Andy Burnham to become UK Labour leader in last step before taking over
as prime minister
[July 17, 2026]
By JILL LAWLESS
LONDON (AP) — Andy Burnham will officially become leader of Britain’s
governing Labour Party on Friday, clearing his final hurdle to taking
office as prime minister next week.
The center-left party will announce the result of a leadership contest
to replace departing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in which Burnham was
the only contender. He had secured nominations from 379 of the 403
Labour lawmakers in the House of Commons as of Thursday night.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, has been prime
minister-in-waiting for weeks, but he has revealed little detail about
his policy priorities. After winning a special election for a seat in
Parliament a month ago, he pledged to build a politics “based on unity
and hope” and an economy that spreads growth evenly across the country.
He has held no press conferences and given few interviews, and will
arrive in Downing Street largely unknown to voters outside Manchester.
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
fueled by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and overstretched public
services.
Burnham's office says he plans to sketch out some of his priorities
Friday in his first speech as Labour leader, and will say that he will
have the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected.”
He’ll highlight 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 centralized and economic power privatized.”
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That’s the decade when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
oversaw policies of privatization, deindustrialization and political
centralization that transformed the U.K. economy.
In a social media video posted late Thursday, Burnham said he also
would make a priority of 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 aging population, and one that
has foxed previous Labour and Conservative governments.
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.
He 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 U.K.'s seventh leader since 2016.
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