Andy Burnham

Andrew Murray Burnham is a British politician who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party since July 2026. He has since been Member of Parliament (MP) for Makerfield in Greater Manchester since June 2026, and was Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 to 2026; before that he was MP for Leigh from 2001 to 2017 and held several Cabinet positions. Burnham identifies as a socialist and is associated with the Labour Party's soft left; he is also a member of the Co-operative Party, which is allied with Labour. His political ideology has since been called "Manchesterism".

Overview§

Andrew Murray Burnham (born 7 January 1970) is a British politician who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party since July 2026. He has since been Member of Parliament (MP) for Makerfield in Greater Manchester since June 2026, and was Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 to 2026; before that he was MP for Leigh from 2001 to 2017 and held several Cabinet positions. Burnham identifies as a socialist and is associated with the Labour Party's soft left; he is also a member of the Co-operative Party, which is allied with Labour. His political ideology has since been called "Manchesterism". Burnham was born and brought up in northern England. He joined Labour at the age of 15 and read English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist and political adviser before being elected the MP for Leigh in 2001. Under the prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Culture Secretary, in which capacity he launched the Hillsborough Independent Panel. In 2009 he was promoted to Health Secretary; he responded to the swine flu pandemic and launched an independent inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal. After Labour's defeat at the 2010 general election, Burnham served in the shadow cabinet from 2010 to 2016. He stood for the Labour leadership in 2010 and in 2015, coming fourth and second respectively. In 2017 he stood down as a MP and was elected Mayor of Greater Manchester. He reorganised Manchester's tram and bus systems as the Bee Network and gained the nickname "King of the North" for campaigning for more furlough funding for Northern communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Burnham's tenure as mayor increased his national profile and he was re-elected in 2021 and in 2024. After Labour's return to government in 2024, Burnham maintained strong approval ratings as those of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, declined, and came to be seen as a potential successor. He returned to Parliament in 2026 by winning the Makerfield by-election and resigned as mayor. Starmer announced his resignation, leading to a party leadership election which Burnham won unopposed. Burnham has announced policies to move some government administration out of London as No. 10 North, cut fares on buses, reduce business rates on pubs, increase government support for apprenticeships, set up a National Care Service, and continue support for Ukraine during his premiership.

Early life and education§

Andrew Murray Burnham was born on 7 January 1970 in Aintree, Lancashire, England, a suburb of Liverpool, and was brought up in Culcheth. His father, Kenneth Roy Burnham, was a telephone engineer, and his mother, Eileen Mary Burnham (née Murray), was a GP receptionist. Burnham was educated at St Lewis Catholic Primary School and St Aelred's Roman Catholic High School, in Newton-le-Willows. Because of his "inability to remember that seven eights are 56" when reciting his times tables, there he earned the nickname "Seven Eights". Burnham was raised Catholic, and served as an altar boy at his local church. He later described himself as "Catholic by upbringing" but "not particularly religious". He said: "Catholic social teaching underpins my politics. We did have to read the catechism at school but it is powerful and strong and right." He joined the Labour Party when he was 15. Burnham read English at the University of Cambridge, where he was an undergraduate at Fitzwilliam College. He gained an upper second-class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. As per tradition, his BA was later promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Cantab) degree.

Early political career§

After university, Burnham moved to London. From 1991 to 1994 he was a journalist for a private company, Baltic Publishing, assigned to their trade magazine Tank Container World (later Bulk Distributor), a magazine covering tanker and intermodal transportation. From 1994 until the 1997 general election he was a researcher for Tessa Jowell. He joined the Transport and General Workers' Union in 1995. After the 1997 election, he was a parliamentary officer for the NHS Confederation from August to December 1997, before taking up the post as an administrator with the Football Task Force for a year. He became a special adviser to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, a position he held until he was elected to the House of Commons in the 2001 general election in 1998.

Member of Parliament (2001–2017)§

After the retirement of Lawrence Cunliffe, Burnham successfully applied to be the parliamentary candidate for Leigh in Greater Manchester, then a Labour safe seat. At the 2001 election he was elected with a majority of 16,362, and gave his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 4 July 2001. After his election to Parliament, Burnham was a member of the Health Select Committee from 2001 until 2003, when he was appointed Parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to the Home Secretary David Blunkett. After Blunkett's first resignation in 2004, he became PPS to the education secretary Ruth Kelly. Along with Labour, Burnham is a member of the Co-operative Party, which has since been allied to Labour since 1927 and runs all candidates jointly with it.

