Andy Burnham officially becomes British prime minister

Andy Burnham became the fifth British prime minister in four years and the seventh in a decade as he formally accepted an invitation from King Charles to form a government.

The meeting quickly followed on the heels of Keir Starmer offering his resignation.

Burnham secured nominations from 379 of the 403 Labour lawmakers in the House of Commons to officially became leader of the Labour Party last week.

Britain’s parliamentary democracy allows governing parties to change leaders, and thus prime ministers, without the need for a general election. The next national election doesn’t have to be held until 2029.

In his first speech as prime minister, Burnham said he hoped to be a “circuit breaker” to end the trend of instability in British politics.

“Britain ⁠needs to show the world that we ‌can regain our stability once again,” Burnham said outside ⁠10 Downing Street.

“We have ⁠not been good ⁠enough, ⁠and ​we need to be ​better.”

In ​a clip recorded before he was officially appointed as British ​leader but released after his ⁠speech in ⁠Downing Street, Burnham ‌said that among his first telephone calls internationally would be U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“President Zelenskyy will be ⁠left ⁠in ​no doubt whatsoever that Britain’s support is steadfast, ​it is ⁠resolute. It will be there for him, and I will be there for him personally, too,” Burnham told reporters.

Burnham’s predecessor ingratiated himself with Trump for over a year, but the U.S. president has expressed his frustration over what he perceived as Starmer’s lack of support for the Iran war. When Starmer announced his plans to resign weeks ago, Trump described him as a “lovely man” and a “sort of friend of mine.”

‘I wish him every success’

While Burnham has been regarded as one of the Labour Party’s best communicators, he faces many of the same problems as his predecessor, including a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living squeeze fuelled by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and overstretched public services.

Promising Britons “some ⁠breathing space now,” he said pn Monday that the government would set out some measures to tackle ‌the high cost of living, and how it plans to fund them.

Burnham was born in Liverpool, where his father worked as a telephone engineer and his mother as a receptionist. He graduated in English from Cambridge, where he met his wife — Marie-France van Heel, a Dutch-born, Belgian-raised marketing professional known to friends as “Frankie.” The couple have three children.

He is not a stranger to federal politics, having first served as MP beginning in 2001 when Tony Blair was prime minister, and later as culture and then health minister under Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown.

Burnham mounted unsuccessful bids for the Labour leadership in 2010 and 2015.

Labour regularly trails behind anti-immigration party Reform UK in opinion polls, with an election due no later than 2029. Labour suffered disastrous results in local elections in May, triggering pressure on Starmer to step down that he couldn’t resist.

Starmer made his farewell speech outside 10 Downing Street before meeting with the king to tender his resignation. He told supporters that “my work is done” and that he was leaving with “good grace” and a “smile.”

“I wish him every success,” he said of Burnham.

Starmer led Labour a mid-2024 election rout as the party more than doubled its seats from a loss five years earlier, even as its share of the total vote only went up by about two percentage points. Starmer’s two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.

Starmer is staying on as MP of Holborn and St. Pancras.