Veteran UK politician Andy Burnham was confirmed as the new leader of the ruling Labour Party on Friday, and is now set to be Britain’s next prime minister.
“There being no other eligibly nominated candidate, it is therefore my honour to declare that the duly elected leader of the Labour Party is Andy Burnham,” interior minister Shabana Mahmood told a special party conference.
Burnham takes over from Keir Starmer, who resigned last month as premier after months of political turmoil, scandal and missteps.
Speaking in London after being formally confirmed as Labour leader and succeeding Keir Starmer, Burnham said he had not yet made up his mind about the composition of his top team.
“I haven’t made any decisions yet about who will be in that top team. But I will soon, and when I have, you will see it reflects all parts of our party, all communities,” Burnham said. Centre-left Labour retains an overwhelming majority in parliament after the 2024 elections, so the leader of the largest party becomes the country’s prime minister, without new polls being held.
It is only four weeks since ex-Manchester mayor Burnham sensationally returned as a member of parliament following a nine-year absence, determined to replace Starmer.
On Monday, he will become the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade, with Labour MPs betting Burnham is the party’s best chance of reining in Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform UK party, tipped in the polls to win the next general election, expected in 2029.
Nicknamed “King of the North” for winning three successive elections to the Greater Manchester mayoralty, Burnham’s flagship idea is devolving powers to other cities in a bid to fire up Britain’s economy, including by setting up a “Number 10 North” office. He said the past four decades since “the 1980s have not been kind to the places that built our party, nor to the communities across the UK in rural and coastal areas. So we pledge today, to them, to be better.”
“If we want an economy and a country that works for all people and places… then it requires a new path to the one we’ve been on for the last 40 years,” he said.
The new party leader also said that he would be a pro-business leader of the Labour Party, saying his experience working with businesses as mayor of Greater Manchester would be a model for government.