Inside Burnham’s roundabout route to No 10, according to those who know him best

For the honeymoon was over as soon as Sir Keir Starmer set foot in Downing Street in July 2024.

Most prime ministers enjoy a few weeks’ grace period after taking office. But just weeks after securing a landslide victory, Sir Keir was left behind.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has publicly admitted the government has been left in a £22bn black hole by the Conservative Party and will take drastic measures, including canceling pensioners’ winter fuel payments, as well as benefits.

The reaction was fierce; For many, this was a point from which the government never recovered.

Days later, Sir Keir was forced to cancel his holiday after violent riots broke out across the country in response to the brutal murders of three girls in Southport.

The scandal over gifts from donor Lord Alli hurt the new prime minister’s opinion ratings; At the end of August, only 36 percent of Britons believed he was doing a good job. His government was going nowhere fast.

As the new administration falters, Labour’s most popular politician was not among the 411 MPs elected in 2024.

Andy Burnham had managed Manchester since 2017 and had cultivated his “King in the North” image during the pandemic as an outspoken critic of an economic model closely tied to London and the South East.

May 2024 saw Mr Burnham re-elected for a third term with 63 per cent of the vote, winning every borough in the city region. But just over a year later, he appeared to have his sights set on a different job.

‘An idea whose time has come’

After a difficult first year characterized by U-turns, ministers arrived in Liverpool for Labour’s September 2025 conference in what felt like a crisis. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was ahead in the polls and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner had recently resigned over tax matters.

Only 18 per cent of Britons believed Sir Keir was doing a good job and Mr Burnham arrived at the conference in the spotlight in his hometown.

He had advised the struggling administration in several interviews in the days leading up, and speculation about a challenge to the leadership was duly swirling around the city’s waterfront.

“There’s nothing more unstoppable than an idea whose time has come,” the Greater Manchester mayor joked as he began speaking at a side event on opening day.

He was ostensibly talking about proportional representation, but his speech sounded as if he were pitching his party on a policy agenda he now calls “Manchesterism.”

But Mr Burnham said it had done nothing more than start a conversation about the direction of the party.

“He always wants the party to go well and we weren’t doing well,” said Steve Rotheram, mayor of the Liverpool City Region and a close friend of Mr Burnham. Independent This week.

According to Mr Rotheram, Labor needed to address its own perception, communicate its achievements and offer hope to a country in the grip of negativity. In his eyes, Mr Burnham was the obvious choice within the party to do this.

But he said as time went on and things did not improve for Sir Keir, Mr Burnham’s plan to return to parliament was becoming clearer.

“I think it was a realization that we had to salvage the situation, and it’s not even trite,” he said, adding that Labor faced an “existential threat” to its future.

“Some of the conversations were not just about what went wrong, but how can we turn this around?” Mr Rotheram added. “How can we fix this?

“This is where it got serious. If we fixed the situation, if he were to go back there, how was he going to get back there in the first place?”

Another Burnham ally says the mayor’s prospect of returning to Westminster has become an open secret as the government struggles Independent This week.

“I would have welcomed him (to the conference) back then,” the MP said. “We all wanted to give Keir a chance, we all wanted to give the government a chance.

“But I’m not blind to what people say to me on doorsteps and what I hear around me.”

Any suggestion of a coup last September came to nothing. If Mr. Burnham was playing his hand at Liverpool, he played it wrong.

He was offended by comments made about bond markets in one of his pre-conference interviews and needed to find a seat in parliament to mount a serious challenge to Sir Keir.

Another false start

Less than six months later, a way to overcome this obstacle presented itself.

Andrew Gwynne’s resignation frees up the safe Greater Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton. Mr Burnham threw his hat in the ring but was blocked by Labour’s senior brass.

According to Mr Rotheram, this decision was rejected appallingly and damaged Mr Burnham’s relationship with Sir Keir’s management.

When Independent Disdain for Sir Keir was evident in the Labor heartland and Mr Burnham’s district when he spoke to voters in his constituency ahead of the by-election in February 2026.

