Zeynep ConkarAndy Burnham, the long-serving mayor of Greater Manchester, is widely expected to become the United Kingdom's next prime minister after Keir Starmer's resignation triggered a leadership contest.
Burnham, 56, was born in Liverpool and studied English at Cambridge University before being elected Labour MP for Leigh in 2001.
He spent the next decade and a half climbing the Labour ranks under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, eventually serving as health secretary.
He ran for the Labour leadership twice: in 2010 and again in 2015, when he lost decisively to Jeremy Corbyn. He reinvented himself in 2017 as Greater Manchester's first directly elected mayor, a post he held for nine years.
As mayor, Burnham renationalised Manchester's bus network and publicly clashed with the Conservative government over Covid-era funding for the city.
Burnham is expected to adopt a more democratic socialist agenda, says political analyst Klaus Jurgens.
“The key questions will be what that means in practice, how he intends to implement it, and whether he can keep Labour's hard-left faction onside while doing so,” Jurgens tells TRT World.
The mechanics of his return were meticulously engineered.
A Makerfield by-election was called specifically to give Burnham a parliamentary seat from which to challenge Starmer, and he won it comfortably on 19 June, securing 54.8 per cent of the vote.
Within days, rival leadership contender Wes Streeting threw his support behind Burnham, clearing the field. Shortly after, Starmer announced his resignation.
“The fact is that Burnham, the successful former mayor of Greater Manchester, decided to run for Parliament, clearly planning ahead for a challenge to Starmer, as you must be an MP to become prime minister,” Jurgens says.
“He remains very popular and fought off Reform UK by a margin of 9,000 votes.”
“Prime ministerial material? Yes. Can he secure the backing of 81 fellow MPs? Probably. His biggest challenge will be appeasing Labour's powerful hard-left faction,” he adds.
Burnham is assembling a team that straddles Labour's internal divides, drawing on figures from both the party's Blairite right and its soft left.
He has reportedly asked James Purnell, a former Blair- and Brown-era cabinet minister who was once chair of the Labour Friends of Israel group, and, more recently, the chief executive of the lobbying firm Flint Global, to serve as his chief of staff.
His stance on Gaza
Burnham's record on Palestine-Israel is hard to defend.
In 2015, while bidding for the Labour leadership, he joined Labour Friends of Israel, branded the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement "spiteful".
He pledged Israel would be his first state visit as leader, describing it as a "democracy" despite Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the mounting killings, torture and imprisonment of Palestinians with impunity. It has prompted international condemnation, legal challenges at the International Court of Justice, and allegations of violations of international law.
Years later, as Israel's genocide in Gaza killed at least 72,000 Palestinians, Burnham still could not bring himself to use the word ‘genocide’.
Pressed directly by the Guardian, he claimed he could not "judge things of that enormity" from his vantage point as a regional mayor, an evasion notable in a politician who has never been shy about weighing in on matters far beyond his Manchester remit.
Adding to that picture, the appointment of a former Labour Friends of Israel chair as his right-hand man suggests where the balance of influence within his inner circle will lie.
“Never a dull day in the Labour Party… as it becomes increasingly likely that Burnham will become Britain's next prime minister, have potential contenders already given up?” Jurgens says.
“There are three other possible alternatives: Ed Miliband, Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood. Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, could also emerge as a last-minute dark horse.”
