In 2024, the UK Labor Party won a landslide victory, its first victory in 14 years. The person who led the party to that victory? Keir Starmer. But just two years later, Starmer found himself under such intense pressure that on Monday he announced his resignation.
Speaking outside his official residence at 10 Downing Street in London, he said a successor was to be selected by the end of Parliament’s summer recess in September.
The person widely expected to be his successor is Andy Burnham. Last week, the popular Manchester mayor won a by-election in the Makerfield constituency by a wide margin and secured a seat in Parliament. Holding a parliamentary seat is a prerequisite for becoming Prime Minister.
a long political career
“Everyone can feel that the country is not where it should be,” Burnham, 56, said after the Makerfield election victory. “From here on out I will give everything I have to make it so. To make sure the Makerfield name is forever synonymous with the change this country needs, bringing back what we have lost – hope – hope for the future.”
Burnham is seen as a leading figure in Labour’s liberal-left faction and 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 in the Home Office before Blair’s successor Gordon Brown, who appointed him to the Ministry of Finance, the Department of Culture, and later as Health Secretary.
Burnham also ran for the Labor leadership twice, in 2010 and 2015. In 2017, he left Parliament to become mayor of Greater Manchester, a region of about 2.8 million people in the north of England. He has since won re-election twice, most recently with nearly two-thirds of the vote.
Among Burnham’s most notable achievements is the expansion of affordable public transport in Manchester. Housing and health care have also been central priorities throughout his tenure as mayor. He is critical of Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union in 2020, and describes himself as a supporter of “pro-business socialism”.
During the Covid pandemic, Burnham clashed with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, demanding more financial support for businesses and workers hit by lockdown restrictions. The confrontation and his general success in Manchester earned him the nickname “King of the North”.
Over the past few years, Burnham’s main criticism of her Labor Party colleague Keir Starmer has focused on the Prime Minister’s cuts to welfare spending. What policies Burnham will pursue if he succeeds as Prime Minister is as yet largely undefined.
a working class northerner
Burnham’s roots run deep in the former mining and industrial communities of Northern England. Born in Aintree, near Liverpool, in 1970, he grew up in the village of Culcheth, where his father worked as a technician and his mother as a medical assistant.
While studying English at Cambridge University, Burnham later said that she often felt like an outsider at the prestigious university. Inspired by the miners’ strike in the mid-1980s, he joined the Labor Party at the age of 14.
He is a lifelong supporter of Everton Football Club. His wife is Dutch and the couple have three children. Burnham also has a tattoo of a worker bee on her right upper arm – a symbol of industry and togetherness.
Today, Burnham is one of the United Kingdom’s most popular politicians, and many supporters see her as Labour’s best hope to counter the rise of Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK Party.
Yet since the Brexit referendum in 2016, the office of British Prime Minister has become somewhat uncertain. Burnham will be the seventh person to hold the post since the referendum a decade ago. If he replaces Starmer, he will inherit a country that still grapples with deep political, economic and social challenges.
This article was originally published in German.