Thus, lifelong supporters said they would switch allegiances to both the Greens and Reform for the first time, arguing that Labor no longer felt like their party.

But some said having popular mayors on the ballot would keep their votes in the red. Their consensus was that he connected with and represented them in a way that Sir Keir did not.

This was made clear when Labor finished a humiliating third behind the Greens and Reform.

Following the defeat, Mr Burnham offered further advice to his party. He said the result “reveals the full depth of the gap between people and Westminster politics”.

As for the possibility of returning to parliament, the mayor, referring to the title of the 2024 book he wrote with Mr Rotheram, said: “That’s what it’s called Head north. All I can say today is that the sequel, ‘Head South,’ is currently on hold.”

Labor Party’s local election excitement

IndependentIts front page, dated 25 April 2026, included a warning from three Labor mayors – Mr Rotheram, Sadiq Khan and Richard Parker – that the performance of the prime minister and his government was making it difficult to campaign at the local level.

Burnham’s ally MP agreed, saying: “When I came out in the local elections in my local area in May, even people who had voted Labor were saying ‘I’ll vote Labor this time but you’ve got to get rid of him’ and they all meant Keir. You can’t ignore that.”

Seven in 10 voters believed Sir Keir was doing poorly as Britain headed to the polls. Labour’s results were nightmarish; It lost nearly 1,500 council seats and gave up control of 30 local authorities across England.

While it took a blow from the Reformation to the heartlands in the north and the Greens in London, it also lost control of the Sennedd of Wales for the first time.

Given these results, those close to Mr. Burnham believed it was now or never.

“Even if you don’t believe what you hear on your doorstep, the election results don’t lie,” the Burnham ally said. “And with Keir the way it was, the government and the country were only going in one direction and that was for Nigel Farage to come to power in two or three years.

“And we can’t let that happen. It’s for the good of the country. This isn’t about saving the Labor Party or the Labor Party for me, it’s about saving the country.”

‘It’s time’

The local election wipeout led more than 80 Labor MPs to call for Sir Keir’s head. When Wes Streeting resigned as health secretary, a de facto leadership race began; It is a race in which Mr. Burnham can only enter if he is returned to the House of Commons.

It was Makerfield MP Josh Simons who stepped aside to facilitate Mr Burnham’s return. Announcing his decision, Mr Simons said: “I stand aside so Andy Burnham can return home, fight to re-enter Parliament and, if elected, deliver the change our country is crying out for.”

The mayor was not impeded this time as it was expected to be a close race with Reform, which had taken 24 of the 25 available seats in Makerfield’s Wigan borough in the local elections.

The view among Mr Burnham’s allies was that if he couldn’t beat Reform in a seat like Makerfield, no one from Labor could. And if he wins, he has proven that he is the man to stop Mr Farage.

Mr Burnham launched his campaign for the June by-election with the slogan “Vote for Andy, for us”.

“He and his campaign team decided not to put the Labor brand on everything,” said the ally, who is part of the campaign.

“So some of the issues were written Labor but there was a lot of focus on Andy. “That was a vote for Andy, not Labour.

“This resonated with people because Andy realized the Labor brand wasn’t popular, and rightly so.”

Speakers in the constituency Independent When the mayors announced their candidacy, Mr Burnham was excited at the prospect of becoming an MP and leader of the Labor Party.

As with Gorton and Denton, he was seen by voters as an antidote to Sir Keir; He understood communities like theirs, embodied their ambitions and made them feel that Labor still cared about them.

Mr Burnham won 55 per cent of the vote, beating out Reform’s Robert Kenyon with relative ease. His new constituents sent him to London to convey their best wishes to Sir Keir.

Nine months after Mr. Burnham declared that nothing was “more unstoppable than an idea whose time has come,” Makerfield voter Terry Miller made a similar statement.

“It’s time,” said Mr. Miller Independent. This time it was true.

Unable to hold on to power any longer, Sir Keir resigned upon Mr Burnham’s return to Westminster.

The former mayor’s tortuous rise to the highest office in the land has now become a formality.