Meet Andy Burnham, Britain’s seemingly subsequent prime minister
Back in 2024, the UK’s Labour party won a landslide victory, the first win in 14 years. The man who led the party to that triumph? Keir Starmer. But just two years later, Starmer found himself under such intense pressure that on Monday, he announced his resignation .
Outside his official residence in Downing Street 10 in London, he said a successor was to be chosen by the end of Parliament’s summer recess in September.
The man widely expected to be that successor is Andy Burnham. Last week, the popular Manchester mayor won the by-election in the constituency of Makerfield by a wide margin, securing a seat in Parliament. Holding a parliamentary seat is a prerequisite for becoming prime minister.
A long political career
“Everyone can feel the country isn’t where it should be,” 56-year-old Burnham said after his Makerfield election victory, in remarks that already sounded distinctly prime ministerial. “From here on I will give everything I have got to make it so. To ensure the name Makerfield is forever synonymous with bringing about the change this country needs, bringing back something we’ve lost ― hope ― hope for the future.”
Burnham is seen as a leading figure on Labour’s moderate-left wing and he has decades of experience in both national and regional politics. He first entered Parliament in 2001. Under Prime Minister Tony Blair, he served as a junior minister at the Home Office before Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, appointed him to roles at the Finance Ministry, the Department for Culture, and later as health secretary.
Burnham even ran for the Labour leadership twice, in 2010 and 2015. In 2017, he left Parliament to become mayor of Greater Manchester, a region of around 2.8 million people in the north of England. He since won reelection twice, most recently getting nearly two-thirds of the vote.
Among Burnham’s most notable achievements in Manchester is the expansion of affordable public transportation. Housing and health care have also been central priorities throughout his time as mayor. He is critical of Brexit, the UK’s exit from the European Union in 2020, and describes himself as an advocate of “pro-business socialism.”
During the COVIDpandemic, Burnham locked horns with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, demanding greater financial support for businesses and workers affected by lockdown restrictions. The confrontation, and his general success in Manchester, earned him the nickname “King of the North.”
In the past few years, Burnham’s main criticism of his Labour party colleague Keir Starmer has focused on the prime minister’s cuts to welfare spending. Which policies Burnham would pursue should he succeed as prime minister has so far largely remained undefined.
A working-class northerner
Burnham is deeply rooted in the former mining and industrial communities of northern England. Born in 1970 in Aintree, near Liverpool, he grew up in the village of Culcheth with his father working as a technician and his mother as a medical assistant.
While studying English at Cambridge University, Burnham later said he often felt like an outsider at the prestigious university. Inspired by the miners’ strike of the mid-1980s, he joined the Labour Party at the age of 14.
He’s been a lifelong supporter of Everton Football Club. His wife is Dutch, and the couple have three children. Burnham also has a tattoo of the worker bee — a symbol of industry and solidarity — on his right upper arm.
Today, Burnham is among the most popular politicians in the United Kingdom, and many supporters see him as Labour’s best hope of countering the rise of the right-wing populist Reform UK party of Nigel Farage.
Yet since the Brexit referendum in 2016, the office of British prime minister has become somewhat precarious. Burnham would be the seventh person to hold the position since the referendum a decade ago. If he does succeeds Starmer, he will inherit a country still grappling with deep political, economic, and social challenges.
This article was originally published in German.
