{"id":652892,"date":"2026-06-22T21:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T21:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/652892\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T21:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T21:43:12","slug":"who-is-andy-burnham-the-man-of-the-people-likely-to-be-next-uk-prime-minister-andy-burnham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/652892\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Andy Burnham, the \u2018man of the people\u2019 likely to be next UK prime minister? | Andy Burnham"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the story that Andy Burnham<\/a> tells about himself, \u201cthe turning point\u201d in his political life came in 2009 when he was booed at a football ground in the north-west of England. He had been an ideologically reliable middle-ranking minister under Tony Blair, the centrist New Labour prime minister between 1997 and 2007, and had gone on to be appointed as secretary of state for culture, media and sport under Blair\u2019s successor, Gordon Brown.<\/p>\n

On the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster \u2013 the fatal crowd crush that killed 97 Liverpool fans in 1989 \u2013 Burnham was representing Brown\u2019s administration at Anfield, Liverpool\u2019s famous stadium. But as he began to offer his words of condolence into a microphone on the pitch, the then 39-year-old minister\u2019s speech was interrupted by loud and angry calls from the stands for justice for those who had been killed due to no fault of their own. A series of British governments had refused demands for a public inquiry into the disaster.<\/p>\n

Footage from the day shows Burnham, who was born in Aintree, a suburb of Liverpool, rattled and close to tears, before nodding and mouthing \u201cOK\u201d. He later explained: \u201cMy journey away from Westminster began at Anfield that day. It was the turning point in my life. To be honest, I fell out of love with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, as a result of Keir Starmer\u2019s announcement that he intends to resign as prime minister<\/a> once a successor has been chosen, Burnham, 56, looks likely to be the country\u2019s next leader.<\/p>\n

After spending the last nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham is on the brink of taking the top political job in the land on the basis of a certain sort of boyish charisma and charm but also with a promise that he will be different to those who have gone before, offering a politics that understands the motivations and concerns of those outside London and who feel unheard.<\/p>\n

Burnham prepares to speak to the media in Manchester in 2020, when he was threatening legal action if tier 3 Covid restrictions were imposed on the city without agreement. Photograph: Martin Rickett\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

His political shtick as a man of the people was given a healthy boost during the Covid pandemic when Burnham went to battle with Boris Johnson\u2019s government over its treatment of his region during the Covid pandemic. While Burnham\u2019s critics characterise him as \u201cCaptain Flip-flop\u201d, on the grounds that his politics have appeared to change over the decades, others see him as a man who is listening.<\/p>\n

Burnham, whose father was a phone engineer and his mother a doctor\u2019s receptionist, has described his childhood in the village of Culcheth, Cheshire, as \u201cfantastic\u201d. He was inspired to join the Labour<\/a> party at the age of 14, after being moved by the BBC TV drama Boys from the Blackstuff, about being long-term unemployed in Liverpool. His two brothers were the first in their family to go to university but Burnham did well enough at school to win a prestigious place to study English at the University of Cambridge, where he went on to meet his now wife, Dutch-born Marie-France van Heel.<\/p>\n

After graduation, he moved to London where he spent a brief period working on trade magazines, including Tank World and Passenger World Management, before starting work as a researcher in the parliamentary office of the Labour MP Tessa Jowell. After that he became an adviser to the then culture secretary, Chris Smith. He was elected as MP for his home town of Leigh in Greater Manchester in 2001. He first served as a junior minister under Blair, but joined the cabinet as chief secretary to the Treasury, and later culture secretary and then health secretary, under Brown.<\/p>\n

Burnham ran for the Labour leadership in 2010 offering \u201caspirational socialism\u201d but came fourth out of the five contenders, losing to Ed Miliband, who had offered to take the party a bit more to the left. When Miliband lost at the 2015 general election, he stood again with a centrist pitch that sought to emphasise his business-friendly credentials. He launched his campaign at the headquarters of the accounting and professional services firm Ernst & Young. Entrepreneurs, he suggested, should be treated \u201cas much our heroes as the nurse\u201d. He lost to the leftwing candidate, Jeremy Corbyn.<\/p>\n

Burnham with the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, in 2010. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Unlike many of his generation of politicians, Burnham accepted a shadow cabinet position in Corbyn\u2019s team, taking up the position of home affairs spokesperson. He was also one of the few not to resign from Corbyn\u2019s team in 2016 when the Labour leader\u2019s lack of energetic support for staying in the EU was blamed by some for the leave campaign\u2019s Brexit victory.<\/p>\n

Burnham only left Corbyn\u2019s side in 2017 to stand to become the first mayor of Greater Manchester. He won the contest<\/a> with more than 60% of the vote and was re-elected by an even bigger margin in 2021.<\/p>\n

During his time in Manchester, he has drawn praise for his transformation of the region\u2019s transport system by taking the buses under public control. His vocal championing of the area, which has economically outperformed much of the rest of the country, earned him the moniker \u201cking of the north\u201d. There remain questions over quite what Burnham\u2019s politics are today but he is seen within Labour as the best chance the party has to steal votes back from Nigel Farage\u2019s rightwing anti-immigration Reform UK and the Greens on the left. He has offered a \u201cturning point\u201d for the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the story that Andy Burnham tells about himself, \u201cthe turning point\u201d in his political life came in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-652892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}