LONDON (AP) — Andy Burnham is a political insider turned outsider who aims to be Britain’s next prime minister.
The 56-year-old politician presents himself as an amiable northern everyman who prefers T-shirts to a suit and tie and spends spare time playing soccer or spinning 1990s tunes during DJ battles.
He’s also an experienced politician whose career has taken him from high-level government jobs to the mayoralty of Greater Manchester, and now to the cusp
of the prime minister’s office.
Burnham is expected to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer after winning a seat in Parliament in a special election he hailed as a “turning point” for U.K. politics.
Burnham was born and raised in a pocket of northwest England between Liverpool and Manchester, the son of a British Telecom engineer and a receptionist. He joined the Labour Party as a teenager, attended Cambridge University and was first elected to Parliament in 2001.
He was a lawmaker for a decade and a half, rising through the ranks under Prime Minister Tony Blair and serving in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Cabinet between 2007 and 2010.
He ran twice for the leadership of the Labour Party, in 2010 and 2015, and lost badly each time, before quitting Westminster to run for Manchester mayor.
His tenure has seen him nicknamed the King of the North, a “Game of Thrones”-inspired nod both to his championing of his home region and his barely disguised political ambition.
He gained the moniker during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he harangued Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson over what he called a “London-centric” approach to the crisis.
Burnham has led the Greater Manchester region since 2017, overseeing rapid regeneration for the city where the Industrial Revolution was forged. The city center has boomed, with skyscrapers blooming on vacant post-industrial sites. Many residents praise him for championing the city. He took a piecemeal public transport system under public control, branded it the Bee Network and improved its services.
He has also won praise for supporting the campaign for justice for victims of the Hillsborough disaster, when 97 Liverpool soccer fans were killed in a crush at a game in Sheffield in 1989. Years of advocacy led by victims’ families exposed mistakes and wrongdoing by police – who initially spread a false narrative blaming drunken fans – and extracted an apology from the government.
Burnham is perceived to be to the political left of Starmer – an asset with Labour members – and is acknowledged as one of the party’s best communicators. The rather stiff public speaker of his earlier leadership bids has been replaced by a relaxed figure in jeans and open-necked shirts.
His three mayoral election victories and decisive win in Thursday's election in Makerfield, where he trounced the candidate of the anti-immigration party Reform UK, have cemented his status as a winner. Many in the party hope he can reverse Labour’s precipitous decline in popularity since Starmer won an election landslide two years ago.
Makerfield voter Ellen Picton, 66, said she was “absolutely thrilled” by Burnham's victory.
“I believe that he’s a man for the common people,” she said. “Andy is like one of us, and he understands what we are going through."
Burnham is pledging to repeat on a national scale his signature brand of “Manchesterism” – a politics that, he likes to say, puts people and place before party and centers on regions ignored by governments in London.
“What we’ve built in Greater Manchester needs to go national,” Burnham said during the campaign. “I know what it is to turn places around.”
But it remains to be seen whether he can have national appeal, said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
“Calling him King of the North in some ways, I think, raises the question of whether he can also be King of the South, King of the East and King of the West,″ Bale said. “However, he does seem to have the kind of X factor that encourages people to think of him as not an ordinary politician, somebody who can communicate with normal people, someone who can speak human.”
In a postelection speech to supporters, Burnham sketched out his priorities: better vocational education and jobs for young people, lower energy bills and rail fares and “an end to trickle down economics, which didn’t trickle down very much at all to places like this.”
Critics say Burnham’s politics are vague and fail to grapple with tough issues, such as where the money will come from to pay for his pledges. And they note that running a country of 70 million is a lot different from overseeing a city region of 3 million.
Nonetheless Burnham now has momentum that could propel him into 10 Downing Street.
"Andy Burnham is probably one of the most popular politicians in the country,” Bale said. “Although, to be honest, that is not saying much.”
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Kwiyeon Ha in Ashton-in-Makerfield, England contributed to this story.
