Andy Burnham

Andrew Murray Burnham (born 7 January 1970) is a British politician who has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. He previously served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Leigh from 2001 to 2017, during which time he was Secretary of State for Health from 2009 to 2010, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from 2008 to 2009 and Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008. A member of the Labour and Co-operative Party, Burnham identifies as a socialist on the soft left of the Labour Party.

Born in Aintree, Lancashire, a suburb of Liverpool, and raised in Culcheth, Cheshire, Burnham attended St Aelred's Catholic High School and joined the Labour Party at the age of 15. He studied at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and subsequently worked as a researcher for Tessa Jowell, as a parliamentary officer for the NHS Confederation and as an administrator with the Football Task Force. From 1998 to 2001, he was a special advisor to Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Chris Smith. At the 2001 general election, Burnham was elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for Leigh in Greater Manchester.

Burnham served as a Parliamentary Private Secretary from 2003 to 2005. He was promoted by Prime Minister Tony Blair to serve in his government after the 2005 election as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. In 2006, Burnham was reshuffled to become Minister of State for Health. He was promoted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a position he held until 2008, when he became Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. In 2009, he was promoted again to become Health Secretary. In that role, he responded to the swine flu pandemic, opposed further privatisation of National Health Service services and launched an independent inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal. Following the 2010 general election which resulted in a hung parliament, Burnham was a candidate in the Labour leadership election which was won by Ed Miliband, coming fourth out of five candidates. Burnham served as Shadow Secretary of State for Health until late 2010, when he became Shadow Secretary of State for Education. He held that role for a year, then returned to the role of Shadow Health Secretary.

Following the 2015 general election, Burnham launched his campaign in the resulting leadership election, and finished a distant second behind Jeremy Corbyn, after which he accepted the role of Shadow Home Secretary. After being selected as Labour's candidate for the new Greater Manchester Mayoralty, Burnham stood down as Shadow Home Secretary in 2016 and as an MP at the 2017 general election. Burnham won the 2017 mayoral election, was re-elected in the delayed election held in May 2021, and elected for a third time in the 2024 election, two months before the Labour Party won that year's general election. In 2026, Burnham applied to be the Labour Party candidate in the 2026 Gorton and Denton by-election but his candidacy was blocked by the party's National Executive Committee, which led to the by-election ultimately being won by Hannah Spencer of the Green Party, whom Burnham previously beat in the 2024 mayoral election. His future political ambitions are a frequent subject of national debate, particularly regarding a potential third bid for the Labour Party leadership and to potentially challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.

As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham has implemented reforms to public transport, taking buses back into local control and bringing them, along with trams, into an integrated London-style transport system – the Bee Network. For his role campaigning to secure more furlough funding for Northern communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was dubbed "King of the North" by both the media and Northerners – even outside Greater Manchester – a title which, despite being used sarcastically at first, has grown into a term of endearment.