Andy Burnham stepped into Number 10 Downing Street on 20 July as Britain's 59th prime minister. As he said himself, it was "third time lucky". He'd run for Labour's leadership twice before - in 2010, coming fourth to Ed Miliband, and in 2015, second to Jeremy Corbyn.
But this time there was no contest. His way had been engineered by party "fixers" well in advance, from the sure win in the Makerfi eld by-election on 18 June (where he got 54.8% of the vote, in a constituency which
had gone over to Farage's Reform in the local elections in May), to the smooth takeover of the Labour Party leadership.
Starmer, who had floundered at the head of government from the start, resigned without protest, pledging Burnham his future support. As outgoing PM, he handed a peerage to his loyal ally, London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan, who will join another 25 new members of the House of Lords - an institution which he had formerly wanted to abolish. Though apparently that's not his own destination. Already a "sir" himself, he'll now be sitting on the back benches... if he sits at all.
Prime minister by default, once removed
What very few commentators care to point out is that the Labour Party's so-called "landslide victory" in 2024 under Keir Starmer was a win by default, due mainly to the universal disgust felt by the electorate with politicians in general, but the Tories in particular, after 14 years of austerity (which included the Covid pandemic).
So this was never a conscious vote for Labour's leaders, nor indeed its election manifesto which was formulated in order to appeal to disillusioned Tory voters. Like Tony Blair's (Labour) manifesto in 1997, Starmer's 2024 Manifesto made no promise of any signifi cant social concessions, nor new renationalisations.
Starmer's only "leftish" pledge was to take the remaining private train operating franchises back into state hands, reintegrating all train services and the already-public track and signals ops of the state-owned Network Rail under so-called Great British Railways (GBR).
But let's remember that Transpennine Express, Southeastern, Northern rail, LNER, Transport for Wales, ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper - almost half of train operations - had already been "renationalised" under the Tories. And it was former Tory PM Rishi Sunak who named the new state company "GBR".
So why would Burnham pledge to stick to such an empty manifesto? On top of that, he also pledged to stay within the fiscal rules designated by former Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves - which, as all economic commentators point out - whether right or left - will leave him no elbow room to do anything at all! In fact from the Telegraph to the Guardian and the Economist to the Financial Times, all the "experts" are telling Burnham that he needs to increase taxes if he is going to be able to fulfil his many promises to the electorate...
Never mind that, though. Burnham apparently has a magic wand and will now proceed to reverse the 40-years of social detriment (which, he explains, began with Thatcher's rule in 1979), once and for all! And since there's so little cash to spare for this task, he has begun his term in offi ce by moving the deckchairs on the proverbial Titanic, literally.
Government personnel were told to pack their bags and head North, where a new seat of government (No 10 North) awaited them. When they gathered in this new (temporary) offi ce in Manchester, Burnham proclaimed: "I think this might be the best day of my life! (...) Things are just completely coming full circle here..."! Yes, he was right back where he started.
Railway workers will appreciate a minor detail: guests from London (including Sadiq Khan) attending the launch of No 10 in the North from London, arrived late or not at all: as usual, disruption on the West Coast Main Line meant Avanti trains were cancelled, delayed and rerouted via the West Midlands...
First as tragedy, then as farce...
For Andy Burnham, the tale of his good fortune is a bit like a re-run of the Boris Johnson story. He wanted to be top dog ever since he became an MP in 2001, aged 31, having joined the Labour Party aged 15. Like Johnson, he was Oxbridge-educated (a Cambridge MA) and also did a stint as a journalist from 1991 to 1994, although in his case - according to Wikipedia - it wasn't for a "posh" journal like the right-wing Spectator, which Johnson co-edited for a while, but a lower class trade magazine called "Tank Container World", for "Baltic Publishing".
Both were "popular" mayors of large cities, one known for the Boris Bike and the ruination of London's streets (the headache of bicycle lanes for bus and taxi drivers) and the other for Yellow Bee Buses and Trams in Manchester. They did at least help some travellers to get from A to B - even if it upset car-owners. But whereas Johnson always wanted to be "King of the World", Burnham actually got to be the "King of the North"!
Ironically, Andy was awarded this unofficial public honour at Johnson's expense as it were, after he "stood up to" the then Prime Minister, over stringent Covid restrictions in October 2020!
