Andy Burnham declared new Labour leader on way to being next UK prime minister

Andy Burnham has been announced formally as the new leader of the Labour Party in his final step towards becoming the next UK prime minister.

Following the announcement, he gave a speech at Trades Union Congress on Friday, ahead of officially taking office as prime minister next week.

The results of a leadership contest to replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer — in which Burnham was the only contender — were announced by Labour Party leader Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood at the gathering.

Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, had secured nominations from 379 of the 403 Labour politicians in the House of Commons as of Thursday night.

“What a moment,” he said, thanking the crowd. “What backing you’ve given me.”

Burnham said he’s “ready” to take on his new role of leading the country and paid tribute to his predecessor for getting the party back in power and laying the foundations for his future work.

The prime minister in waiting is about to take office

The 56-year-old has been prime minister-in-waiting for weeks, since winning a special election for a seat in Parliament a month ago, but he has revealed little detail about his policy priorities.

He will arrive in Number 10 Downing Street largely unknown to voters outside Manchester.

He sketched out some priorities in Friday’s speech, promising to deliver “hope in every heart” and “good growth in very post code”, in part by transferring power from central government in London to local leaders in cities and regions.

“We will take power back from Westminster and Whitehall and give it to the place you live,” he told the audience.

“More power over life’s essentials so you can make them work better.”

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Starmer announced last month that he would resign after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.

Labour regularly trails behind anti-immigration party Reform UK in opinion polls, and the governing party had catastrophic results in local elections in May, triggering pressure on Starmer to step down that he couldn’t resist.

Burnham deemed a better communicator than Starmer

Burnham brings a more relaxed style of leadership than the rather stern Starmer, and is regarded as one of the Labour Party’s best communicators. But he faces many of the same problems as his predecessor, including a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living squeeze fuelled by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and overstretched public services.

And his promises of a new, less divisive politics are not too different to what Starmer pledged when he took office in 2024.

“I will work to build a new politics. The country is crying out for it,” Burnham said.

“How can politicians point fingers when living standards are falling and politics as a whole isn’t working for them? It infuriates them and makes them switch off.”

He said he would have the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected,” such as tackling the patchy access to social care for those who need it because of age, illness or disability.

It’s a pressing issue in a country with an ageing population, and one that has foxed previous Labour and Conservative governments.

Burnham says he’ll reverse 40 years of bad decisions

He highlighted plans to focus on economic renewal, more public control of key sectors and creating new modern industrial jobs, arguing that Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralised and economic power privatised.”

That’s the decade when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher oversaw policies of privatisation, deindustrialisation and political centralisation that transformed the UK economy.

“Slowly, at times imperceptibly, over four decades, political and economic power drained away out of our communities in every region and nation of the UK,” Burnham said, calling Britain’s change of prime ministers — for the sixth time in a decade — “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years.”

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Starmer will remain prime minister until Monday, when he formally tenders his resignation to King Charles III. The King will then ask Burnham to form a government.

Britain’s parliamentary democracy allows governing parties to change leaders, and thus prime ministers, without the need for a general election. The next national election doesn’t have to be held until 2029.

New prime ministers have come with increasing frequency in recent years. Burnham will be the UK’s seventh leader since 2016.

He faces strong and sometimes conflicting pressures.

Unions welcomed his focus on living standards but said the test would be whether he can deliver. Business group the Confederation of British Industry praised his emphasis on economic growth, but also aid that “the challenge is execution.”