Inside life of Andy Burnham from Blind Date wife and wild make-up rumours to PM rival

In what has been a white-knuckle week at Westminster, Andy Burnham is planning a return to the halls of power. Almost 100 Labour MPs have called on the Prime Minster Keir Starmer to make way for a new Labour leader, with the most crushing blow so far coming from Wes Streeting, who stepped down as Health Secretary on Thursday. Starmer continues to fight on, but it's clear blood has been scented. Now, another contender has made their intentions clear - the 'King of the North' himself, Andy Burnham . Former Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons, MP for Makerfield, announced on Thursday that he would be relinquishing his seat for the Greater Manchester Mayor, who he hailed as the right man to "drive the change our country is crying out for". Just minutes after, Burnham, 56, confirmed he would be seeking selection for the Makerfield seat, telling supporters: "Much bigger change is needed at a national level if everyday life is to be made more affordable again." Wes Streeting has today backed leadership rival Burnham's bid to return - saying he has the "best chance of winning" the upcoming Makerfield by-election. Born in Liverpool to a BT engineer father and a GP receptionist mother, Burnham's family moved after his dad landed a new job in Manchester. The politician grew up in the quiet Cheshire village of Culcheth on the outskirts of Warrington, where he attended St Lewis Catholic Primary School and St Aelred's Roman Catholic High School in Newton-le-Willows. An ardent Everton FC supporter, the sporty middle son also showed promise as a bowler for Lancashire Schoolboys. Music was another passion - especially The Smiths and The Stone Roses. In his 2024 book, Burnham reflected: "It was hard to be both a good student and one of the lads." But while the budding politician may have had doubts about where exactly he fit in, his proud dad Roy always knew his clever son was "destined for better things". Speaking with The Liverpool Echo in 2010, at a time when Burnham was gunning for Labour party leadership, Roy said: "He has always been driven. He mixed a lot. He played a lot of sport and was popular when he was younger. But he was rigid in his studies. At a certain time in the evening, he would go and do his homework." Even as a teenager, Burnham was showing a keen interest in politics. The Labour 'lifer' told The Mirror how he'd joined the party at the age of 14 after tuning into BBC TV drama, Boys From The Blackstuff, which focused on the lives of those struggling in the Thatcher era. A straight-A student, Burnham initially considered studying Spanish and becoming a courier, but took a completely different turn thanks to an inspirational English teacher. "Steve Harrington, amazing man, I'm still in touch with him... He boosted my confidence at a time when I didn't and wouldn't have thought I could go to Cambridge," he said. "He particularly lifted me from a student who could have done reasonably well and gone to a decent university to somebody who achieved much more than I thought I could." His brothers, Nick and John, both work as teachers in the Warrington area. As proud as Burnham's family would have been at him being accepted to Cambridge, he "struggled to feel part of things" as a student, adding: "But my growing interest in Manchester music gave me an identity and an advantage." It was during his studies at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, that Burnham met his wife, Marie-France van Heel. Known affectionately as Frankie, the professional marketing executive is originally from the Netherlands and also previously lived in Belgium. She came from a family of football fans, and the pair quickly hit it off. The course of true love never did run smooth, and in the early days of their courtship, Frankie asked Burnham's permission to appear on the iconic Saturday night dating show, Blind Date. Thankfully for Burnham, she didn't hit it off with 'Will from Surrey' on their awkward, argument-filled date to Gibraltar. By the time they returned to the studio, Frankie was so fed up with Will, who told her she was a 'cold fish', that she threw a cushion at him. While living in a two-up, two-down near Brixton, the Burnhams welcomed their first son, Jimmy, in March 2000, but it wasn't all smooth sailing. Burnham has since admitted that they hadn't planned to start their family at that time because he "felt stability was important". But the young family made things work, with Burnham juggling his burgeoning parliamentary career with being a new dad. In October of that year, he and Frankie went on to tie the knot, shortly before he was selected as MP. It was at this point that they made the move back up North, where daughters Rosie and Annie were born. Opening up about the tricky side of balancing his career with his home life, Burnham shared: "It's very hard to spend time away from the family. Partly what rooted me was that my mum and dad were always there. I just hope the dysfunctional side of the job doesn't put my children off what I do. Whatever they do, it doesn't matter, as long as they fulfil themselves as people. Although I know the family would find it easier if they came home and said they were going to vote Tory rather than that they had decided to support Liverpool..." A brand consultant for much of her career, Frankie is now Chief Customer Officer for the Octopus Energy Generation-backed electric vehicle charging company Be.EV, based in Manchester. Like many politicians before him, Burnham initially pursued journalism, taking up an unpaid internship at the Middleton Guardian after graduation. There, the differences between himself and his privileged Cambridge classmates once again became apparent. "Nearly