The right now

Burnham (/ˈbɜːrnəm/ ⓘ; born 7 January 1970) is a British politician who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party since July 2026. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Makerfield since June 2026, and was Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 to 2026. From 2001 to 2017 he was MP for Leigh and held several cabinet positions, the most recent being Secretary of State for Health from 2009 to 2010 in Gordon Brown's government. A member of both Labour and the Co-operative Party, Burnham identifies as a socialist and is associated with Labour's "soft left" faction. His political ideology has been called "Manchesterism".

Burnham grew up in Culcheth, between Liverpool and Manchester in Northern England, and joined Labour aged 15. He attended St Aelred's Catholic High School in Newton-le-Willows and read English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. In his early career, Burnham was a researcher for Tessa Jowell and special adviser to Culture Secretary Chris Smith. At the 2001 election, he was elected MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester. Under the prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, he held several cabinet positions, firstly as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and then as Culture Secretary, in which he launched the Hillsborough Independent Panel. In 2009 he was promoted to Health Secretary, in which he responded to the swine flu pandemic and launched an independent inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal.

After Labour lost power in 2010, Burnham served in the shadow cabinets of Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn in several positions from 2010 to 2016, firstly Shadow Education Secretary, primarily Shadow Health Secretary and lastly Shadow Home Secretary. He ran for Labour's leadership in 2010 and 2015, coming fourth and second. Selected as the Labour candidate for the new Greater Manchester Mayoralty, he won the mayoral election in 2017 and stood down as an MP. As mayor, Burnham reorganised Manchester's tram and bus systems as the Bee Network and was nicknamed "King of the North" for campaigning for more furlough funding for Northern communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was re-elected in 2021 and 2024.