Who Is Andy Burnham, ‘King Of The North’ Eying Downing Street ‘Throne’?

 

Fresh from his UK by-election victory last week, veteran Labour politician Andy Burnham took another step on Monday towards his long-held dream of moving into No. 10 Downing Street.

And everything points to it being third time lucky for the man touted as succeeding Keir Starmer to be Britain’s next prime minister.

Seen as representing the Labour party’s “soft left” and a pro-business socialist, Burnham has twice sought the party leadership, losing out to Ed Miliband in 2010 and Jeremy Corbyn in 2015.

READ ALSO: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Announces Resignation

He first entered parliament in 2001, and held senior cabinet posts under prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

He quit parliament in 2017 to run for mayor of Greater Manchester, where three successive election victories and his staunch defence of the region have earned him the nickname “King of the North”.

He has described his campaign to return as MP and challenge Starmer as “a final chance to change” the Labour party.

Following his decisive victory in a key parliamentary by-election in northwest Makerfield, he vowed to “ensure the places Westminster has neglected will now get fairness”.

After being sworn in Monday as an MP, he greeted supporters in Westminster Hall with a fist pump and snapped a selfie in front of a group of around 200 Labour colleagues.

 

‘Feely, Touchy’

Andrew Murray Burnham was born in 1970 into a working-class family in Aintree, near Liverpool, and grew up in the village of Culcheth in nearby Cheshire.

Now 56, the loyal Everton football fan enjoyed the “Madchester” party music scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

He joined the Labour party as a young teenager before studying English at the University of Cambridge, where he said he often struggled with “imposter syndrome” because of his working-class background.

Recently, he has openly opposed Starmer, who resigned on Monday, over welfare cuts and warned of a “climate of fear” in the party, urging him to put forward a more left-wing vision for Labour.

In the past decade, Burnham has emerged as one of Britain’s most recognisable regional leaders.

“When you’re a mayor, it’s very focused on an area, and balancing it within a country might be a bit of a challenge, but I hope he does a good job,” broadcast engineer Aaron Wear, 23, said in Manchester.

Starmer’s most recent Manchester mayor re‑election bid, in May 2024, saw him resoundingly returned to helm the city-region of 2.8 million people with nearly two-thirds of the vote.

He has pushed an agenda centred on public transport, housing and public health.

But so far he has remained “rather vague” on his plans for tackling the UK’s cost-of-living crisis, said Tony Travers, a professor at The London School of Economics.

“It’s sort of vibes — feely, touchy — and he’s a good communicator, but rather less detail on what would change,” he told AFP, adding he believed Burnham was “not much further to the left than Starmer”.

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