Andy Burnham is a political insider turned outsider who goals 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 Nineties tunes during DJ battles.
He’s also an experienced politician whose profession 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 predicted 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.
His nickname is inspired by ‘Game of Thrones’
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 teen, 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 every 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 each to his championing of his home region and his barely disguised political ambition.
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He gained the moniker in the course of 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 town where the Industrial Revolution was forged. The town center has boomed, with skyscrapers blooming on vacant post-industrial sites. Many residents praise him for championing town. 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 federal government.
He pledges to finish trickle-down economics
Burnham is perceived to be to the political left of Starmer – an asset with Labour members – and is acknowledged as one in all the party’s best communicators. The quite 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 within 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 consider that he’s a person for the common people,” she said. “Andy is like one in all us, and he understands what we’re 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 in-built Greater Manchester must go national,” Burnham said in the course of the campaign. “I do know what it’s to show places around.”
However it stays 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 feel, raises the query of whether he will also be King of the South, King of the East and King of the West,″ Bale said. “Nonetheless, he does appear to have the form of X factor that encourages people to consider him as not an strange politician, someone who can communicate with normal people, someone who can speak human.”
In a postelection speech to supporters, Burnham sketched out his priorities: higher 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 in any respect to places like this.”
Critics say Burnham’s politics are vague and fail to grapple with tough issues, akin to where the cash will come from to pay for his pledges. They usually note that running a rustic of 70 million is rather a lot different from overseeing a city region of three million.
Nonetheless Burnham now has momentum that might propel him into 10 Downing Street.
“Andy Burnham might be some of the popular politicians within the country,” Bale said. “Although, to be honest, that is just not saying much.”
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