On the day Andy Burnham is sworn in as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, we’re looking back to not just the early years of his career, but what inspired it to begin with. During a 2015 interview alongside his parents, Eileen and Roy, Andy revealed a memorable slogan he spotted on a sticker when he was a child.
According to the Mirror, Andy saw a sticker on the back of a car in 1979 (when he would have been around nine years old) that read, ‘Don’t blame me, I voted Labour.’ Intrigued, Andy turned to his father, Roy. ‘I asked Dad what it meant and he said, “Well, there’s this woman called Maggie Thatcher…”’
Andy said he recalled passing picket lines on his way to school during the miners’ strikes of the 1980s, and remembered appeals for canned food for the families. His mother’s grandfather had also been a miner. Andy became a member of the Labour party at the age of 14, and at 18 joined an activist march against Margaret Thatcher’s infamous (and later repealed and apologised for by David Cameron) Section 28 act.
‘Roy and I were always Labour and interested in politics, but we didn’t indoctrinate him,’ Eileen told the Mirror, while Roy added, ‘We’d discuss things and I’ve seen his values develop.’
Andy has now risen to the very top of his political career to take the keys of 10 Downing Street as the new Labour Prime Minister. It’s third time lucky for Andy, who previously made bids to be Labour leader in 2010 and 2015 without success. In the meantime, he’s been elected MP for Makerfield and was considered a successful Mayor of Greater Manchester, which paved the way to finally getting his hands on the top job.
On Monday (20 July), Sir Keir Starmer officially handed his resignation to King Charles at Buckingham Palace before Andy Burnham was invited by His Majesty to form a new Government. In his final speech outside Number 10, Sir Keir said that his work was now done and promised Andy his support going forward.
Andy Burnham will be moving into the famous street alongside his wife, Marie-France van Heel, who, according to the BBC, he met during his university days. They’ve been together for more than two decades and have three children together: Jimmy, Rosie and Anne-Marie.
