After weeks as U.K. prime minister-in-waiting, Burnham went to Buckingham Palace on Monday to be appointed Britain's new leader by King Charles III.
He succeeds Keir Starmer, and Britain’s political turbulence gave way, at least temporarily, to smooth choreography.
Burnham is the seventh U.K. prime minister since 2016 in a now well-rehearsed handover after replacing Starmer as leader of the center-left governing Labour Party on Friday.
The former mayor of Greater Manchester was the only contender in the center-left party's leadership contest to replace departing starmer, who was forced out by a rebellion within his party. Friday's announcement was a foregone conclusion after Burnham secured nominations from 379 of the 403 Labour lawmakers in the House of Commons.
He sketched out some priorities in Friday's speech, promising to deliver “hope in every heart” and “good growth in every post code,” in part by transferring power from central government in London to local leaders in cities and regions.
He highlighted plans to focus on economic renewal, more public control of key sectors and creating new modern industrial jobs, arguing that Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralized and economic power privatized.”
That’s the decade when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher oversaw policies of privatization, deindustrialization and political centralization that transformed the U.K. economy.
