Westminster has, once again, been engulfed in high theatre. The Prime Minister stood aside on Monday announcing a two-week departure timetable. Hours later, Andy Burnham hopped on the train to take his Commons seat and began his march on No.10 Downing Street. With no other contenders emerging, it looks as though Andy Burnham could be Prime Minister sooner rather than later.
Andy Burnham is a man with a long political history, having been a member of both Blair and Brown governments before becoming Manchester Mayor. If he does enter No.10, he could also be our most pro-proportional representation Prime Minister ever. Both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer have hinted towards electoral reform in the past, so what makes Andy Burnham different?
Andy Burnham’s move away from First Past the Post
Following his first victory under the Supplementary Vote in the Manchester Mayoralty, Andy Burnham had a taste of a different voting system and publicly began supporting electoral reform.
In 2021, he responded to a tweet from a constituent regarding proportional representation saying he had “come round to it”. A few weeks later reaffirmed his support in a podcast saying that First Past the Post breeds resentment by failing to represent voters.
In written evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee he defended the SV system. He argued, “As Mayor, collaboration, partnership and consensus-building are critical to my job… I need a strong mandate and an ability to reach out beyond traditional political divides. The current Supplementary Vote supports this.”
Electoral reform and the ‘rewiring agenda’, 2022-24
Common to Andy Burnham’s messaging when he became Manchester Mayor was his dislike of the way things are done in Westminster.
In 2022, Andy Burnham backed Labour supporting PR in an oped in the Guardian as the party debated and then passed a motion calling for electoral reform at Westminster. In it he warned: “First-past-the-post, combined with the whip system, takes the votes of millions and turns them into inordinate power for a small Whitehall elite.”
His messaging was explicit in his appearance at a Labour for a New Democracy event in March 2022. The event was framed around proportional representation being part of a broader agenda of a ‘complete rewiring of Britain’.
In June 2023, the Guardian reported on his comments at the ‘Making Britain Work for Scotland’ rally, that he doesn’t “believe all people in all places will be equally represented in Westminster until every vote matters” and called for Labour to formally adopt PR.
Following the 2024 General Election, and the most disproportional Parliament in our history, he attended a Labour for a New Democracy rally at Labour conference. He made his first call for a review of the First Past the Post system. He said “why not launch a review of the voting system for the House of Commons? And why not consider carefully whether proportional representation has the support of the country”.
Andy Burnham explicitly calls for proportional representation, 2025
In June 2025, Andy Burnham appeared at the Compass conference. He explicitly called for proportional representation as well as a “revolution in technical education, and the biggest programme of social and council housing that the country has ever seen”.
At 2025’s Labour conference when the first rumblings of a leadership bid took flight, he appeared at the Labour for a New Democracy rally once again. He said that “There is nothing more unstoppable than an idea whose time has come, and PR’s time has come”.
A manifesto commitment? Andy Burnham in 2026
At the Alliance Party conference in Belfast, he criticised First Past the Post for concentrating power in the hands of a few and called for as many parties as possible “to fight the next General Election on a shared manifesto commitment to introduce a system of proportional representation at the one after”.
As his campaign began in Makerfield, Burnham outlined in an ITV interview the ‘real change moment’ of him standing for the first time under a voting system other than first past the post that led him to support electoral reform for Westminster. He said that campaigning for Manchester Mayor gave him “an incentive to knock on any door, because you may be able to get a second preference from somebody”. Burnham added: “And the thing about that was is that it finally aligned the conversation on the door with what people want from politics, which is about problem-solving first and foremost, not about point-scoring.
When pressed by the interview if that meant he wanted to bring in proportional representation for Westminster, Burnham said: “I support it, and I think it brings a different conversation. But that, to answer your question, would require it to be in a manifesto and endorsed at a general election.”
He later told The Guardian that he wanted electoral reform to make politics, “less point-scoring, more problem-solving”. To The Observer, he reaffirmed his commitment, referencing his time as Manchester Mayor and fighting for every vote.
[The following section was added on 22 July 2026]
As he stood in front of Number 10 to make his first speech as Prime Minister, Burnham spoke again of his plans to change the culture of politics at Westminster. He said: “We will make this moment a circuit breaker for Britain, bringing forward the biggest changes in the last forty years. “A new political model and a new economic model.” Later adding: “And that’s why we will change politics, to make it more collaborative, more about problem solving than point scoring.”
Andy Burnham’s opinion on the need to scrap First Past the Post comes from his first-hand experience winning elections under it, and then experiencing a system where more votes mattered.
With his wider comments about a break from Westminster culture and his commitment to reviewing our outdated and unfair voting system, could a representative parliament finally be in reach? The ball is in the PM’s court.
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