Andy Burnham Runs for Labour Leader Again
Andy Burnham Runs for Labour Leader Again
Andy Burnham has announced he wants to be the next Labour leader. This is his third time trying for the job — he ran in 2010 and 2015 but didn't win either time.
BBC News reported on 22 June 2026 that Burnham has officially entered the race. He is coming back to Parliament after nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester, the region's top elected official.
The leadership race started after Keir Starmer, the current Labour leader and Prime Minister, stepped down earlier in June 2026. According to BBC News, Labour's rules mean a leadership election must happen automatically when the leader resigns. There's another way to trigger a contest — if a fifth of Labour MPs nominate someone — but that didn't happen here.
Who is Andy Burnham?
Burnham is 56. Before he became mayor in 2017, he was an MP for Leigh and held two important government jobs under Prime Minister Gordon Brown: running the Health Department and then the Home Office. He lost his two previous leadership bids — to Ed Miliband in 2015 and Jeremy Corbyn in 2010. (The timing is that they ran in those years; he lost to each of them.) He left Parliament to become Greater Manchester's first elected mayor.
Why his mayoral record matters
Burnham's main pitch to become leader is built on what he did as mayor. Greater Manchester is England's largest combined authority — essentially a grouping of councils with shared powers and a mayor to run them. While serving there, he became well known in the North of England for fighting the government over Covid restrictions and funding, and for focusing on rough sleeping and devolution (giving more power to local areas rather than keeping it in Westminster).
This gives him something most MPs don't have: a track record running a real region, not just debating in Parliament. Whether Labour MPs, members, and union officials — the people who choose the leader — will see that as an advantage is the main question he faces.
The broader context here
This leadership race is different from his previous two attempts. In 2010, Labour had just lost power. In 2015, the party was changing rapidly as more members joined. Now Labour was in government when Starmer left — and after a crisis like that, parties usually want stability rather than big change. Burnham will need to show he can deliver that sense of steadiness, while also making the most of the cross-party respect he built in Greater Manchester.
There's also a practical puzzle. English mayors don't automatically get a seat back in Parliament when they leave office. Burnham will need to either find a safe seat or win a by-election. How quickly he can sort that out will shape how serious people take him as a candidate — or whether he looks like an outsider trying to muscle back in.
