Andy Burnham

Andy Burnham

Andrew Murray Burnham is a British Labour Party politician. He has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. Burnham was the Member of Parliament for Leigh from 2001 to 2017. He served in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008, Culture Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Health Secretary from 2009 to 2010. He came fourth out of five candidates in the 2010 Labour leadership election, coming fourth behind Ed Miliband.

About Andy Burnham in brief

Summary Andy BurnhamAndrew Murray Burnham is a British Labour Party politician. He has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. Burnham was the Member of Parliament for Leigh from 2001 to 2017. He served in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008, Culture Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Health Secretary from 2009 to 2010. In May 2016 Burnham announced his candidacy to become Labour’s candidate for the Greater Manchester Mayoralty and was selected in August 2016. He resigned as Shadow Home Secretary in October 2016 and was replaced by Diane Abbott. The mayoral election was held in May 2017 and the announcement of the June 2017 general election during the Mayoral campaign led him to stand down as an MP. In that role, he opposed further privatisation of National Health Service services and launched an independent inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal. After the 2015 general election, Burnham launched his campaign to succeed Miliband in the resulting September 2015 leadership election. He finished a distant second behind Jeremy Corbyn. He is popularly nicknamed ‘King of the North’ for his efforts to represent interests of the people of the north of England. He joined the Labour Party in 1984 when he was 14 and was a researcher for Tessa Jowell from 1994 until 1997. He was a parliamentary officer for the NHS Confederation from August to December 1997, before taking up the post as an administrator with the Football Task Force for a year. In 1998, he became a special adviser to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, a position he remained in until he was elected to the House of Commons in 2001.

After his election to Parliament, he was a member of the Health Select Committee from 2001 until 2003, then serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Home Secretary David Blunkett until 2004, when he became PPS to Education Secretary Ruth Kelly. In the May 2006 reshuffle he was moved from the Home Office to the Department of Health and served as Parliamentary Under Secretary for Identity Cards. In 2006, BurnHam was reshuffled to become Minister of state for Health. In 2009 he was promoted again to become Secretary ofState for Health and held that role until late 2010. He came fourth out of five candidates in the 2010 Labour leadership election, coming fourth behind Ed Miliband. In October 2016, he accepted a role in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet as Shadow home secretary. He held the role until October 2016 when he returned to the role of Shadow Health Secretary. In December 2016 he was appointed Shadow Secretary for Education and held the position until October 2017 when he left the Shadow Cabinet to become Mayor of Manchester. In January 2017, he announced he would not be standing for re-election in the May 2017 mayoral election. In March 2017 he announced that he would be stepping down from the Shadow Home Cabinet to focus on his role as Mayor. In April 2017 he was re-elected to the Shadow Shadow Cabinet. In November 2017 he became Mayor of the City of Manchester for a second time.