2005–2007: Early ministerial career§

After the 2005 general election, Burnham was promoted to serve in Tony Blair's government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, where he was responsible for implementing the Identity Cards Act 2006. He left the Home Office to become Minister of State for Delivery and Reform at the Department of Health in the government reshuffle on 5 May 2006. When Gordon Brown formed his first cabinet on 28 June 2007, Burnham was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a position he held until 2008. He played a key role in drafting the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review during his tenure at the Treasury.

2008–2009: Culture Secretary and the Hillsborough campaign§

In a January 2008 reshuffle, Burnham was promoted to Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, replacing James Purnell. After she threatened to sue him for libel over comments that smeared her reputation in an article Burnham wrote for Progress magazine, in June 2008, he issued an apology to Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights pressure group Liberty. Later that year, Burnham announced government plans to tighten controls on internet content to rectify what he described as an imbalance with television regulations. This announcement was followed by an address to the music industry lobbying group, UK Music, where he called for "a partnership between Government and the music business as a whole: one with rewards for both of us; one with rewards for society as a whole." He added, "My job – Government's job – is to preserve the value in the system." In April 2009, after being heckled by the crowd at the 20th anniversary memorial of the Hillsborough disaster, Burnham raised the issue at the next day's cabinet meeting in Downing Street. He requested permission from Gordon Brown to raise the disaster in Parliament, and Brown agreed. This intervention ultimately led to the establishment of the second Hillsborough inquiry. By 2014, when Burnham spoke at the 25th anniversary of the disaster, his pivotal role was recognized as he was cheered and applauded by the crowd. On 27 April 2016, the day after the Hillsborough inquest verdict that found the 96 Hillsborough deaths had occurred as a result of unlawful killing, Burnham made a speech to the House of Commons calling for those responsible to be held to account. Condemning South Yorkshire Police, which had instigated a cover-up in the aftermath of the tragedy, he described the force as being "rotten to the core" while suggesting that the cover-up had been "advanced in the committee rooms of this House and in the press rooms of 10 Downing Street". The eleven-minute statement drew applause from MPs, a response that is generally against convention at Westminster. This campaign reached a historic milestone in July 2026 when the House of Commons passed the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, broadly known as the Hillsborough Law. Pushed through by the departing Keir Starmer government, the legislation establishes a statutory duty of candour for public officials and ensures non-means-tested legal aid for families facing the state at inquests. Burnham hailed the bill's passage as a fundamental "rewiring of the state" that would finally dismantle institutional cover-up culture, completing a personal full-circle political journey just days before he took office as Prime Minister.

2009–2010: Health Secretary and the Stafford Hospital inquiry§

In June 2009, Burnham was promoted to Secretary of State for Health, a post he held until the Labour government resigned after the 2010 general election. Just a month after taking office, he launched an independent inquiry chaired by Robert Francis QC into unusually high mortality rates at Stafford Hospital (later renamed County Hospital) in July 2009. The inquiry uncovered systematic failures and heavily criticized the care provided by the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. A subsequent, wider public inquiry—also led by Francis—was launched in 2010 by Burnham's Conservative successor, Andrew Lansley. While this wider inquiry confirmed serious failings, it concluded that linking those failings to a specific number of deaths would be "misleading". After leaving office, reports emerged claiming that Burnham and his predecessor as Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, had rejected 81 separate requests for a public inquiry into the Stafford Hospital deaths. Burnham also faced criticism for not visiting the hospital or meeting with the affected families during his tenure. The Daily Telegraph reported that up to 2,800 more deaths than expected had occurred across 14 NHS trusts highlighted for high mortality rates since initial concerns were raised in 2005. Though, these figures were later discredited. The Keogh Review, led by Bruce Keogh into the 14 trusts, later described the use of such statistical mortality measures as "clinically meaningless and academically reckless."

National Care Service proposal§

As Health Secretary, Burnham pioneered the creation of a National Care Service (NCS), aiming to introduce a publicly funded social care system free at the point of use, mirrored on the National Health Service. The Department of Health published its green paper, Shaping the Future of Care Together, which proposed a NCS "on par with the NHS." This was followed in September by a public consultation dubbed the "Big Care Debate", which Gordon Brown promoted as a "crucial national debate" in July 2009. The consultation confirmed strong public appetite for social care reform, leading the government to opt for a phased rollout. The first stage started with the Personal Care at Home Act 2010, passed in April 2010. Burnham had formally launched the NCS a month earlier, granting all elderly and disabled people free social care. The second stage, scheduled for 2014, was designed to extend free social care to individuals in residential care for more than two years, with a third and final stage fully introducing free social care for all adults after 2015. Though, after Labour's defeat in the 2010 general election, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition led by David Cameron and Nick Clegg scrapped the initiative, and the Personal Care at Home Act 2010 was later repealed.

