When Andy Burnham was shadow home secretary a decade ago, he was asked if he’d ever consider leaving Manchester and moving to London to be nearer Westminster. He replied: “Nope. Because my networks are here, my mum and dad, my brothers… my support system.” In 2024, the Makerfield MP – who grew up with his parents and his two siblings – wrote in his book Head North that he, his wife Marie-France van Heel and their three children, Jimmy, Rosie, and Anne-Marie, were “are as tight a five-strong family unit as mine was before us”.
So, as Burnham prepares for a potential move into No 10 Downing Street, who makes up this “tight” first family? The oldest of Burnham’s three children is Jimmy, 26, who was given the same name as Burnham’s grandfather. He was born in 2000, just as Burnham was starting to work as an MP. Jimmy left Manchester and moved to London to study circum-Caribbean and Latin American history at University College London, finishing his BA in 2021, before working in a bakery in Primrose Hill, North London.
According to his LinkedIn, he did some work experience at his mother’s former workplace, Heavenly PR, and then went on to be a caseworker for the Labour Party. Now, Jimmy is an International Policy Officer for the Royal College of Nursing and lives in London. Burnham has talked of sharing a love of music with his children, and how his son got him into bands The Strokes and Big Thief. He also mentions in an interview in music magazine The Quietus that he and his son went to Bluedot festival in Cheshire together to see Jimmy’s beloved New Order.
