The former Manchester mayor replaced Keir Starmer after meeting with King Charles at Buckingham Palace where he was formally invited to form a government.
Former Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham replaced Keir Starmer as prime minister of the UK on July 20.
Burnham took the keys to Number 10 Downing Street following a visit to Buckingham Palace to formally accept the invitation to form a government from King Charles.
Burnham, 56, has become the seventh prime minister of the United Kingdom in just over 10 years, during a tumultuous decade for the country, marked by Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, soaring immigration, a rising cost of living, and rising energy prices.
The new prime minister arrived at Downing Street, after leaving the palace, to a throng of cheering supporters.
He then addressed the nation, saying he was “acutely conscious” of the fact he was the seventh incumbent of Number 10 since 2016, calling his ascension a “moment for reflection and new resolution.”
He said that the moment “requires my generation of politicians to raise our game and rise to the new challenge,” adding that “Britain needs to show the world that we can regain our stability once again.”
“I know people at home are fed up with politics,” he said. “I hear you and I want to be honest with you—we have not been good enough, and we need to be better.”
Burnham said that the UK needed “a new political model and a new economic model,” adding that the country had taken some “wrong turns” in the 1980s by centralizing power in the capital and privatizing large swathes of industry.
He promised to “take power” out of London and give it to local areas, “so that they can do more and, in doing more, build a new economy where we put life’s essentials back under stronger public control to make them affordable to you again.”
He said that later this year, he would lay out a “10-year plan” for the country, but that he can “do something to give people some breathing space now, some help with the cost of living.”
Burnham promised to reform education to improve employment prospects for young people, offer them more mental health support, and build more social housing, but said his first action as prime minister would be to end homelessness in the UK.
“Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again-the moment we bring back hope,” he said, before shaking hands with some of the assembled crowd and entering Number 10 with his wife, Marie-France van Heel.
The new prime minister assumed the role after Starmer officially stepped down the same morning, making his own trip to see the king to relinquish his office, a little over two years after sweeping to power in a landslide general election victory, which saw the left-wing Labour Party form a government for the first time in 14 years.
In his final address to the nation, Starmer said his “work is done.”
By Guy Birchall
