Andy Burnham will return to parliament on Monday after a nine-year absence as the MP for Makerfield. The former mayor of Manchester was elected by a landslide, with a majority of more than 9,000 votes. The path to number 10 is now clearer than ever. But what does Burnham believe? of New statesman has taken a look at the political stances Burnham has taken over the past year.
immigration
Immigration has caused some major divisions between the left and soft right of the Labor Party in recent months. Shabana Mahmood’s controversial reforms to the immigration and asylum system include ending permanent refugee status and removing government support from asylum seekers it deems not to need it or who are breaking the law. If he makes it to No. 10, Burnham will have to control some of these divisions.
Burnham is understood to be backing Mahmood’s reforms and is said to keep him in his cabinet if he becomes prime minister (according to reporting from May 20). But publicly he has said different things. He was critical of Mahmood’s reforms in an interview with Radio 4 on November 20. He said: “I have a concern about leaving people without the ability to settle… It could limit the Home Office’s ability to deal with the backlog. And it could leave people feeling left out and unable to integrate.”
However, he appears to have changed his position slightly during the campaign. In an interview in June 9Burnham said: “It’s about control, isn’t it? It feels like the country isn’t running properly, running things properly, and the small boat issue speaks volumes for that. People want this addressed. We have to go further.” In the same interview, Burnham added: “We need to use detention more so that people who have no basis for a claim are not admitted to the country.”
The economy
In an interview with New statesman published on September 24, Burnham said: “We have to get beyond this thing of being in trouble in the bond markets.” He doubled down on these comments in a speech at the Institute for Fiscal Studies IN January 20when he said Britain is in “a low-growth loop” and “our shallow adversarial political system has shown itself unable to pull us out of it and this only adds to the volatility, so we find ourselves stuck in a mess and struggling in the bond markets”.
In one interview in May 18after the Makerfield by-election was announced, Burnham said he would stick to the government’s current fiscal rules. “Let me say this really clearly. I support fiscal rules. There has to be a plan to reduce the debt,” he said, “but beyond that we have to change the policy and take the turbulence out of British politics because that’s a cause of uncertainty which then has that impact on the markets.”
He is committed to keeping the triple lock on the state pension. And, after initially appearing to support state compensation for Waspi women (Burnham said June 10 that they “deserve some recompense for injustice”), a spokesman for Burnham returned IN June 11 adding that he now “accepts that the decision not to award compensation to the group is final.”
In his victory speech, Burnham said the UK needs an “economy that works for everyone” and “an end to the recessionary economy, which didn’t go down very well in places like (Makerfield).
Electoral Reform
Burnham has long been an advocate of electoral reform. At the start of the race, Caroline Lucas, the former leader of the Greens, urged her party not to run an all-out campaign against Burnham because of his support for Proportional Representation.
This is the policy in which Burnham has proved perhaps most consistent. IN an interview IN May 21 He said: “I think there should be reform in the electoral system.” He later doubled down in an interview in May 31saying, “I am committed to proportional representation.” Burnham is unlikely to make any major, sweeping constitutional changes until after the general election. Seventy-eight MPs of the Labor Party have signed an amendment to the Representation of the People bill that calls for the creation of the National Commission for Electoral Reform. Can Burnham – who is now one of their number – follow suit?
Brexit
A Remain supporter in 2016, Burnham told the Labor Party conference in September 29 that he would like to see the UK rejoin the EU in his lifetime. Burnham was put off back in his position as Wes Streeting said at a Progress conference in May 16 that the United Kingdom under his leadership would use its forthcoming manifesto to seek a mandate to rejoin the European Union.
In a speech the next day (May 17), Burnham seemed to soften his position (which made sense because Makerfield was a largely leave-voting constituency). He said: “My view is that Brexit has been damaging,” he said, “but the last thing we need to do is revisit these arguments. I am not proposing that the UK should rejoin the EU. I respect the referendum.” Burnham clarified this position in an interview in June 4, reiterating that he would like to see the UK rejoin the EU in his lifetime, but that “doesn’t mean you run the referendum now”.
PROTECTION
The government was thrown into chaos last week when John Healey, the defense secretary, and Al Carns, the armed forces minister, resigned over the proposed Defense Investment Plan. Burnham has previously supported calls to increase defense spending; IN April 29, he said Labor should consider an “other course” which could involve borrowing outside the fiscal rules to pay for increased spending.
However, he has recently changed his view on how the government should finance any increase in defense spending. ACTIvE June 12days before voters went to the polls in Makerfield, but after Healey and Carns had resigned, Burnham echoed former Labor defense secretary George Robertson’s call to cut welfare spending to pay for defence. In an interview, Burnham said the UK should not be “ambivalent” about cutting benefits in order to pour more money into defence. But he added that this should not be done by what he called “crude cuts … that create a reaction” and instead should move “towards a more preventive state that makes the right investments to support people in work”.
North Sea oil and gas
Although he is a close ally of Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, Burnham told New Statesman’s Alba Rea in an interview in June 3 that he is open-minded about North Sea oil and gas. “I have an open mind, you know. I don’t have a fixed kind of position.”
Public services
Burnham has been clear that he would like to bring the UK’s energy and water systems back under public control. For example, in an interview in May 16Burnham said the UK needs to put more things back into public control: “energy, housing, water, transport”. He pointed to Manchester Bee Network buses: “I put them back under public control with £2 fares, so you take that principle and apply it to energy and apply it to water (industry) – that’s what I think we should be doing.”
Parliamentary Labor Party
Starmer’s premiership has been defined in part by a turbulent relationship with the Parliamentary Labor Party. Suspensions of the whip have been used several times by this Labor government to rebuke rebellious MPs. What would Burnham do differently?
IN an interview in June 10, 2025Burnham said, “We need to have more of a cooperative policy.” He added that there was “far too much” factionalism in the Labor Party and said he had never subscribed to a “wing”. He has previously suggested scrapping the flogging system altogether and said in the same interview: “People often spit out their coffee when I say that.”
Burnham reiterated this stance during the campaign. IN an interview IN May 31 he described the “whip shirt” before adding: “I look back to when I was in the PLP… if we had gone with what the PLP said… the conscience of the PLP will lead the government.” He criticized the way the whip is used by the government. “Where it goes wrong is if a small group of people at the top use the whip as an instrument of intimidation … don’t punish (the PLP) for taking a position that relates to the people they serve.”
(Further reading: Only Keir Starmer can take away Labor’s hope now)
