LONDON (AP) — Andy Burnham was spending his first full day as U.K. prime minister Tuesday, after entering 10 Downing Street on a wave of enthusiasm and a mountain of challenges ahead.The pressing issues look familiar. They were the same ones his predecessor, Keir Starmer, faced: a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living crisis, overstretched public services, and foreign policy that includes wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and managing relations with U.S. President Donald Trump, which appeared to get off to a good start. Burnham became prime minister after spending most of the past decade running Greater Manchester as mayor of a northwest England region with 3 million residents, before winning his ticket back to Parliament in a special election last month. Leading a national government delivering services for 70 million people is a monumentally larger task with problems on a larger scale.These are some of the main issues confronting Burnham:
Boosting the economy and decentralizing government Domestic issues top Burnham’s agenda and he has already said he will set out his plan on Tuesday for how his government will fund an effort to lower living costs.Burnham inherits an economy that was improving until the Iran war upended forecasts and growth is now widely predicted to slow sharply over this year while inflation rises.
