Andy Burnham has been named as the Labour Party’s new leader and is set to take over as the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade on Monday.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Burnham was announced as the new head of the party by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood at a special press conference on Friday.
In a speech following his unveiling, Burnham said it was a “proud” and “emotional” moment for him and his family and paid tribute to outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
He went on to vow sweeping changes to British politics and criticised his generation of politicians for not doing enough for working class people across the UK.
“This generation of politicians, myself included, have failed to challenge a political culture and an economic model that simply does not work well enough for ordinary people,” he said. “We pledge to them, today, to be better.”
Burnham was left with a clear path to Downing Street after his last potential leadership rival ruled out challenging last week. He received 379 nominations from Labour MPs for the party leadership out of a possible 403.
His uncontested run has sparked concern from some analysts and government insiders, however, and opposition leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Labour of “running scared” of scrutiny.
It comes after Keir Starmer announced he was stepping down as PM last month, as pressure continued to build in the wake of Labour’s disastrous local election results in May.
Key takeaways from Burnham’s speech
In his speech on Friday, Burnham outlined five key points that he said would shape his leadership and “make us better.”
Firstly, he said he would look to create more unity in the Labour party, building “one Labour team.”
“We won’t beat Britain’s new right if we are consumed by infighting and pulling in different directions,” he said. “That is, and always has been, an indulgence that falls heaviest on the people who need Labour most.”
His second goal, he continued, will be to establish a “new politics,” putting a stop to political “point scoring” and focusing on problem solving to “fix the big things” facing the country.
Burnham said he would also move the party in a “distinctively Labour” direction.
“We won’t try to ‘out green’ the Greens, or ‘out-reform Reform. Or doing what we’ve done in the past in wearing too many Tory clothes,” he said, adding that he believed Britain took a number of “wrong turns in the 1980s.”
“Political power was centralised and economic power was privatised,” Burnham told the crowd, saying that wealth and power were therefore concentrated “in the hands of fewer people and fewer places.”
Burnham also committed to being a “leader for the north, the south, the east, and the west. For Scotland, Wales, and for Northern Ireland.”
He said that while the north of England had “given me so much,” he would now do the “same for everywhere.”
“This is the moment to speak for all parts of the country and unite people in a common cause,” he added.
Burnham’s final commitment was to redivert power away from London and towards the rest of the UK.
“More power over life’s essentials so you can make them work better and more affordable for people,” he said.
He added that he would be a “pro-business leader” and that he wanted to take more power to reindustrialise and improve the education system.
Who is Andy Burnham?
Born on Merseyside in the northwest of England and raised in the village of Culcheth in Cheshire, Burnham has said he was first inspired to enter politics after watching “Boys From The Blackstuff,” an acclaimed 1982 TV show about five unemployed men in Liverpool navigating life in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.
He went on to study English at the University of Cambridge before starting out in journalism, working for a number of trade publications. He soon made the jump into politics, taking a job as a researcher for the late Tessa Jowell, a former MP for Dulwich, while in his early 20s.
He eventually became MP for Leigh in 2001, a position he held until 2017, and served in a number of senior ministerial positions, including as secretary of state for health and chief secretary to the Treasury. He unsuccessfully ran for the Labour leadership in 2010 and 2015, losing to Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, respectively.
In 2017, he took over as mayor of Greater Manchester, overseeing a period of huge growth and development and gaining a reputation for his loyal defence of the region during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.
Burnham, who has since become known as the “king of the North,” returned to Westminster in June after securing a huge majority in the Makerfield by-election, comfortably beating out challengers from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and Rupert Lowe’s hard-right Restore Britain.
Since his return, Burnham has repeatedly touted the need for change in British politics and has focused on the idea of devolution, pledging to help power flow into other parts of the UK through a “No. 10 North.” He has also said he would put an end to trickle-down economics and neoliberalism and embark on “the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period.”
Looking to Europe, Burnham has previously called for the UK to rejoin the European Union, but he sought to soften his stance on the issue during his Makerfield campaign.
“My view is that Brexit has been damaging,” he said in May. “But I also believe the last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments”.