Andy Burnham

Biography

Andy Burnham was born in Aintree, near Liverpool, on 7 January 1970 and grew up in Culcheth, the son of a telephone engineer and a doctor's receptionist. He joined the Labour Party at fifteen and read English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, graduating in 1991. He worked as a trade magazine journalist, as a researcher for Tessa Jowell, at the NHS Confederation and the Football Task Force, and from 1998 as special adviser to the culture secretary Chris Smith.

He was elected MP for Leigh in 2001. Under Tony Blair he was a junior Home Office minister and then minister of state for health, and under Gordon Brown he served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary, when he set up the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and Health Secretary during the 2009 swine flu outbreak. After Labour lost power in 2010 he held shadow cabinet posts until 2016 and stood for the party leadership in 2010 and 2015, finishing fourth and then second.

He left Parliament in 2017 on being elected the first Mayor of Greater Manchester, a post he won again in 2021 and 2024. As mayor he brought the region's buses and trams together as the Bee Network and became known as the King of the North for demanding more support for northern areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2026 he returned to the Commons by winning the Makerfield by-election, was unopposed in the Labour leadership election that followed Keir Starmer's resignation, and became Prime Minister on 20 July 2026.