Labour has chosen Burnham as its next leader and future British Prime Minister

Andy Burnham is set to become the next Labour Party leader and British Prime Minister: the newly elected MP for Makerfield and former mayor of Manchester received the backing of 322 Labour MPs this evening, a landslide victory that guarantees his move to Downing Street.

Nominations for the succession to Keir Starmer opened this morning, and by the end of the day Burnham was the only candidate in the running. Under the rules, the race will remain open until next Wednesday, partly to give Labour-affiliated trade unions the chance to have their say.

However, these are merely a formality: the outcome now seems a foregone conclusion. Barring any surprises, Burnham will become Prime Minister on 20 July. It will therefore be a coronation without a vote, an unusual situation that some, even within Labour, consider undemocratic.

Burnham, with his usual sense of humour, said this evening that he hopes to be lucky at the third attempt, having already tried unsuccessfully to become Labour Party leader in 2010 and 2015. After leaving Westminster, however, he was elected mayor of Manchester and subsequently re-elected twice with an ever-increasing number of votes, having succeeded in revitalising the city’s economy and gaining enormous popularity, which has now brought him back to Westminster.

Starmer, who has been slipping in the polls for some time, has been hampered by Labour’s disastrous results in the local elections in May and also by his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. After just a few months, he was forced to recall the former Labour minister because documents released by the US Department of Justice revealed the close ties between Mandelson and the financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of paedophilia and died in prison in 2019.