Andy Burnham Set To Take Over As New British Prime Minister

Andy Burnham will on Monday become Britain’s sixth prime minister to move into Downing Street since 2016, with an in-tray overflowing with challenges and little time to make his mark.

The new leader takes over from the unpopular Keir Starmer just two years after the outgoing prime minister led Labour to power in a landslide election victory after 14 years of Conservative rule.

After being asked by King Charles III to form the next government, Burnham, 56, is due to make his first speech Monday outside 10 Downing Street shortly after Starmer has said his farewells.

In an interview with The Times published late Sunday, Burnham set out his ambition for change, saying he wanted to draw a line under a decade of political turmoil.

“What we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. That’s the way I see it,” he said.

“I am going to try and do things in a different way.”

In his first speech he was to acknowledge he feels “acutely conscious” of the need for a more stable brand of politics, as he becomes the sixth new prime minister in the last 10 years.

Burnham will set out “priorities for restoring confidence in government and giving Britain more breathing room” amid the cost-of-living crisis, his team said.

Delivering growth and devolving power to regional communities are also expected to feature.

An announcement on his senior cabinet appointments was also expected on Monday with all eyes on who will replace Rachel Reeves as finance minister.

The former mayor of Greater Manchester, nicknamed the “King of the North”, has been parachuted in by the Labour Party, after Starmer resigned last month, with MPs viewing him as the party’s best chance of reining in Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party.

Deputy Labour Party leader Lucy Powell said Sunday Burnham’s mayoral experience away from the London centre of government meant he understood the “bigger, bolder measures” needed to deliver on Labour’s election manifesto promises.

Among Burnham’s most urgent challenges will be a tepid economy, high government borrowing costs, a ballooning welfare bill and irregular migrants arriving in small boats that have fuelled support for Reform.

Unpredictable energy prices due to the US-Iran war and a volatile American president in Donald Trump also threaten to buffet his premiership.

Burnham told The Times he would take a “different approach to public spending, and to running the economy — more focused on early investment, early intervention, setting people up for success, and much less paying for failure.”