LONDON — Andy Burnham has already run twice, unsuccessfully, for the leadership of the Labor Party, which currently governs the United Kingdom. Now, his impressive victory in a supplementary parliamentary election brings him closer not only to that goal, but also to reaching number 10 Downing Street as prime minister.
A fluent communicator, known for his friendliness and charisma, Burnham has been mayor of Greater Manchester for nine years, during which time he has cultivated an image of optimism, activism and a frankness considered typical of the north of England.
With a parliamentary seat for Makerfield in northwest England, Burnham will need the support of 80 Labor colleagues to mount a challenge to the leadership of unpopular Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Allies see Burnham – who in Manchester earned the nickname “king of the North” for his defense of the region during the Covid-19 pandemic – as a possible savior of the Labor Party in the face of the advance of Reform UK, a right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage. Critics, on the other hand, portray him as a political chameleon, who would face the same economic limitations that have held back Starmer’s lackluster government — as well as a restless and impatient electorate.
In any case, he would be a very different type of leader from the one he wants to replace.
“He is optimistic, good-natured and seems to enjoy being a politician,” said John McTernan, an adviser to Tony Blair when he was prime minister and someone who has known Burnham since he worked as a researcher for a parliamentarian in south London. “Leaders either inspire you, or they depress you a bit,” McTernan added, noting that there have been several recent prime ministers who “didn’t seem to really like the job” — including Starmer.
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Burnham was born in Liverpool in 1970. His father was a telephone technician and his mother was a receptionist at a doctor’s office. He grew up in Culcheth, a village in Cheshire, not far from Makerfield. Of Irish origin, he studied in Catholic public schools and has spoken about his relationship with Catholicism, including his meeting with Pope Francis in 2023.
“My mother was with me and, although I am not Catholic in the full sense of the word, I felt the magnetic force of the Vatican,” he said, comparing the faith to his lifelong devotion to the Everton football club. If you stop going to games, he said, “you’re still an Everton fan; you can stop going to church, but you’re still Catholic.”
Burnham won a place to study Literature at the University of Cambridge and, after graduating, followed a classic path towards political projection: first as a researcher for Tessa Jowell, a parliamentarian from south London, and then as an advisor to the then Culture Secretary, Chris Smith.
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It was in Cambridge that he met Marie-France Van Heel, born in the Netherlands. The two later married and had three children.
“When my wife got pregnant, we actually hadn’t planned on having kids at that point because I thought it was important to have stability. We got married in October 2000, when Jimmy was 8 months old, and I was in a tough fight to get the nomination,” Burnham told The Guardian in 2009, referring to his attempt to run for Parliament.
After being elected in 2001 to represent Leigh, a district in northern England near where he grew up, Burnham became a junior minister in Tony Blair’s New Labor government. He was later promoted to cabinet under Gordon Brown and held the roles of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport and then Secretary for Health.
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In 2009, Burnham was booed during a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, in which 97 Liverpool fans were crushed to death in a stadium. The episode left a deep impression on him and convinced him that the families deserved justice, after the police, investigators and the press tried to portray the victims as hooligans and blame them for the tragedy. Pressure exerted by Burnham helped secure a second investigation.
After the Labor Party lost the 2010 general election, Burnham ran for leadership of the party and finished fourth. In 2015, he tried again and started as favorite, but ended up defeated by the left-wing Jeremy Corbyn, on whose team he later served.
In 2017, Burnham left Parliament after concluding that his political future lay outside Westminster and was eventually elected Mayor of Greater Manchester.
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Robert Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said Burnham led a booming local economy and showed political skill by increasing control and regulation over the city’s bus system — winning a dispute with transport companies.
“He turned what could have been dull, technocratic politics — and, believe me, if Keir Starmer had been there it would have been — into a David versus Goliath contest,” Ford said. “His great strength is that he is a very effective communicator, an excellent storyteller; he is good at giving voters a sense of who he is, who he stands for and what he is trying to do.”
“In this respect,” said Ford, “he contrasts greatly with the current Labor prime minister.”
Burnham also took a leading role during the pandemic, complaining that government-imposed lockdowns penalized regions like his, and gave a speech in the center of Manchester that became famous.
Perhaps the most recurrent criticism of Burnham – who served under three very different Labor leaders, Blair, Brown and Corbyn – is that he is politically malleable.
In 2022, after the last World Cup, Starmer himself mocked his former colleague. In a speech to journalists, he joked that Burnham “had the chance to see his childhood team, Argentina, win the World Cup”, but that “the result was mixed because he also saw his childhood team, France, lose the final, and his childhood teams Morocco and Croatia fall in the semi-finals”.
McTernan acknowledged that Burnham has a reputation as a “people-pleaser” politician, but said: “A politician who wants to please people is much better than one who hates them.”
A common thread in Burnham’s trajectory is the idea that British politics and the media are excessively focused on London, and that regional inequality has harmed the country — an argument he already raised in his first speech in Parliament, in 2001. In a recent interview, Burnham stated that the United Kingdom has been “on the wrong path for 40 years”.
Burnham raised concerns among some observers last year by saying that the Labor Party should go “beyond being held hostage by the bond market” — a phrase he later claimed had been misinterpreted. More recently, in an interview with the BBC, he seemed unclear when commenting on an aspect of economic policy. In Manchester, however, it adopted business-friendly policies to attract investment.
According to Ford, as mayor, Burnham “got relatively used to saying what he thought,” but has now “received a pretty harsh lesson about the need to weigh your words more carefully.”
It is difficult to predict how well the skills demonstrated in Manchester would prepare him for the top job in British politics.
“It’s very different when you sail straight into the storm of 10 Downing Street, where there will be 150 issues on your desk every day,” Ford said. “You don’t have much control over which ones you choose to pick a fight with, and you don’t have time to think.”
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