LONDON – Andy Burnham, the man about to become Britain’s next prime minister, looked exhausted and on the edge of fury.

It was October 2020, the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic. As mayor of Greater Manchester, he had just learned from an aide that the Conservative government in London, some 200 miles south, had imposed fresh lockdown restrictions on his area, while refusing his demand for US$87 million (S$112 million) to protect low-income workers and struggling businesses.

“This is no way to run the country in a national crisis,” he fumed in front of a Manchester concert hall. “They should not be doing this. Grinding people down. Trying to accept the least they can get away with.”

“It is frankly disgraceful,” he said.

The video clip went viral, earned Burnham the nickname “King of the North” and was arguably the moment that set him hurtling toward No. 10 Downing Street.

On July 17, he became the leader of the Labour Party and on July 20, King Charles III will formally ask him to become the country’s 59th prime minister.

Burnham’s brand has always been that of the plainspoken, stand-up-for-the-little-guy politician. Despite his highbrow English degree from Cambridge University, his regional accent communicated his ordinary upbringing in north-west England.

Born in 1970, Andrew Murray Burnham grew up in a close-knit Roman Catholic family in the village of Culcheth, between two postindustrial cities in decline for decades: Liverpool, where he was born, and Manchester.