Andy Burnham has confirmed he would stand to succeed Keir Starmer as Labour leader and British prime minister, hours after Starmer announced his resignation on June 22 following months of mounting pressure within his party.
The former mayor of Greater Manchester, who won the Makerfield by-election on June 18 with 54.8 per cent of the vote and took his Commons seat hours before Starmer stepped down, said the transition had to be handled responsibly.
“I will put myself forward as part of this process,” Burnham said in a statement posted on social media, thanking Starmer for his service and pledging stability and a focus on the issues that mattered most.
Starmer, who became prime minister in July 2024 when Labour won a landslide general election, said he would remain in office as a caretaker until a successor was chosen.
He said every decision he had taken had been about “putting the country I love first”, confirming he had informed King Charles III of his departure.
The Prime Minister asked Labour’s National Executive Committee to open nominations on July 9 and conclude the process before the summer recess, with a new leader in place by September.
If Burnham is the only candidate, he could be confirmed within days. A contest would need the backing of a fifth of Labour’s MPs and could run into the autumn.
Burnham, who served as a minister under Gordon Brown in the late 2000s, was quickly endorsed by Wes Streeting, the former health secretary who had been tipped to stand but ruled himself out.
Streeting, who quit as health secretary in May, said Burnham could “win the fight of our lives against the forces of nationalism”, a reference to Reform UK.
The right-wing party, led by Nigel Farage, has overtaken Labour in the opinion polls since the 2024 election and made historic gains in May’s local and regional elections.
Those results, among Labour’s worst on record, fuelled calls for Starmer to go, as did the June 11 resignation of defence secretary John Healey over military spending.
Farage demanded an immediate general election, branding Starmer “the most incompetent prime minister” Britain had had. Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, urged Burnham to call a poll himself, noting the new MP had demanded exactly that during the Conservative turmoil of 2022.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch stopped short of backing an immediate election but said one would be justified unless Burnham set out how he would fund defence, offering Tory votes to help him do so.
Burnham would become Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade of instability at Westminster.
