Jill Lawless
Andy Burnham promised to bring hope to the British people and purpose to the country’s floundering Labour government as he was officially declared party leader on Friday, clearing his final hurdle to take office as prime minister next week.
The former mayor of Greater Manchester was the only contender in the centre-left party’s leadership contest to replace departing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was forced out by a Labour rebellion. Friday’s announcement was a foregone conclusion after Burnham secured nominations from 379 of the 403 Labour lawmakers in the House of Commons.
“We’re going to give them hope back,” Burnham told an audience of lawmakers, party activists and trade union leaders in his first speech as leader. “This is a proud moment you have given me and my family today, and an emotional one, but it is one for which I am ready.”
“I have a plan,” he added, in a bit to reassure a party that has seen its popularity nosedive since winning a landslide election victory two years ago.
Australian expat Catherine West, a Labour MP since 2015 who was among the 379 to vote for Burnham, received one nomination from Bermondsey and Old Southwark MP Neil Coyle.
“I’m flattered … but I’m backing Andy,” West said in a post on X. In May, West vowed to launch a formal challenge against Starmer, in a bid to force cabinet ministers to choose a new leader.
Burnham, as he took to the stage, said: “I don’t need to say commiserations to Catherine West because she backed me too. Thanks, Catherine.”
Burnham has been prime minister-in-waiting for weeks, since winning a special election for a seat in Parliament a month ago, but he has revealed little detail about his policy priorities. He will arrive in Number 10 Downing Street largely unknown to voters outside Manchester.
He sketched out some priorities in Friday’s speech, promising to deliver “hope in every heart” and “good growth in very post code,” in part by transferring power from central government in London to local leaders in cities and regions.
“We will take power back from Westminster and Whitehall and give it to the place you live,” he told the audience. “More power over life’s essentials so you can make them work better.”
Starmer announced last month that he would resign after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.
Labour regularly trails behind anti-immigration party Reform UK in opinion polls, and the governing party had catastrophic results in local elections in May, triggering pressure on Starmer to step down that he couldn’t resist.
Burnham brings a more relaxed style of leadership than Starmer, and is regarded as one of the Labour Party’s best communicators. But he faces many of the same problems as his predecessor, including a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living squeeze fuelled by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and overstretched public services.
And his promises of a new, less divisive politics are not too different to what Starmer pledged when he took office in 2024.
“I will work to build a new politics. The country is crying out for it,” Burnham said. “How can politicians point fingers when living standards are falling and politics as a whole isn’t working for them? It infuriates them and makes them switch off.”
He said he would have the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected,” such as tackling the patchy access to social care for those who need it because of age, illness or disability. It’s a pressing issue in a country with an ageing population, and one that has foxed previous Labour and Conservative governments.
He highlighted plans to focus on economic renewal, more public control of key sectors and creating new modern industrial jobs, arguing that Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralised and economic power privatised.”
That’s the decade when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher oversaw policies of privatisation, deindustrialisation and political centralisation that transformed the UK economy.
“Slowly, at times imperceptibly, over four decades, political and economic power drained away out of our communities in every region and nation of the UK,” Burnham said, calling Britain’s change of prime ministers “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years”.
Starmer will remain prime minister until Monday, when he formally tenders his resignation to King Charles III. The King will then ask Burnham to form a government.
Britain’s parliamentary democracy allows governing parties to change leaders, and thus prime ministers, without the need for a general election. The next national election doesn’t have to be held until 2029.
