Britain’s next prime minister promised to take power away from London and expand public control over key services after winning the Labor leadership unopposed.
MANCHESTER, England (CN) – Andy Burnham vowed on Friday to deliver Britain’s biggest political and economic reform in four decades after being confirmed as leader of the ruling Labor Party, putting him on track to become prime minister on Monday.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, won the leadership unopposed with the support of 379 of Labour’s 403 MPs at a special party conference in central London.
He succeeds Keir Starmer, who announced last month that it would retire after losing support within the party and suffering heavy defeats in local elections in England, Scotland and Wales.
In his victory speech, Burnham pledged to reverse what he called decades of over-centralised government and return power to Britain’s regions.
Power for the regions
“Britain took a series of wrong turns in the 1980s,” Burnham said, arguing that political power was concentrated in London while economic power was privatized.
He promised to lead “the biggest change in 40 years of British politics”, saying a Labor government under his leadership would be “unabashedly Labour” and put “people and places at the heart of everything we do”.
Burnham said Labor lawmakers had “heard the cry from the people of Makerfield on behalf of forgotten places everywhere” and pledged to rebuild trust with voters who had left the party.
Burnham also vowed to unite Labor after years of internal divisions, saying factionalism had weakened the party and hampered its ability to take on Britain’s growing political right, with the far-right UK Reform party consistently leading the polls and winning hundreds of seats in local elections.
He said he would decentralize power from Whitehall, the administrative center of government in London, giving regional mayors and local authorities greater control over transport, housing and economic policy. He has also proposed the creation of a second prime minister’s office in Manchester, called “No 10 North”.
His agenda includes Britain’s biggest council house building program since the years after the Second World War, greater public control of water, energy and transport services, lower net migration, welfare reform and maintaining Labour’s fiscal rules excluding increases in income tax, value added tax and National Insurance payroll taxes.
Who will be in the cabinet?
The leadership win paves the way for Burnham to become Britain’s seventh prime minister in 10 years.
Under Britain’s parliamentary system, the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons becomes prime minister after being formally appointed by the monarch.
Starmer will remain prime minister over the weekend before resigning to King Charles III on Monday morning. Burnham will be invited to form a government later that day.
In his speech, Burnham did not announce any cabinet appointments.
Speculation has been building over who will become chancellor, Britain’s finance minister, a choice likely to signal how aggressively he intends to pursue his economic agenda.
Much of the attention has focused on the current Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, who is on the left of the party.
Initially seen as the favorite for chancellor because of his close political ties to Burnham, Miliband has in recent days been overtaken by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, from the party’s right. Her appointment is likely to secure more centrist Labor lawmakers while balancing Burnham’s more interventionist platform.
Who is Andy Burnham?
The former health secretary served in the Labor governments of prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before leaving Parliament in 2017 to become mayor of Greater Manchester.
He built a national profile through transport reforms that brought the region’s bus and tram network under public control, as well as frequent clashes with Boris Johnson’s Conservative government over Covid-19 restrictions.
His signature promise as mayor was to end rough sleeping in Greater Manchester by 2020. The number of people sleeping rough fell sharply before rising again as Britain’s wider housing crisis deepened.
Burnham returned to Parliament last month winning the special election in Makerfieldopening a path to challenge Starmer for the Labor leadership as the prime minister’s approval ratings plummeted.
He now faces immediate pressure on defense spending as NATO members move towards higher military spending targets, while Labor has also committed to major domestic investment.
Courthouse News reporter James Francis Whitehead is in England.
Subscribe to our free newsletters
Our weekly newsletter Closing arguments provides the latest on ongoing trials, major litigation and decisions in courts around the US and the world, while monthly Under the lights feeds legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.
