LONDON – Britain is getting its seventh prime minister in a decade with the 56-year-old Andrew Burnham walking through the historic black door of 10 Downing Street on July 20, after a brief audience with King Charles III, the country’s monarch.

Andy – as he likes to be called – arrives promising the most radical rupture in Britain’s economic governance in half a century: the rollback of what he dismisses as the “neoliberalist” market economy, and the dismantling of a centralised British administration he accuses of hoarding both political and economic power.

It is a bold prospectus from a politician who has carefully nurtured his image of a rebel outsider despite the fact that he has been in politics for over a quarter of a century. And as the new prime minister knows only too well, he does not have much time to prove himself; electoral honeymoons for British leaders are notoriously brief.

Burnham came to power in what is by now a traditional British pattern – not after winning general elections, but as the beneficiary of a parliamentary revolt that overthrew his predecessor.

Keir Starmer, who led Labour to a landslide victory in July 2024, quickly lost support and bungled his premiership. After Labour suffered historic defeats in the May 2026 local elections, attention turned to Burnham as the only politician able to revive the party’s fortunes.

Burnham, who chose to withdraw from national politics and spent the past nine years as mayor in Manchester, one of Britain’s biggest urban conurbations, re-entered Parliament through a by-election in June. Less than three weeks later, he stormed to Labour’s leadership.

His authority is not in doubt. No Labour MP stood against Burnham for the party’s leadership elections, so his rise to power was dubbed a “coronation.”...