Andy Burnham, Britain’s new prime minister, photographed on Friday during a special conference of his Labor Party. (Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP).
Andy Burnham will pave the “new way” for Britain going forward when he is named the leader of the ruling Labor Party, and the country’s next prime minister, during a special conference on Friday.
On Monday, Burnham will officially replace Keir Starmer, who resigned as prime minister and leader of the party last month.
Starmer returned Labor to power in July 2024 after 14 years in opposition with a victory over the Conservatives, who had five prime ministers in the turmoil sparked by the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Starmer’s premiership was quickly marked by domestic policy mistakes and controversy, including his appointment of former Jeffrey Epstein associate Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US.
Disastrous local and regional election results in May put further pressure on Starmer, which proved difficult to resist after Burnham won a parliamentary by-election on 18 June, allowing him to make himself available for the leadership position.
Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham has already made it clear he will put his name in the running for the leadership of the struggling Labor Party. In his victory speech, he warned that the party had its “last chance for change”.
Burnham will become Britain’s seventh prime minister in the last 10 years. His party is full of hope that he has the best chance of reining in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. Recent polls have predicted Farage’s party could win the next general election in 2029.
Burnham, nicknamed “King of the North” because of his victory in three consecutive elections as mayor of Manchester, aims to get Britain’s economy going again by decentralizing political power.
Keir Starmer at the Nasrec exhibition center in Johannesburg on 22 November 2025. (Photo: Leon Neal/AFP).
He said in a speech earlier that Britain “made a series of wrong decisions in the 1980s” when “political power was centralized and economic power was privatized”.
According to Burnham, a “new path will be paved” to make the economy work for all Britons.
He comes from the party’s so-called soft left and is in favor of more public control of services and reindustrialisation.
Labor MPs again hope Burnham will be better at communicating with the public than Starmer and that he will be prepared to take a more radical approach to reforming Britain’s battered public services.
Before Burnham can tackle these issues, he will first face Starmer’s previous challenges: a struggling economy, high government borrowing costs and immigrants arriving in small boats.
Burnham, who will take office after meeting King Charles III as head of state, has pledged to stick to Labour’s 2024 election manifesto by not raising the country’s primary tax.