Live Updates: Andy Burnham Becomes Labour Leader and Is Set to Be Britain’s Prime Minister
Mr. Burnham promised more public control of essential services, a shift of power toward local governments and a push for economic growth.
Andy Burnham was installed on Friday as the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, the final step before King Charles III asks him on Monday to form a government and become the country’s 59th prime minister.
In remarks to a special conference of Labour Party members in central London, Mr. Burnham called for having “the courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected” and pledged to “challenge a political culture and an economic model that simply doesn’t work well enough for ordinary people.”
The former mayor of Greater Manchester faces many of the same structural problems that have caused the country to churn through prime ministers every few years since 2016: slow economic growth, high government debt, a struggling national health service and deep political divisions.
Mr. Burnham, who replaces outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has so far offered few details about how he would confront those. His speech was equally vague. He talked about providing hope to people and handing power back to local communities, and said he would be a pro-business prime minister. At the same time, he said his government would be a “distinctively Labour” one. He said he would pursue a “a problem-solving rather than a point-scoring approach” by avoiding the infighting that has often plagued the Labour Party.
“When you add all of that together,” he said, “a plan to give people more power to bring back the hope we have all been missing too much. People are looking for us to deliver, and we will.”
In his career as mayor of Greater Manchester, Mr. Burnham repeatedly argued that the national government in Westminster was ignoring the needs of local communities, especially in the north of England. He has promised to set up an office in Manchester as a symbol of the government’s determination to ensure that changes.
“Britain took a series of wrong turns in the 1980s,” he said Friday, referring to the transformative and contentious government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which oversaw extensive privatization and deregulation.
“The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs,” he said. “That, in turn, led to the concentration of more wealth and power in the hands of fewer people and fewer places. Large parts of Britain were deindustrialized.”
His criticism of past governments implicitly included his own Labour Party, as he said that “this generation of politicians, myself included, have failed” the people of Britain. He promised that his administration would embark on “a new path to the one we’ve been on for the last 40 years.”
This was third time lucky for Andy Burnham, who failed twice before to become Labour Party leader in 2010 and 2015. Just a few months ago his path to getting the top job looked to be blocked when he was prevented from running for Parliament in a special election. But when he tried again, following Labour’s disastrous local election results in May, he was allowed to stand and won the Makerfield seat decisively. Today he became leader unopposed, illustrating how quickly political fortunes can change in today’s tumultuous climate.