In a historic transfer of power at Downing Street on Monday, Andy Burnham was sworn in as the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, succeeding Keir Starmer and immediately setting out an ambitious agenda to reshape British politics and economics after decades of neoliberal restructuring. The former mayor of Greater Manchester, who previously served as a cabinet minister during the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, used his first address to the nation to acknowledge the extraordinary political volatility Britain has experienced over the past eight years, noting he is the seventh prime minister to hold office since 2016.
“It requires my generation of politicians to raise our game and rise to the new challenge,” Burnham told the crowd assembled outside 10 Downing Street.
Aligning himself with progressive priorities first championed by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Burnham revealed that his first official order of business as prime minister will be to end the national crisis of rough sleeping across the UK. He outlined that a sweeping 10-year national strategy will be introduced later this year, mapping a unified path forward for all British citizens regardless of socioeconomic background or partisan affiliation. While the full long-term plan will be unveiled in the coming months, Burnham pledged immediate targeted action to ease the strain of the ongoing cost of living crisis, with specific relief measures — including details on how the policies will be funded — set to be announced Tuesday.
On the foreign policy front, the new prime minister offered few new details, confirming only that the UK will uphold all existing defence commitments to its international allies while focusing domestic policy efforts on tackling the cost of living crisis.
The core of Burnham’s inaugural address was a sharp rebuke of the neoliberal economic framework introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1979, which he said had left lasting damage to communities across the UK. He argued that Thatcher’s agenda triggered decades of centralized political power, mass privatization of public assets and deindustrialization that has never been reversed for left-behind regions.
“Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, large parts of the country deindustrialised, and they still haven’t recovered,” Burnham said. “Many feel as though they’re still in decline, and they don’t have the ability to turn things around.”
Thatcher’s administration privatized core national sectors including energy, water and social care, dismantling the post-World War II social democratic consensus that shaped British policy for nearly four decades. Notably, this neoliberal framework was largely retained by the New Labour governments Burnham served in between 1997 and 2010. The former prime minister’s vision of restructuring the economy was explicitly designed to reshape British society, with Thatcher famously stating in 1981 that “economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.”
A longstanding advocate of devolving power away from Westminster and London to regional and local governments across the UK, Burnham pledged to reverse decades of deindustrialization and rebuild a national economy that puts essential public services and utilities under greater public oversight to lower costs for households. He stopped short of committing to full nationalization of key industries, however. The new prime minister also promised to accelerate construction of affordable public council housing to address the UK’s ongoing housing crisis.
Earlier in the day, outgoing prime minister Keir Starmer delivered his farewell address, framing his two years in office as a period of successful reform for the Labour Party and tangible progress for the country. Starmer took over the Labour leadership following the party’s 2019 general election defeat, and credited his internal reforms for delivering a landslide general election victory for Labour in 2024. In a notable break from his previous public comments, Starmer did not repeat his false claim that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn had been institutionally antisemitic.
Starmer claimed that during his tenure, public services have improved, child poverty has fallen, and net immigration to the UK has dropped substantially. Describing his time in office as the greatest privilege of his life, he reaffirmed his unflinching support for Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion. He framed Burnham’s ascent to the premiership as an orderly, peaceful handover of power, offering his full backing to the new prime minister.
“I wish him every success,” Starmer said.