everything I do has a route into it from something that has happened to me in my life, practically all the things I'd say. And the reason I was so into unpaid internships is for this reason. I saw people literally fly out of Cambridge into the Times, the Guardian, and I'm thinking, 'well, where's my Times and Guardian internship?,'" he said. Although working for free was far from ideal, it proved a useful starting point for young Burnham, who went on to work for trade magazines such as Tank World and Passenger World Management. In 1994, he was hired by Labour minister Tessa Jowell as a researcher, kickstarting his political ascent. Employment with the Transport and General Workers' Union followed. After the victory of former PM Tony Blair , he held a brief parliamentary officer role at the NHS Confederation, as well as an administrator position on the government's Football Task Force. In 1998, Burnham was hired as a special adviser to Culture Secretary Chris Smith, and in 2001, he was elected MP for Leigh. By 2007, he had become one of the stars of Gordon Brown's cabinet, rising to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary, and Health Secretary. During the Brown years, Burnham also made a name for himself after launching a campaign that would eventually lead to the second Hillsborough inquiry. In 2010, he made his first bid for Labour leadership, but ultimately lost out to Ed Miliband , under whom he served as Shadow Education Secretary and Shadow Health Secretary. It was during this time that Burnham used his position to rail against cuts to the NHS . In 2015, Burnham ran for the Labour leadership again, but ultimately came in second place behind Jeremy Corbyn , earning just 19 per cent of the vote comapred with Corbyn's 60 per cent. .He served briefly under Corbyn as Shadow Home Secretary but ultimately bowed out in 2016 after being elected as Manchester's Mayor. The two unsuccessful leadership bids hasn't put Burnham off. Back May 2021, the politician suggested he was still considering this possibility, adding that the Labour Party should "get in touch" if it were "ever to feel it needed me". Burnham has "generally voted against reducing central government funding of local government" and has "almost always voted against greater restrictions on campaigning by third parties, such as charities, during elections," They Work For You reports. And when it comes to social issues, he has "almost always voted for measures that increased LGBT+ rights and social equality", and has "consistently voted for the hunting ban". With foreign affairs, he has "consistently voted for replacing Trident with a new nuclear weapons system". He "consistently voted for the Iraq war", and also "consistently voted against investigations into the Iraq war". With matters of education, Burnham has" voted a mixture of for and against (alignment score: 50 per cent) university tuition fees", and "voted against raising England’s undergraduate tuition fee cap to £9,000 per year" back in 2010. Back in March 2023, Burnham was slapped with a £2,000 speeding fine after admitting to driving at 78 mph on a stretch of the M62 motorway at a time when there was a 40 mph speed limit in place. In a statement, Burnham accepted he had been "going too fast", asserting, "On the night in question, I was travelling home on the M62 westbound in normal motorway conditions intending to come off at Junction 10 for the M6. When I got close to the junction, it became clear it had recently been closed and I had to re-route quickly back onto the main motorway." Arguing that he had "not aware of any variable speed limit in place on the smart motorway at the time", only finding out later in a letter, he continued: "If I had been aware, I would not have been travelling at that speed. That said, I acknowledge that, at 78 mph, I was going too fast and accept the court's decision." As detailed in his book, disillusioned Burnham and Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram made the decision to leave Parliament at a Westminster pub, hoping to instead "build something different from the outside" by running as mayors. During his time in the mayoral office, Burnham has regularly championed the needs of those in the North West and brought key services, such as buses, back under public control. After three years in the job, Burnham had almost halved rough sleeping in the area, encouraging local stars and footballers to donate, while giving 15% of his own annual salary to his homelessness fund each year. He also heads out regularly to count the number of people sleeping rough. One of Burnhams' best-known moments came in 2020, when he stood up to Whitehall during the Covid pandemic, refusing to back down while negotiating a financial package to help locals during this most difficult of times. In a rousing speech given in Manchester City Centre, which saw Burnham dubbed 'King of the North', the Mayor said: "What we've seen today is a deliberate act of levelling down. I don't believe we can proceed through this pandemic by grinding people down. We need to carry them with us, not crush their spirit." Speaking with The Guardian after the speech, Burnham said it had been a completely "bewildering" few weeks, while his daughters, used to rumours about him wearing mascara or hair dye, were now having to put up with the notion of their dad being a 'sex symbol'. He said, "I just want all that stuff to pass." In the years since, Burnham has continued to push for Manchester to be recognised as the important city it is. Speaking with the New Statesman, Burnham discussed the rapid growth of Greater Manchester towns such as Stockport, saying: "This country's failure to support one of its major cities [to grow] at this scale is mind-boggling." In this same interview, