Inside the operation to break Andy Burnham into parliament

LONDON — Andy Burnham has long traded on his outsider status as the mayor of Greater Manchester. But it’s a team of old hands in Westminster that will be instrumental in putting the man known as the “King of the North” on the cusp of running the U.K.

The Labour mayor — well used to picking fights with administrations in Westminster — is now gunning to re-enter parliament via what will be a hugely-competitive by-election in Makerfield. That would allow him a toe-hold to challenge the struggling Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.

In doing so, Burnham is relying on a trusted team of associates from his last stint as a member of parliament — and some who have coalesced around him since. POLITICO has spoken to a dozen officials, friends and advisers to understand who the key players around Burnham are — both in getting him over the Makerfield threshold, and potentially further. All spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity around the nascent leadership bid.

The ‘best friend’

Stranded in the mayoralty for which he left a long career in the House of Commons in 2017, Burnham is currently unable to run for the Labour leadership. But his small team of plotters got the ball rolling many months ago with a series of videoconference calls with sympathetic Labour MPs.

“If Andy wasn’t there, then Kevin always was,” said one person with knowledge of the talks.

The Kevin in question is Kevin Lee, director of the Greater Manchester mayor’s office, who has been advising Burnham with little break since 2010.

“The most important person in Andy’s team is Kevin Lee — he’s number one. They’ve been together for yonks,” said one of Burnham’s friends.

“He just knows Andy inside out. He knows exactly what Andy is going to say. And more importantly they’re best mates. When he’s driving Andy about he keeps sweets in the glove compartment because he knows Andy likes a sweet before he speaks,” the friend continued. “They’re almost like husband and wife.”

Lee’s first gig with Burnham was back in 2010, when he ran the former health secretary’s first unsuccessful bid for the Labour leadership. Lee was there advising Burnham for his second, in 2015, too, as well as his triumphant tilt at the Manchester mayoralty in 2016.

“Even at points where it hasn’t gone well they’ve maintained a working dynamic,” said an official who’s worked with the pair. “Both in the public and the private world if you haven’t succeeded in your objective you might rearrange your team — but in this instance it hasn’t happened.”

The near-singularity of Burnham’s close team, however, has led to concerns in recent weeks about a lack of grip. Some Labour critics warn that the media narrative about him hasn’t been sufficiently under control, with many unauthorized “allies” seeming to speak to journalists on Burnham’s behalf. 

“Andy was very frustrated by it because he thought it was not necessarily helpful,” said a second person who’s worked with Burnham. “The vacuum he’s created by not having a stronger team around him has been felt.”

Burnham declined to comment for this piece.

Andy Burnham gives a speech during The Great North Investment Summit at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds on May 18, 2026. | Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

To try get a grip on the messaging, Grace Pritchard has been seconded from Cabinet minister Ed Miliband’s team to run communications for Burnham’s by-election bid, with Lee remaining in his official role at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

“She’s the best — widely respected as one of the sharpest comms people in the party,” one official who’s worked with Pritchard said.

The parliamentary agitators

Burnham wouldn’t have his current shot at the leadership if it wasn’t for the “network” he’s built up in the Parliamentary Labour Party, as one MP put it. They were describing the array of friends and contacts the mayor now has working for him in Westminster.

Burnham needed an MP to stand aside so that he could run for the Commons. Then Starmer needed to be sufficiently weakened that the PM couldn’t once again block the mayor’s bid to run in a by-election, as he was able to in January.

Labour left-winger Clive Lewis was Burnham’s first public supporter during the Starmer administration, even briefly offering up his own Norwich South seat for the mayor. 

But over time his big champions in the Commons became Louise Haigh, who revived the soft-left Tribune group after being forced out as transport secretary, and Anneliese Midgley, a friend of Burnham’s who represents a Liverpool constituency and has campaigned with the mayor for a Hillsborough Law to prevent state cover-ups in the wake of the football stadium disaster.

They were two of the first Labour MPs to call for Starmer’s resignation as the disastrous results of May 7’s local elections were being announced the following day.

Now Midgley has been appointed “political lead” in the by-election, and Haigh is expected to be given a key role in the campaign in the coming days.

Who exactly was instrumental in running the operation to get Burnham a potential seat remains a closely-guarded secret. Before Burnham found his way in, prospective seats were publicly named — some with total confidence by Westminster reporters — only for the MP in question to swiftly rule out stepping aside.

“There was a battle taking place between No. 10 behind the scenes. It was like whack-a-mole,” said one of Burnham’s supporters in parliament. “There was definitely an operation to scuttle the ship before it was launched. And it was pretty successful.”

That may explain why the MP who ended up standing aside for Burnham’s bid came as such a shock to almost everyone in Westminster. Josh Simons had been the director of Labour Together, a Starmer-supporting think tank, before he was elected in Makerfield at the 2024 general election. He even served in Starmer’s government until he had to resign under a cloud.

Simons decided to give up his seat last week after a lengthy visit to his home by Burnham, but there had been sounding out going on for some time.

People who have worked with Simons believe he would only have made room after being offered a key role in a future Burnham team — claims Simons denies. Instead he argues it was a decision made in the interest of a Labour Party “imploding” in the polls, with no sign of Starmer being able to turn the ship around.

Keir Starmer on the campaign trail ahead of the Gorton and Denton by-election on February 23, 2026. | Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Simons has, however, been playing an informal role in giving a “handover” to Burnham in the early days of his candidacy, two people with knowledge of their talks said. Simons has been briefing the mayor on local issues and setting out the lay of the political land in Makerfield. He was with Burnham as recently as Tuesday, accompanying him to present football trophies in Wigan.

The big shots and the thinkers

Burnham is no stranger to the Cabinet either. Two of his biggest supporters around Starmer’s top table are Miliband, the energy secretary, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is “pally” with Burnham, too, as the friend quoted above put it. And Deputy Labour Leader Lucy Powell is another prominent champion in parliament. They all might hope to prosper if the mayor does make it to Downing Street.

More immediately, Powell is taking on the key by-election job of trying to rally members and volunteers on the campaign. She played a similar role in the Gorton and Denton by-election, which Labour lost to the Greens after Burnham’s candidacy was blocked. Powell and Nandy, whose Wigan constituency neighbors Makerfield, were out campaigning for Burnham even before he was officially selected as the candidate.

Political commentator and activist Neal Lawson, the co-founder of the Labour-linked Compass pressure group, is also seen by those around Burnham as significant. Luke Hurst, from the Burnham-supporting Mainstream organization, and Matthew Lawrence, who has articulated a case for a spread of the “Manchesterism” model of governance that Burnham has furthered during his time as mayor are also spoken of as key players, as is Zoë Billingham, the director of the IPPR North think tank.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, a former think-tanker, was the first minster to resign from Starmer’s government in the wake of the disastrous local election results. She is now advising Burnham on policy, according to two of the Greater Manchester mayor’s allies. 

If everything goes Burnham’s way and he does become prime minister, he is already determined not to repeat a perceived mistake of his predecessor. As POLITICO reported Tuesday, his team has been working on a policy plan for his first 100 days in government.

If Burnham wants to avoid being turfed out of office at the same pace as Starmer, expect the team above to be relied on for policy clout — and fast.

Dan Bloom contributed reporting.