Today, Burnham has wasted no time in marking his territory. And, under obligation to show he would do better, has said "I offer hope", and a "plan for change". And his policy announcements have been coming thick and fast, even if there is no timetable (or available means) for their implementation. In fact much really does hinge on whether he raises taxes (massively!) or not. But even then, how to fi x social care, which he says is his priority, and which he rightly says is the only way to prevent the NHS from collapsing? Elderly social care - mostly privatised today - would need to be taken back under a fully revamped NHS and made free and comprehensive... Quite frankly, impossible to imagine without a social revolution!
Appearances are deceiving
It was with a pledge to "end rough sleeping" that Burnham began his first term as Manchester's mayor in 2017. To prove he meant it, he offered part of his mayoral salary to charities involved in providing temporary refuge. An additional 600 beds were eventually provided... and there was an initial fall of 35-40% in the number of rough sleepers - but then the numbers rose again.
This was, so we are told, because Manchester became a magnet for the homeless, thanks to Andy's promise. Strangely enough, Burnham did not blame the rise in homelessness on the ongoing social crisis, which affects not only Manchester, but every city in the capitalist world. When Manchester's rough sleeping increased again, he blamed the other mayors for not doing what he did...
Today, as new PM, the fi rst instruction Burnham has issued to his government is "to end rough sleeping" - again, but this time in the whole country! It will be interesting to see how he and his Housing Minister - the returning Angela Rayner - will go about achieving this!
Anyway, it's a bit of a sleight of hand, because ending rough sleeping is not the same as ending homelessness, i.e., solving the dire shortage of social housing; what used to be called council homes... But never fear because Burnham has said he is about to create "the biggest programme of council house-building since the Second World War". And contrary to a myth retold, Burnham didn't solve Manchester's homelessness crisis.
Nevertheless, today he claims that fi nally, and after 40 years of little or no social housing being built at all, anywhere, the devolution of powers to local councils will do the trick. They will apparently be able to create growth funds and raise the necessary cash themselves.
In fact Burnham is not the first PM to blame too much centralisation of power in Westminster for all ills. Devolution is not a new policy - and its great advantage is the devolution of blame. Who sets council tax? Not Westminster! And nor indeed will the new Number 10 in the North...
"Manchesterism"'s record
When Burnham became mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017, the city had the highest number of rough sleepers, homeless and worse, the most deaths of rough sleepers, in the whole country. He had no choice but to try to address this.
By 2018, a scheme called "a bed for every night" was established which provides more than 600 bed spaces. Of course, permanent housing had also to be found for rough sleepers - often sick, addicted to various substances and unable to care for themselves. In 2017, there were 268, but by 2021, the number had fallen to 90. But each year since, the number of Manchester's rough sleepers has risen - and is now in line with the national picture.
But what about building social housing? Despite permanently altering Manchester's skyline, with "his" 28 skyscrapers - and there are seven more of these steel and glass towers currently under construction - this is and was never anything to do with housing the homeless! These 40-65-storey buildings are part of Burnham's growth plan for businesses - full of offi ces and luxury apartments. There is no social housing inside the shiny towers!
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has reported that more than 89,000 households were on social housing waiting lists across the region in 2024-25. And outlined plans to build just 10,000 social homes by 2030 "to meet demand"!
Burnham says the cost of living crisis, evictions from the asylum system (!) and the lack of affordable rents, all place "a significant strain on services and leave [...] more people at risk of homelessness". Which is very true. But one has to wonder how and why, even when refugees have been given the right to stay, that today they are sleeping in tents in St Peter's Square! Apparently 360 people were sleeping rough in March 2026, across the 10 local authorities of Greater Manchester, rising from 335 the previous year.
During Andy Burnham's whole tenure as Mayor of Greater Manchester, the delivery of new social rent housing rose from 76 homes in 2017-18 to just 633 in 2024-25! Against need, this is pitiful. A total of 2,368 social rent homes were built across the region's 10 boroughs up to 2025, though the overall number of total council homes actually fell (!) from 61,000 to 59,000 due, we are told, to "Right to Buy" losses. And indeed, council homes are still up for sale. A "right" legislated by Margaret Thatcher in 1980, which decimated social housing throughout the country - since over all these years, councils failed to replace the homes which "migrated" into the private sector.
