can Only Get Better songwriters Alan Mackenzie and Peter Cunnah expressed regret two years ago that the track was used so prominently by Labour in 1997.
Asked in 2024 whether they would give permission for Keir Starmer to use the song for campaigning, Mackenzie said: “There’s no way – our songs and politics, never again.”
During the Labour conference event on Tuesday, Cox expressed concerns over the “serious problems” with the way science funding is being allocated.
“There are serious problems at the moment, not with the amount of money in the system but how it’s being used,” he said, going on to say he had “worries” over the approach taken by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
In July, UKRI said the Jodrell Bank Observatory, which hosts the UK’s largest telescope, would not be prioritised for further funding after 2028. Burnham promised in September that he would save it.
Cox used the event to argue that science funding should not be seen primarily through the lens of its role as a driver of economic growth, although it does play a role in growth.
“My challenge would be: Is that right, that we should be attempting specifically to try to engineer higher growth rates by fiddling around with the targeting of the science budget?” he asked.
The professor said UKRI’s remit should be “make Britain the best place in the world to do science”, adding: “Just do that. That’s what I want you to do.
“I don’t want you to micromanage the levers of growth because you’re not capable of doing it, and you’ll make mistakes, in my view, to be rather more provocative.
“Like the mistake that was made with Jodrell, like the mistake that’s going to be made with some of the facilities, like Diamond and the ISIS neutron source and Daresbury Laboratory. I could list 20 mistakes that are going to be made… This shouldn’t be the way that you manage a research council.”
