The new leader takes over from the unpopular Keir Starmer just two years after the outgoing prime minister led Labor to power in a landslide election victory after 14 years of Conservative rule, AFP reported.
After being asked by King Charles III to form the next government, Burnham, 56, is due to make his first speech Monday outside 10 Downing Street shortly after Starmer has said his farewells.
He will set out “priorities for restoring confidence in government and giving Britain more breathing room” amid the cost-of-living crisis, his team said. Delivering growth and devolving power to regional communities are also expected to feature.
An announcement on his senior cabinet appointments is also expected on Monday with all eyes on who will replace Rachel Reeves as finance minister.
The former mayor of Greater Manchester, nicknamed the “King of the North,” has been parachuted in by the Labor Party, after Starmer resigned last month, with MPs viewing him as the party’s best chance of reining in Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party.
Deputy Labor Party leader Lucy Powell said on Sunday Burnham’s mayoral experience away from the London center of government meant he understood the “bigger, bolder measures” needed to deliver on Labor’s election manifesto promises.
Among Burnham’s most urgent challenges will be a tepid economy, high government borrowing costs, a ballooning welfare bill and irregular migrants arriving in small boats that have fueled support for Reform.
Unpredictable energy prices due to the US war on Iran and a volatile American president in Donald Trump also threaten to buffet his premiership.
The new prime minister wanted to “radically” rewrite an “over-centralized” political system and an economic model that had put vested interests ahead of ordinary people, Powell told BBC television.
“It’s about giving ordinary people security in work, security in their home, a home they can afford and live in a community that they can feel proud of and knowing that their children are going to have opportunity for the future,” she said.
MNA
