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Andy Burnham was officially declared leader of Britain’s governing Labour Party on Friday, clearing his final hurdle to taking office as prime minister next week.
The centre-left party announced the result of a leadership contest to replace departing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in which Burnham was the only contender.
The announcement was a foregone conclusion after he secured nominations from 379 of the 403 Labour lawmakers in the House of Commons as of Thursday night.
Starmer will remain prime minister until Monday, when he formally tenders his resignation to King Charles. The king will then ask Burnham to form a government.
Britain’s parliamentary democracy allows governing parties to change leaders, and thus prime ministers, without the need for a general election. The next national election doesn’t have to be held until 2029.
New prime ministers have come with increasing frequency in recent years. Burnham will be the U.K.’s seventh leader since 2016.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, has been prime minister-in-waiting for weeks, but he has revealed little detail about his policy priorities. He will arrive in 10 Downing Street largely unknown to voters outside Manchester.
While Burnham has been regarded as one of the Labour Party’s best communicators, he faces many of the same problems as his predecessor, including a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living squeeze fuelled by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and overstretched public services.
Burnham was set to sketch out some of his priorities in a speech Friday.
Starmer announced last month that he would resign after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.
Labour regularly trails behind anti-immigration party Reform UK in opinion polls, and the governing party had catastrophic results in local elections in May, triggering pressure on Starmer to step down that he couldn’t resist.