Shadow portfolios§

In May 2010, Burnham became Shadow Secretary of State for Health in the Miliband shadow cabinet. Burnham was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Education and election co-ordinator for the Labour Party in October 2010. As shadow education secretary, Burnham opposed the coalition government's plans for "free schools". He argued for moving the education system back towards a comprehensive system. A year later, he was again appointed to the role of Shadow Secretary of State for Health, which he held until 2015.

In September 2015, Burnham accepted an appointment as shadow home secretary in the first Corbyn shadow cabinet and remained in the role after the 2016 reshuffle. Burnham opposed the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy; appearing in 2016 alongside the anti-Prevent organisation MEND, Burnham said: "The Prevent duty to report extremist behaviour is today's equivalent of internment in Northern Ireland." On 25 April 2017, as his final act in Parliament, he delivered an adjournment debate that lasted over a hour on the infected blood scandal. Burnham used the debate to present a raft of evidence stating "this scandal amounts to a criminal cover-up on an industrial scale" and that "these are criminal acts". He said that if the Government did not set up an Investigation into the scandal that he would refer his evidence to the police. In July 2017, the then Prime Minister Theresa May announced an independent public inquiry into the scandal, after successive governments since the 1980s had refused to do so. The final report was published on 20 May 2024, concluding that the scandal could have been largely avoided, patients were knowingly exposed to "unacceptable risks", and that doctors, the NHS and the government tried to cover up what happened by "hiding the truth". The then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak apologised for the failures over the scandal, calling it "a decades-long moral failure".

Previous leadership campaigns§

In May 2010, after Brown's resignation as leader of the Labour Party after the formation of the Cameron–Clegg coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, Burnham declared his intention to stand in the subsequent leadership contest. He launched his leadership campaign in his Leigh constituency on 26 May. Burnham stood on his philosophy of "aspirational socialism", aligning himself with Intern Aware's campaign to end unpaid internships. He made policy commitments including re-creating the National Care Service, which he had previously introduced as health secretary before its abolition by the Coalition, and replacing inheritance tax with a land value tax. Burnham finished fourth, eliminated on the second ballot with 10.4% of the vote. After labour's defeat in the general election to Cameron's Conservatives, Burnham announced that he would stand to replace Miliband in the 2015 leadership election, the leadership contest was won by Ed Miliband.On 13 May 2015. He stressed the need to unite the party and country and "rediscover the beating heart of Labour". Burnham was initially considered the frontrunner in the race to succeed Miliband. The emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as the candidate representing the left-wing faction of the party, in June 2015, and the consequent growth in support for Corbyn's campaign saw Burnham's lead diminish to the point that Corbyn overtook him – this was first reflected in a YouGov poll published by The Times on 21 July. Burnham pledged to offer "a balanced plan for a strong economy and sound public finances, providing a genuine alternative to George Osborne's punishing austerity" in his official manifesto. His platform involved re-balancing the tax system, by restoring the 50p income tax rate that had been cut in the 2012 budget. He also signalled that he would not introduce the 'mansion tax' that was included in Labour's 2015 election manifesto, calling the proposal "the politics of envy". His other policies included increasing the minimum wage and scrapping the youth rate, to build a "true living wage for all ages" and abolishing zero-hour contracts and unpaid internships. He also announced that he would address the house price and rent crisis by giving councils greater freedom and increased borrowing powers to build more houses, regulate the private rented sector and introduce a land value tax on commercial properties. Burnham was criticised in late May 2015 for claiming £17,000 a year from the taxpayer to rent a London flat while owning another within walking distance of the Palace of Westminster. A spokesman for Burnham said that renting out the original flat was necessary to "cover his costs", as parliamentary rule changes meant he was no longer able to claim for mortgage interest expenses. He was also criticised for refusing to be interviewed by The Sun when it emerged he had given an interview to the newspaper during his first run for the Labour leadership, and been photographed in the back of a cab for the newspaper. Burnham announced that he would commit Labour to "a policy of progressive re-nationalisation" of the railway system in August 2015. There was some speculation in the media that the announcement was an attempt by the Burnham campaign to align itself further to the left of the party and win back voters it had lost to Corbyn's campaign, as nationalisation had formed a key part of Corbyn's economic policy. He continued to voice his opposition to the TTIP free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, arguing that it would undermine the National Health Service, as it would "open the floodgates" to private healthcare providers. He was also in favour of building a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Burnham came second to Corbyn in the election, with 19% of the vote in the first round, compared to 59% for Corbyn in September 2015.

