Andy Burnham

Andy Burnham is the Labour and Co-operative MP for Makerfield and has been Prime Minister since 20 July 2026. He represented Leigh from 2001 until the dissolution of Parliament in May 2017, sat in Gordon Brown's cabinet, and then served as Mayor of Greater Manchester from May 2017 before returning to the Commons at a byelection in June 2026.

His Westminster career began in junior office as a Home Office minister from May 2005 and a health minister from May 2006. Under Brown he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 28 June 2007, Culture Secretary from 25 January 2008 and Health Secretary from 6 June 2009 until the May 2010 election. In opposition he held the health and education briefs and was shadow home secretary from September 2015 to October 2016. He stood for the Labour leadership in 2010 and 2015 and lost both contests.

The central decision of his mayoralty was to bring buses under public control. On 25 March 2021 he made the Greater Manchester bus franchising scheme under the Transport Act 2000. Stagecoach Manchester and Rotala brought judicial review claims; Rotala's central argument was that a fresh independent audit was required after the authority assessed the effects of Covid-19. The High Court dismissed both claims on 9 March 2022, and the Court of Appeal dismissed Rotala's appeal on 25 July 2022. Franchised services were introduced in tranches under the Bee Network name, the last on 5 January 2025. In January 2026 the combined authority said the transition had been delivered on time and within its original £134.5m budget; that is the authority's own statement, not an audited outturn. Transport Focus reported in March 2026 that overall bus journey satisfaction in Greater Manchester rose from 79 per cent to 86 per cent in 2025, the largest improvement among the areas it surveyed.

Burnham pledged to end the need for rough sleeping in Greater Manchester by 2020, and in November 2018 the combined authority launched A Bed Every Night, an emergency accommodation scheme whose second phase was backed by £6m. The single night count fell from 268 in 2017 to 241 in 2018 and to 84 in the official 2021 snapshot, with a local count of 89. The 2020 target was not met. The figure then rose in each of the next four years, to 102 in 2022, 149 in 2023, 154 in 2024 and, according to The Mill's analysis of the government snapshot published on 26 February 2026, 197 in autumn 2025. The combined authority did not issue its usual announcement of the 2025 figure.

On housing, Burnham pledged in May 2024 to deliver at least 10,000 new council homes, with at least 1,000 in each borough and a target date of 2028. He also said he would ask the government for powers to suspend Right to Buy on those homes, and more widely where councils requested it, citing the loss of nearly 24,000 homes in the city region through the scheme in two decades. Both were commitments and requests rather than delivered results.

His national profile grew during the pandemic. In October 2020 he refused to accept the government's move of Greater Manchester into the highest tier of restrictions without more financial support for affected businesses and workers. On 20 October 2020 Boris Johnson announced that the area would move to the "very high" alert level regardless, telling the public that the mayor had not accepted the business support offered.

Burnham won the Makerfield byelection on 18 June 2026 with a majority of 9,231 on a turnout of 58.7 per cent, and was sworn in on 22 June. He was elected Labour leader unopposed on 17 July and became Prime Minister three days later.

His first decisions in Downing Street drew on his mayoral agenda. On 22 July 2026 he announced that single bus fares across England would be capped at £2 from January 2027, replacing the £3 cap, with £454m of funding, most of it from switching international climate finance to loans. On 25 July he paused changes to automatic prisoner release dates under the Sentencing Act 2026, which had been due to take effect in September, pending an urgent review. On 30 July he set out plans for English mayors to retain a share of the income tax and business rates raised in their areas, with details deferred to a white paper after the autumn budget. His first announcement as Prime Minister, on 20 July, was an additional £340m as the first phase of a five year programme to end long term rough sleeping, intended to provide 1,200 homes and intensive support for at least 3,000 people. Unlike his 2020 Greater Manchester pledge, it set no end date.