LondonAndy Burnham, the king of Northern England, will be crowned leader of the Labour Party on July 17 and, three days later, on the 20th, will become the seventh Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in a decade. The former mayor of Manchester, MP for the Makerfield constituency, in North West England, formalized his candidacy for leadership of the party this Thursday to fill the vacancy left by Keir Starmer. "I have just submitted my nomination to lead the Labour Party," he wrote on X, admitting that the process "is starting to feel very real." The PremierStarmerannounced his resignation on June 22, a victim of his own mistakes and pressure from his MPs due to poor electoral expectations.
Burnham has secured the support of 322 MPs, just one less than the threshold that would make any alternative candidacy mathematically impossible. The anticipation his proclamation has generated was evident this very morning, when in front of the Labour parliamentary group office, inside the House of Commons, a small queue of parliamentarians had already formed to be the first to formalize their support for the future prime minister. The gradual withdrawal of possible contenders to succeed Starmer, even before the candidacy submission process officially opened, has completely cleared his path. On July 17, when the nominations deadline closes, he will be proclaimed leader of the Labour Party. On the next working day, July 20, Starmer will officially present his resignation to the King, who will then ask Burnham to form the new government.
In his second intervention of the day via social media, Burnham addressed the humanitarian crisis and the genocide in Gaza, a topic that has deeply divided Labour from the left. Thus, the next prime minister apologized for the Labour Party's initial response to Israel's military offensive on the Strip. In a pre-recorded video, Burnham stated that the suffering of the population of Gaza is "a scar on the collective conscience" and acknowledged that his party's position after Hamas's attacks on October 7, 2023, "was not good enough." While condemning those attacks, he admitted that the United Kingdom took too long to call for a ceasefire and apologized to those who believe Labour "did not do well."
Burnham has also argued that, although important measures have been adopted – such as the decision to recognize the Palestinian state – the British government must go further. Among the options he has put forward is the possibility of imposing new sanctions against those responsible for the violence in Gaza, as a sign of the will to toughen the British response to the conflict.
On the other hand, even if tomorrow, Friday, or Monday, when parliamentarians return to Westminster for the last week of sessions before the summer holidays, he were to gain the support of one more MP and reach the magic figure of 323 MPs, the Labour leadership indicated this Thursday that it maintains the planned schedule. Burnham, therefore, would be prime minister a day after, in the best-case scenario, the English football team won the World Cup. Perhaps, as Starmer has promised, the government's last act before going to Buckingham Palace to present their resignation to the king will be to decree a public holiday to celebrate the hypothetical victory. The only time the Three Lions won the World Cup, in 1966, there was also a Labour government, led at the time by Harold Wilson. England, however, has a much harder time than Burnham in achieving its goal: first it must beat Norway's Halland and, in a hypothetical semi-final, it would have to overcome Messi's Argentina or an always uncomfortable Switzerland.