Hello Tony!
The obvious point to make about Andy Burnham and his "great success" in Manchester, is that it was down to a revival of Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's Public-Private Finance Initiative and so-called Public-Private-Partnerships. This is how he built the 28+7 skyscrapers...
Burnham had, after all, cut his political teeth in Tony Blair's government, having won his first parliamentary seat (for Leigh in Greater Manchester) in 2001. He held several ministerial posts under Tony Blair until Blair resigned in 2007 - and in 2009 became Gordon Brown's Health Secretary.
So it's ironic that Tony Blair has been one of the fi rst to criticise the fresh-faced Andy's projects! Because Burnham is not even trying to revive "Old Labour" - as some of his opponents have argued. He is not quasisocialising or quasi-re-nationalising very much at all. He is reviving the New Labour of Blair himself.
The PFI and PPP of the late 1990's and early 2000s was the Blair government's "answer" to the need for existing old Victorian infrastructure to be replaced. Not only that, but since the building of new schools and hospitals had not kept up with demand - and because the previous Tory government (under Thatcher and Major) had merely closed, but not replaced antiquated buildings - PPP was seen as a means to fund this... It meant that the government fi nanced the projects through public borrowing - taking out what amounted to mortgages - with which to pay private construction companies, which they also agreed to pay rental and hire fees to when they leased these facilities back in order to utilise them. A huge win-win for the private sector, entirely at public expense!
Hong-Kong in the North-west
The satirical magazine, Private Eye, wrote this in June 2025 of one of the capitalist benefi ciaries of Burnham's "transformation" of Manchester: "in what must be the shortest move to a tax haven in history, the property magnate behind 80 percent of the 40-storey-plus skyscrapers now dominating the Manchester skyline, Daren Whitaker, last month moved to Monaco for, er, one day. Whitaker founded the Renaker construction group in 2006 after a couple of decades at Laing O'Rourke. Very nicely he has done from it, too, with the latest Sunday Times Rich List attributing to him a fortune of £700m..."
This was quoted on Reddit:
"Cue a certain amount of consternation, not least because Renaker can thank taxpayer support for much of its wealth. Over the past decade the group has borrowed more than £600m from the Housing Investment Loans Fund of Greater Manchester Combined Authority - led since 2017 by regional mayor Andy Burnham - to
build structures such as the city's tallest, 65-storey, tower at Deansgate Square. Last year, the fund approved lending of £140m to help build a couple more towers".
In the meantime a rival Manchester property developer Aubrey Weis, fi led a lawsuit against Burnham's Greater Manchester Authority, accusing it of cronyism in its dealings with Renaker, which it says got a discount on its interest rates after the loan. And although his case was dismissed at appeal last year, Weis may well still take it to the Supreme Court. Which would be a slight embarrassment for the new PM.
As Private Eye wrote at the time, "... Burnham [has] unveiled a new £1bn Good Growth Fund, which is expected to fund development beyond central Manchester. Or that's the plan. The same Andy Burnham criticised the previous fund, before his 2017 election, as 'too focused on city centre and luxury schemes'. Then it used its funds, with the help of our man-no-longer-in-Monaco, to turn the city into the north-west's Hong Kong".
While Private Eye is a product of a politically literate liberal British middle class milieu and hardly a "good" reference for revolutionary Marxists, it is often privy to facts that are otherwise unavailable to us! Of course, its editors have their own reasons to dig dirt on Burnham...
Winning back the voters
Burnham's new Cabinet features many of the same faces - although he has brought back a few MPs who had resigned or otherwise disgraced themselves, like Rayner (housing), Haigh (First Secretary of State) and Streeting (defence). For the fi rst time women outnumber men - 12 out of 23 are females; and there are 11 Northerners. Much is made of this. But of course it means nothing. Indeed Burnham is unlikely to change a dot or comma to Starmer's policies on the so-called big issues, like the war in the Middle East or Ukraine, and has already pledged to meet Britain's (NATO) commitments.
He has also wasted no time in shaking hands with Ukraine's Zelensky and promises "to have his back". At the beginning of July, he stated that "Labour's initial response to the treatment of Gaza caused huge hurt. We got it wrong and I am sorry for that". He said that the party needed to "do better" and that "more pressure should be put on Israel".
