SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned this week. Next month, his center-left Labour Party will choose his successor. NPR's Lauren Frayer has this profile of the front-runner, a man who has been shaped by England's north-south divide.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Andy Burnham was born and raised in Northern England but went to the generally more posh South for college, studied literature at Cambridge, where Professor John Mullan recalls him wearing a soccer jersey to class.
JOHN MULLAN: And I think that might be quite common on the streets of Northwest England, but it's not necessarily a common thing in a Cambridge college.
FRAYER: It was an early example, Mullan told The Times of London, of the working-class identity that would come to define Burnham, the politician. Elected to Parliament at age 31, he served as sports minister and gave this speech on the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster...
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ANDY BURNHAM: The 96 fellow football supporters who died will never be forgotten.
FRAYER: ...When soccer fans were crushed in an overcrowded northern stadium and then blamed for their own deaths, accused of being hooligans.
CHARLOTTE WILDMAN: You know, they were treated so badly, and he was one of the first politicians to really listen.
FRAYER: Historian Charlotte Wildman says Burnham launched a government inquiry that found police failures were to blame at Hillsborough and helped change a stereotype.
WILDMAN: Particularly northern working-class men were demonized. They were accused of being violent, aggressive, criminal, and that was a very entrenched stereotype.
FRAYER: Burnham then ran for the leadership of his center-left Labour Party, nominated by his friend, Keir Starmer, but he lost twice and retreated north to Manchester, the birthplace of the working class in the Industrial Revolution. As mayor there, he sought to change the city's stereotype with a program of...
WILDMAN: Regeneration, of almost, like, marketing and branding - you know, Manchester used to have such a negative image, and, you know, it was so associated with urban decay.
FRAYER: Nowadays...
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FRAYER: It's kind of become a cliche Manchester is this skyline of construction cranes, but it's really true. I'm standing near these canal area, formerly warehouses, industrial space. And there's now an art center, and there are glass skyscrapers. Looks more like Dubai than England.
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FRAYER: Manchester is the fastest growing city in the country. Burnham gets credit, though...
ROSE MARLEY: You know, those cranes and that economic development, we were already on that trajectory, you know, as he started out as the mayor.
FRAYER: Rose Marley worked as one of Burnham's advisers, though they first met on Manchester's famous indie music scene. Marley recalls Burnham's transformation from a buttoned-up MP to a DJ.
MARLEY: He started wearing his trainers and his T-shirts and started DJing, so he pretty much became, you know, a full-on Mancunian within weeks, really (laughter).
FRAYER: By day, Burnham reversed the privatization of buses and got the central government to hand cities more power over things like education and housing. In local politics, he became a national figure, especially during COVID.
JOSHI HERRMANN: A particular press conference that he gave during the pandemic in 2020.
FRAYER: Joshi Herrmann founded the local Manchester news site, the Mill. He recalls how Burnham learned of a new lockdown while on live TV and lashed out, saying it would hurt blue-collar workers.
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BURNHAM: People too often forgotten by those in power.
FRAYER: This was under then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson's often-confusing health guidance. And Burnham...
HERRMANN: He expressed the sense of helplessness, a feeling that perhaps the government didn't really understand what it was like to be in a place like Manchester. He really identified himself as a different type of politician in this country. And I think without that moment, he wouldn't be sort of going into Downing Street in the next few weeks.
FRAYER: Burnham is one of Britain's most popular politicians. He may win back some working-class voters who've deserted Labour for the far right. But he'll also face the same challenges as Starmer - low national growth, high energy prices, pressure to ramp up defense and a certain rather volatile ally across the Atlantic.
HERRMANN: Andy Burnham's someone who really likes to have affirmation. I don't know what lengths he will go to to make sure Donald Trump is not Truth Socialing (ph) about him in the middle of the night because he won't like that. He will be more hurt by that, I think, than someone like Keir Starmer.
FRAYER: Governing a country rather than a city is something Britain's next prime minister may have to get used to. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, Manchester, England.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELMIENE SONG, "MARKING MY TIME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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