New Delhi: Andy Burnham, a pro-workers’ rights activist, proponent of increased defence spending, and a critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, is set to become Britain’s next Prime Minister after receiving overwhelming support from Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) Friday to succeed Keir Starmer.
Starmer announced his resignation in late June, just short of two years after leading the party to a landslide general election victory in 2024.Burnham received nominations from 322 of Labour’s 403 MPs on the first day of the leadership process—far exceeding the 81 required to enter the contest. With no serious rival expected to emerge, the 56-year-old Makerfield MP is likely to be formally confirmed as Labour leader on 17 July and appointed Prime Minister by King Charles III on 20 July.
He would become Britain’s seventh Prime Minister in 10 years.Burnham’s expected ascendancy represents an extraordinary return to Westminster for a politician who has spent nearly a decade building his reputation and political prowess outside of London, as the mayor of Greater Manchester.From Liverpool to Manchester to Westminster
Born in Liverpool on 7 January 1970 and raised in the nearby town of Culcheth, Andrew Murray Burnham studied English at Fitzwilliam College at the University of Cambridge. He has said the 1984-85 miners’ strike—a year-long confrontation between Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government and mineworkers resisting widespread pit closures and job losses—helped shape his political outlook and encouraged him to join the Labour Party as a teenager.Burnham worked as a parliamentary researcher and for the National Health Service (NHS) before being elected MP for Leigh, Great Manchester in 2001. He rose rapidly under the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, serving as chief secretary to the Treasury, culture secretary, and health secretary.He contested the Labour leadership twice: finishing fourth in 2010 and second to Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. His likely victory in 2026 has consequently been described, by Burnham himself, as a case of “third time lucky”.Burnham left Parliament in 2017 to become Greater Manchester’s first directly-elected mayor, which is the position in which he established a national profile and acquired the nickname “King of the North”.He is married to Marie-France van Heel, whom he met at university, and the couple have three children. A Roman Catholic by upbringing, Burnham is also a football, cricket, and rugby enthusiast.‘King of the North’
