Andy Burnham becomes UK Prime Minister as Starmer resigns

LONDON (The Thursday Times) — Andy Burnham became the United Kingdom’s 59th Prime Minister on Monday, succeeding Keir Starmer after being invited by King Charles III to form a government, and becoming Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade. The former Mayor of Greater Manchester took office after Starmer formally resigned at Buckingham Palace, and delivered his first speech outside 10 Downing Street promising what he called “a circuit breaker for Britain.” The handover followed the customary sequence of a British transfer of power. Starmer delivered a farewell address outside Downing Street, flanked by staff and colleagues, then travelled to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to the King. Burnham followed him to the Palace, where, in the ceremony known as “kissing hands,” he accepted the King’s invitation to form a new administration. A Palace statement said the King “received in audience the Rt Hon Andrew Burnham MP and requested him to form a new Administration,” which Burnham accepted “upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.” Burnham, 56, is the Member of Parliament for Makerfield and served for years as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, where he built a national profile and earned the nickname “King of the North.” He held cabinet posts as Culture Secretary and Health Secretary under previous Labour governments, and twice ran unsuccessfully for the Labour leadership in the last decade. This time he was appointed unopposed, running without a challenger after Starmer agreed to step down. Starmer, who led Labour to a landslide election victory just two years ago, announced in June that he would resign, following a series of policy reversals, scandals over staffing appointments and heavy losses in local elections that prompted calls for his departure from within his own party. By late last year his approval ratings had made him, according to pollster Ipsos, the most unpopular prime minister since its records began in 1977. In his farewell speech he pointed to falling immigration numbers, shorter National Health Service waiting times and children lifted out of poverty as markers of his record, and wished Burnham “every success.” Speaking outside Number 10, Burnham broke with tradition by delivering his address without a lectern, standing freely in the street in keeping with the more informal style he has sought to project. He promised “the biggest changes of the past 40 years,” pledged cost-of-living measures beginning as soon as Tuesday, and said a full ten-year plan for Britain would follow later this year. He named ending rough sleeping as his first instruction to civil servants, and reiterated his long-standing argument that power and investment must be shifted away from London toward Britain’s regions and cities.