Veteran Westminster swamp creature turned ‘King of the North’ political chameleon Andy Burnham has been given the keys to Number 10 Downing Street, officially taking over the office of Prime Minister on Monday after Sir Keir Starmer was forced to resign just over two years after taking power.
The London political churn has spat out another one. Sir Keir Starmer formally resigned as Prime Minister to make way for former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who became the seventh prime minister in a decade, and fifth to take power in less than four years. While Burnham presents as a more personable figure than his predecessor, it remains to be seen how far northern charm will take him and if he can deliver on the key priorities of the British public.
Starmer attempted to hold his head high on Monday morning as he left Downing Street — as opposed to the tearful resignation announcement he delivered last month — claiming that he left the country in a “stronger and fairer” position than it was when he came into office. This was clearly not the opinion of the British public, who delivered Starmer’s Labour Party an electoral drubbing in the local ‘mid-term’ elections in May in favour of Brexit boss Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
The defeat came in the wake of his government failing to return the British economy to growth while imposing the highest tax burden on the nation since the Second World War and having failed to protect the country’s borders, with over 70,000 illegals crossing the English Channel under his watch, the most of any modern prime minister.
The Starmer government was marred from the start, having bungled the response to the Southport massacre, in which he appeared to have more rage toward the so-called “far-right” rioters than towards the Rwandan-heritage teen who stabbed three young girls to death and left ten more injured at a Taylor Swift dance party just days into his term. However, the drumbeat call for his resignation truly ramped up last autumn following the release of the Epstein files by the Trump administration in the United States, which revealed that Starmer’s ambassador to Washington, Peter ‘Prince of Darkness’ Mandelson, had continued his close relationship with the New York financier long after he was convicted of his first child prostitution offence.
Sir Keir attempted to limp on, throwing his longtime political ally, Chief of Staff, and architect of his rise, Morgan McSweeney, to the wolves. Yet his continued presence as Prime Minister appeared more of a function of no challenger being foolish to take over the job — and therefore the blame — before the expected heavy losses at the May elections, shortly after which self-described socialist Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham finally put himself forward for the top job.
This morning, Burnham met with King Charles III for the traditional “kissing hands” ceremony, in which the British Monarch officially invited Burnham to form a government in his name.
In his first address to the nation as Prime Minister outside Number 10, Burnham acknowledged the political turmoil that led to his rise, saying: “I am acutely conscious that I am… the seventh Prime Minister since 2016. Making this a moment for reflection, and new resolution… it requires my generation of politicians to raise our game, and rise to the challenge. Britain needs to show the world we can regain our stability once again.”
In his speech, the new PM pitched himself as an economic reformer, promising to bring prosperity from London to the rest of the country.
“We will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land, so that they can do more, and in doing more, build a new economy where we put life’s essentials back under stronger public control to make them affordable to you again,” he said.
Despite his folksy act, having taken the moniker of ‘King of the North’, following his nearly decade in office as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham appeared to have consciously concocted such an image after spending the prior decade as a Westminster insider under the governments of former Labour PMs Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
His rise to the highest office in the land over the past month also had the distinct odour of swamp. To put forward a leadership challenge against Starmer, Burnham needed a seat in the House of Commons, and the constituency of Makerfield was conveniently vacated by anti-Breitbart activist MP Josh Simons, who himself had been forced out of the Starmer government over scandals involving his pro-censorship activities at the Labour Together think tank founded by Starmer’s former Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney.
Simons, who appeared outside of Downing Street on Monday morning’s coronation for Burnham, is tipped to be set for a top gig in the new government in exchange for his move to give up his seat in Makerfield for the new PM. His return to power will likely signal continued crackdowns on social media, potentially including a ban on VPNs, as the government seeks to ban under-16s from accessing social media.
Burnham’s victory in Makerfield last month was also facilitated, in part, by the help of the far-left cancel culture group HOPE Not Hate, which busied itself with digging up old social media posts of Burnham’s Reform opponent, and allegedly even leafleting on behalf of the Labour Party, for which Nigel Farage has launched a complaint at the Electoral Commission. Nevertheless, with just over 25,000 votes, Burnham was sent to Parliament and enabled to become Prime Minister.
Yet, without having run on the 2024 Labour Party manifesto and only having been backed by a mere fraction of the public, Burnham is already facing calls for a general election from Farage and others, who argue that his administration has no popular mandate to govern.
Burnham does not appear to have any interest in fighting a general election; indeed, he promised a Soviet-style 10-year plan to fix Britain’s economy, which he claimed was only faltering as a result of the policies put in place by Margaret Thatcher over four decades ago.
“We have not been good enough and we need to be better. We will be. We will make this moment a circuit breaker for Britain, bringing forward the biggest changes in 40 years. A new political model, and a new economic model. In the 1980s, Britain took some wrong turns. Political power was centralised, economic power privatised. Large parts of the country, deindustrialised.”
He vowed to “build a new economy where we put life’s essentials under stronger public control to make them affordable to you again. Reindustrialising Britain again with public procurement to back British industry. Later this year I will bring forward a new Plan for Britain. A ten year plan.”
Burnham vowed to bring down the cost of living, build more state housing, end homeless sleeping, reform the education system with more mental health support, and claimed that he would reduce welfare spending while meeting international defence commitments.
Yet with details lacking on Monday and his new government already signalling against new energy extraction from the oil-rich North Sea, it remains to be seen how such an industrial plan will fare. Urging his new counterpart in London to adopt his “drill baby, drill” ethos, U.S. President Trump urged Burnham to take advantage of Britain’s natural resources in the North Sea, saying that it could transform the UK from a “Poverty Stricken Disaster, to one of the Richest Countries anywhere in the World!”
Time will tell if this Prime Minister will actually listen to such advice from across the pond, or if it will be more of the same from Burnham.