Candidacy and election§

On 5 May 2016, a spokesperson for Burnham confirmed that he had been approached by party officials in Greater Manchester, asking him to consider resigning from Corbyn's shadow cabinet to run in the upcoming mayoral election in 2017. On 18 May 2016, he confirmed that he was standing for mayorship. Burnham was selected as the Labour candidate in August 2016. Burnham said that he would resign as Shadow Home Secretary once a replacement had been found, to concentrate on his mayoral bid in September 2016. He was succeeded by Diane Abbott in October. Burnham said, if elected as Greater Manchester's mayor, he would resign his seat as the member of parliament for Leigh. In the event, the 2017 general election was declared two weeks before the mayoral election, and Burnham did not stand as a candidate for parliament. Burnham was elected to the new role of Mayor of Greater Manchester on 5 May 2017. He gained 63% of the vote, winning majorities in all ten of Greater Manchester's boroughs. He said: "This is the dawn of a new era, not just for this city region but for politics in our country in his victory speech. It has since been too London-centric for too long. The old political and party structures haven't delivered for all people and for all places.... Greater Manchester is going to take control. We are going to change politics and make it work better for people." In the election of 6 May 2021, Burnham was re-elected as mayor, with 67% of the vote on a turnout of 34.7%. In the 2024 mayoral election, Burnham was elected for a third term with 63.4% of the vote, on a turnout of 32.5%. This was the first Greater Manchester mayoral election to use the first-past-the-post voting system, with Burnham winning in every ward but one. On Burnham stepping down as mayor, the local Manchester Evening News (MEN) newspaper gave him positive ratings for economic development and action on homelessness, although it felt he had not been as successful with police management. Its polling reported that he had a 65% approval rating. Jennifer Williams, who covered Burnham for the MEN and Financial Times, felt that Burnham had joined a longstanding "economic project dating back to the 1980s" to boost Manchester's economy and national standing, but had "injected a zeal into defining the city...to the masses" that increased its profile nationally while managing a "byzantine system" of different local authorities and bus operators, and was "loved by his workforce". She felt his career had faced more difficulties with bridging a divide between "Greater Manchester's resurgent city centre and its struggling post-industrial towns" and a tendency to "respond emotionally" to issues like homelessness "and leave the detail for later".

Homelessness and housing§

The issue of homelessness in Greater Manchester was a leading focus of Burnham's mayoral campaign. He pledged to donate 15% of his mayoral salary to charities tackling homelessness if elected. After his election he outlined his plan to launch a "homelessness fund", with money going to homeless charities and mental health and rehabilitation services. He pledged to end rough sleeping in Greater Manchester by 2020, but in November 2019 he admitted he would miss his target. As mayor, Burnham continued longstanding local policies of supporting construction, especially of housing and high-rise development; Jacob Reid of Bloomberg News felt that this had succeeded in keeping Manchester's city centre "booming again" after "decades of decline". Burnham opposed adding targets for affordable housing into private construction projects, arguing that it "doesn't work" and deters construction.

Public transport§

In 2020, Burnham signed off on a new £10 yearly charge for pensioners who wished to continue to use their TFGM travel passes on the region's trains and trams. The charge was intended to help fund a London-style bus system. Pensioners resident in London boroughs get free travel on most public transport in London from the age of 60, while Burnham kept the Manchester system linked to the much later state pension age.

Burnham pledged to bring Manchester's bus network back into public ownership by 2025. The plans were legally challenged by bus operators Stagecoach Group and Rotala, but in March 2022 the mayor and authority won the case at the High Court. Media analysts commented that the ruling could pave the way for other city regions in England to regulate bus services that had been privatised since the 1980s. Capped fares of £2 for adult single fares were introduced in September 2022. The integrated transport Bee Network started operating in Greater Manchester in 2023.

COVID-19 pandemic§

In March 2020, Burnham called for clearer advice on slowing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing his previous experience as health secretary during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. He welcomed the additional measures implemented across Greater Manchester and Lancashire by Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak in July during the pandemic, in the knowledge that (at the time) some areas across North West England had lower infection rates than the rest of the country. On 15 October 2020, Burnham, along with other North West leaders, backed away from government talks to place Greater Manchester in tier 3 – the most restrictive level – of a new three-tier categorisation. He cited the grants system for businesses and 80% furlough scheme for employees as insufficient, saying they would push people into poverty and destitution which would outweigh the impact of the virus if mitigated correctly. Many of the concerns such as the impact on businesses and employees were shared by local Conservative MPs in Greater Manchester and surrounding areas. For his campaigning to secure more furlough funding, he was dubbed the "King of the North" by the media. He did not secure as much extra money as he had wanted, being forced to lower his request for £90 million to £65 million.