Whatever Burnham really thinks about the plight of the Palestinians, it's clearly a push to win back the socalled "Muslim vote" which Labour lost to the Greens and independents - MPs who left the party over Starmer's initial support for Netanyahu's no-holds-barred attack on Gaza, including depriving civilians of food and water.
This vote is important. There are around 3.9 million people identifying as Muslim in Britain - 6.5% of the total population and they have traditionally voted Labour. That is, until Starmer put his foot in it. But they constitute 10% of the electorate or more, in as many as 110 constituencies, and in places like Birmingham and Bradford (and another two dozen), they make up over 20%. In other words, they have a very signifi cant localised electoral weight.
Saying "sorry", may be unlikely to bring them back to Labour's fold. However when it comes to the latest Opinion polls, it seems that - less than a month after he became PM - there has already been a shift in Labour's favour! A "Burnham bounce" has meant he has leapt ahead in the opinion polls to +19% - compared to the Tories' Badenoch at 2%, the Liberals' Davey at -6% and Reform's Farage and the Greens' Polanski both at -19%. Starmer is at -41%. [Net Approval of party leaders, YouGov, 20 July]. Voting intention polls show Labour on 22%, neck-and-neck with Reform and the Conservatives on 21%. So yes there has been a bit of a turn-around in Westminster politics!
The racist card
There was some surprise that Burnham left Shabana Mahmood fi rmly in place as Home Secretary: the self confessed "anti-Paki", "Paki". (Apparently she thought that by claiming the label of "Paki" it would lose its value as an insult). The jury is out on the impact of this racist terminology, but not on her policies, which certainly are an insult to immigrants and would-be asylum-seekers.
Mahmood was Starmer's answer to the Tories' Kemi Badenoch; in British politics - lately, anyway - the job of pandering to racist backwardness is usually given to someone with a black or brown skin - and Badenoch panders with great alacrity. But Mahmood is certainly doing her bit for the cause. As a reminder: she has doubled the residence requirement for immigrant workers to apply for settled status from 5 to 10 years and added conditions of proof of good conduct for permanent residence, let alone citizenship. Refugees who are lucky enough not to be deported on arrival will have their asylum reviewed every 30 months. They can be sent back at any time, if their country is no longer deemed dangerous...
What was most shocking was the halting of new study visas for students from dangerous Sudan, Myanmar and Afghanistan (as well as Cameroon). The reasons? According to Mahmood's offi cials, too many of these students don't want to return - and their countries refuse to take them back! No surprise, of course, since conflict, war and "human rights" abuses abound where they come from and "safe and legal" routes to flee repression or death, have been shut down!
Mahmood has also launched a new scheme - offering 150 refused asylum seekers up to £40,000 to return to their countries of origin, voluntarily. It's a kind of paid death sentence since they would immediately become a target! If those selected refuse the offer, Mahmood says, they will be forcibly removed. What's more the government is changing the law so it no longer has a legal duty to support asylum seekers financially.
Labour MPs may sanctimoniously uphold Britain's membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) against Tory cries to leave, but to all intents and purposes the Labour government has left already. And Burnham has no plan to change this.
Game of thrones Voices - mainly from the right - have called for a general election, claiming that Burnham hasn't got a mandate from the whole electorate, only from Makerfi eld. Obviously they hope that Labour would lose, but given Burnham's opinion poll "bounce" at the moment, that is unlikely, at least for now and while the honeymoon lasts.
Burnham himself argues that what the "country" now needs is "stability": best not to create any more waves in the political sea... There are many commentators who point to the number of prime ministers which the country has seen since the Brexit referendum - that is, in the last 10 years - as a factor of instability. There have been 7 - Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak - all Tories - and now Starmer and Burnham...
This changing of faces - behind which are fundamental policies which differ very little - is the only way the system can pretend to offer change. In a way it's the trick that many of those who abstain from voting today discovered long ago. They no longer have the illusion that a new man or woman at the Despatch Box will make the slightest difference to their lives.
As for changing "a leader" frequently - in and of itself, why not? If there was a socialist system that would probably be a requirement. The Paris Commune of 1871 - which Karl Marx referred to as the fi rst workers' government in history - ruled that anyone elected onto its executive body should be subject to immediate recall and replacement if they were not carrying out the duties they had undertaken.
