By Hannah H, Year 12
For many of us Andy Burnham is a familiar name floating in and out of the news in recent weeks with even more prevalence in recent days following the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Despite his recent moments in the limelight his political career spans from before the turn of the millennia. Andy Burnham currently sits at the top of the list of most popular politicians at 35% popularity (I’ll let you make your own opinions from that) and recently won a 9,000 majority in the recent Makerfield by-election. Looking at Burnham with a wider scope than his recent success this article plans to briefly outline; who is Andy Burnham, his political career and ideological beliefs, his role in the future of the Labour Party and overall how the King of the North came to be.
Burnham was born and raised in Liverpool, kicking his political career off at an early he joined the Labour party at 15 years old. He completed his education at Cambridge, reading English and pursued a political career being a researcher and special advisor.
In 2001, after 16 years in the Labour Party, Burnham was elected to be the MP of Leigh, a position which he held until 2017. During his time as MP, Burnham held many cabinet roles, serving under Gordon Brown (in government), Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn (in opposition). His roles include Chief Secretary of the Treasury (where he assumed the deputy role in the Treasury) the Shadow Secretary for Home, Education and Health. However, Burnham’s career has not been exclusively serving in Cabinet, he ran to become party leader in 2015 coming second to Corbyn and a suffered a harsher defeat in 2010 coming in 4th place out of the five candidates in the leadership race that elected Ed Miliband.
When Burnham decided to no longer stand in 2017 he delivered powerful final speeches on the Contaminated Blood Scandal and the Hillsborough inquiry, calling for ‘real change’ in Britain politics. Soon afterwards he stood as Metropolitan Mayor of Manchester winning the election with a 63% majority along with majorities in all 10 Greater Manchester constituencies. As Metro Mayor, Burnham has tried to tackle many significant issues in and around the Greater Manchester area, such as homelessness and public transport. In this role he failed to meet his aim of ending rough sleeping by 2019 and later signed off a £10 charge for pensioners to use public transport among many other policies. Burnham, having been re-elected as an MP (in Makerfield this time) now wishes to run in a leadership election for head of the Labour Party and is the current favorite to succeed Keir Starmer.
Burnham has described himself as a socialist and a soft left alternative to Keir Starmer. 'Soft left' here refers to a moderate type of social democracy promoting a wide spectrum of ideas. Despite Burnham’s self declaration of political beliefs it does not stop jokes and jeers from circling: A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a bar. The barman says, ‘What are you drinking, Andy?’. (A true political chameleon or just a glory hunting MP. As said previously you all can make up your own minds on that one.)
At the point of publishing this article we can only assume at what Burnham’s manifesto for party leadership might be. One can assume it would be something similar to his beliefs of 'soft leftism' but to be certain we simply have to wait.
After stepping down as party leader Starmer has left a significant timescale for the Labour Party to arrange their affairs as Parliament is sent on summer recess, starting from the 17th of July. Starmer set out the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party to accept nominations from the 9th-17th of July before starting the leadership contest. During this time Starrmer will remain as PM leading the Labour Government until a new Labour leader is selected. The nominees will need to meet the requirements of 20% of party support and 5% of constituency parties or three affiliates. Of these affiliates two must be trade unions.
The Institute of Government has outlined below a potential leadership contest in which Andy Burnham stands as a nominee.
In conclusion, Burnham is an incredibly charismatic leader and face of Northern Labour. While the future leadership contest relies on many hypotheticals we can only wait and see if Andy Burnham, King of the North, will be crowned Party Leader.
