Andy Burnham has become Britain's new prime minister. The nomination process unfolded on July 20th in London, with one outgoing Labour leader passing the baton to another. The hope is that Burnham will ease the leadership turnover, stabilising the country.
Rewatch Andy Burnham's first speech since becoming the new UK Prime Minister. Having been asked by King Charles III to form a new government, former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has become Britain's 7th prime minister in a decade. Andy Burnham has been sworn in as the successor to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The former Manchester mayor has become a leading figure in the Labour Party and one of the UK's most popular politicians. Andy Burnham has pledged to provide immediate cost-of-living relief for Brits and invited US President Donald Trump to Manchester in the hours after becoming UK PM on Monday. New PM says his political and economic model will bring ‘biggest changes in 40 years’UK politics live – latest updatesAndy Burnham’s difficult first cabinet – a visual guide to the options and dilemmasAndy Burnham has said his arrival in power will be a “circuit breaker” moment for Britain, pledging that his government will restore hope to millions of people.Addressing the country for the first time from outside No 10 Downing Street after taking over from Keir Starmer, the new prime minister said he would set out a 10-year plan for the country later this year to transform the politics and economics of the UK from “where we are now to where I believe we all want Britain to be”.
The new leader takes over from Keir Starmer just two years after outgoing PM led Labour to a landslide election victory. Keir Starmer will give his final speech from Downing Street before Burnham arrives and is appointed as new PMGood morning. It is the sixth time this has happened in just over a decade (Theresa May replaced David Cameron on 13 July 2016), and so in some respects there is nothing very new or surprising about this.
In the past, when parties in power have replaced a PM, generally they have opted for someone popular with their own MPs, but less popular than their predecessor with the public at large (Liz Truss, Theresa May, Gordon Brown), or for someone more popular with the public, but less liked by their own activists (John Major, Rishi Sunak). At the start of the year, anyone looking at polling would have concluded that the logical choice for Labour would have been to replace Keir Starmer with Andy Burnham. Labour is not always noted for taking decisions that will be electorally beneficial, but in this case that is what it has achieved.
It has replaced a PM who had become an electoral millstone with one of the most admired politicians in the country, and with someone – for the moment at least – with his whole party behind him.That may not be the case by the end of the day, after Burnham has named his cabinet. Here is Rowena Mason’s overnight story about what to expect today.This week [Burnham] will tell us of his “ten-year plan for the country”. Perhaps his premiership won’t last that long, he conceded.
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