Quite obviously, Burnham's government isn't a workers' government and it will be carrying out the policies which are required by the British capitalist class. Because King of the North or not, they are the real power behind his throne!
30 July 2026
Workers' Fight Editorial of 22 July 2026 after Andy Burnham's appointment as PM
WE'LL HAVE TO FIGHT OUR WAY OUT OF THIS COST OF LIVING CRISIS!
Andy Burnham's "New Look Cabinet"? Welcome to the Old Look! With few exceptions, the exact same faces have trooped back into the Cabinet Office!
First among them is John Healey, the "Brutus", who stabbed his former boss in the back - apparently, over that "underfunded" defence budget. Or was this just part of the plot to replace Starmer? And do we really care?
As new Chancellor, Healey now has the job of finding these extra defence pennies himself. Or more precisely, of deciding what to cut, in order to find them, since he and his new boss are religiously "respecting the fiscal rules" set by outgoing "Sir" Keir and Rachel Reeves!
This is what strikes one immediately. These self-imposed fiscal limits - repeated like a Catholic catechism by two choir-boys - which simply means that austerity rules!
For "change", as Burnham pledged several times over, the rules and the manifesto promises would have to be broken. It would mean taxing the rich: squeezing them "till the pips squeak" - in order to fund social care, house the homeless, end rough sleeping, and do all the other things that Burnham talks about.
SQUEAKING PIPS?
It was the current Chancellor's namesake, Dennis Healey - James Callaghan's Chancellor when Labour was in power in the 1970s - who famously promised to "squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak". In October 1973 he said "I warn you that there are going to be howls of anguish from those rich enough to pay over 75% on their last slice of earnings". However he never dared to do any of it. And the two Labour Chancellors since then - Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, didn't either.
Today no such threats are even made. On the contrary, we're told that ministers are all going to behave themselves. Under no circumstances are the bond markets to be given even the slightest reason to twitch! In fact one wonders why they bother to have Treasury ministers at all; why not just co-opt the stock exchange?
On Wednesday it felt very much like Ground Hog Day. Transport Secretary (still-in-post), Heidi Alexander, was sent to do the rounds of the newsrooms. This time her job was to explain how "Andy" really does want to help us all with the cost of living. And how that 45 quid off energy bills (in October) and £2 cap on bus fares, are just a "taster"; more is on its way...
Very helpfully, journalists from all and sundry media kept asking how this is all going to be funded, informing new {and old) government ministers that the money just isn't there. Along these lines, an episode of "Dead Ringers" on BBC radio, called for Burnham's immediate resignation for his failure to change anything so far - the same day he was appointed Labour leader!
Of course squaring a circle is impossible. If Andy Burnham is going to "help the working class", as people who were interviewed by the BBC in Manchester asked of him, he can only do so at the expense of the bosses and their sacred profit system. Quite obviously, he will not.
OUT WITH THE PROFITEERS!
Anyway, judging from his "achievements" in Manchester, Burnham's expertise lies in quite the opposite direction. Behind all the glowing reports of how he "changed the face of Manchester", (if building tall skyscrapers and luxury offices and apartments was the kind of change Mancunians wanted, or needed} is the reality of his revival of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's so-called Public Private Parnerships.
But in this case, most contracts and loans were awarded to just one construction company - Renaker - whose boss, Daren Whitaker, has "acquired" a fortune of £700m (according to the Sunday Times Rich List) and a (tax-free) address in Monaco!
Private Eye writes, "over the past decade the group has borrowed more than £600m from the Housing Investment Loans Fund of Greater Manchester Combined Authority - led since 2017 by regional mayor Andy Burnham - to build structures such the city's tallest, 65-storey, tower at Deansgate Square". It seems Whitaker's pips are certainly overdue for a very sharp squeeze, if he can be found!
That said, the real issue facing workers isn't what Burnham does or doesn't do as PM or his kissy relationships with big business. And we certainly have no illusions that he will help our class! He works for, and defends the same system we are up against.
Undoubtedly - just like in the crisis of the 1970s, things are going to get tough. We need to prepare to face up to this, by gathering our forces and preparing to fight collectively for our interests. And always remembering that our strength is in our numbers and our determination to fight to the end... with the ultimate aim not just of rocking the capitalist boat, but sinking it!