Denis MacShane / Jul 2026
The new UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, chairs his first cabinet meeting, 21 July 2026. The new minister for EU-UK relations, Hamish Falconer, is second from the right. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Britain’s new prime minister is an instantly recognisable political creature to anyone who follows European politics. But he is unusual for a British, especially a Labour politician.
He has learnt to speak passable Spanish and his university sweetheart, Frankie, who married him is Dutch and speaks fluent French.
The British political and media elites are almost universally monolingual and if presented with Le Monde, Die Welt or El País would not know which was the first or the last page.
He comes from a Catholic family and pays tribute to the Catholic Church’s social teaching so for Burnham politics is about helping those without money to find their way to an income, to found a family, and to live in their own home.
Burnham has a way with words that does not fit into the usual left-right taxonomy. He has served a long apprenticeship as a Labour politician – elected an MP aged just 30 and then holding cabinet rank office in the long, stable and on the whole successful Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown 1997-2010.
He was No 2 in the UK Treasury (the Finance Ministry) then made Health Secretary where he insisted on the need for a national plan for old age care.
Burnham is a classic social democratic politician to be found in Northern Europe maybe like Helmut Schmidt who was Mayor of Hamburg, the Manchester of Germany, before moving to national leadership as German Chancellor. Schmidt impressed with his handling of crises that hit Hamburg and in building a partnership economic model with the business and financial sector leaders of Hamburg just as Burnham has a ten years’ record in turning around the Manchester economy to launch new businesses, build new homes and give the city the best public transport network in Britain.
Burnham arrives on the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote won by Conservative Party and the Europhobic far right headed by Nigel Farage. They promised in 2016 that stopping trade and partnership links with Europe would lead to a new British economic renaissance and the return of the UK as a global power.
Now every opinion poll shows up to 60 per cent or more of the public consider Brexit to have been a major wrong-turning for Britain. This does not give Burnham permission of some kind of instant rejoin. Both Britain and the EU have changed since 2016.
The departed British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer claimed in 2022 he “would make Brexit work”. Alas nearly every sector of the British economy suffered from the loss of trade access and millions of Brits were denied under the Starmer version of Brexit from living, working, studying or retiring in Europe.
Burnham will have to reach out to business to create a new coalition for a reconnection to Europe possibly along Swiss or Norwegian lines. Europe has become weaker once Britain amputated herself from the continent and more subtle leadership is needed from the capitals of Europe to allow a soft re-engagement between the UK and the rest of Europe.
He has named Hamish Falconer, a former diplomat now a Labour MP educated at Oxford and Yale to be in charge of relations with Europe. But he faces opposition not just from the Conservative Party headed by the anti-EU Kemi Badenoch and the populist enthno-nationalist Reform Party leader Nigel Farage.
But neither of these rightist parties are proving to be election winners. Farage’s Reform party were beaten by Green and Labour candidates in two recent key by-elections while the Tories under Kemi Badenoch scored only 2 per cent in these by-elections.
More problematic for Burnham is the opposition of the press including daily papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Rupert Murdoch stable of papers, and the mass circulation Daily Mail.
The head of the Confederation of British Industry, Rain Newton Smith, says that British business does not want to “re-litigate” exit. This is the view of the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and the far-right Nigel Farage. Historically dating back to the 1950s, British business took a lead in promoting partnership with Europe to promote trade.
Without business support, Burnham, despite being personally pro-European may feel it is politically safer to leave the European dossier stay under lock and key and just manage a genteel decline of Britain as a globally relevant competitive economy.
It will be no easy task to lead a fractious Britain infected like Germany, France, the Netherlands and other EU member states challenged by the new ethnonationalist borderline racist ideologies rising in political influence in nearly every European nation.
Burnham’s natural instincts are a return to Europe for Britain. The question is will EU leaders help or hinder him in realising this ambition? And can economic actors, businesses in the UK part company with the right-wing politicians and editors who bow before Brexit despite its negative impact on growth, investment and trade?
Denis MacShane is a friend of Andy Burnham over 15 years. He says the new prime minister’s personal mobile phone numbers have not changed since the time both men were British Labour MPs 15 years ago.
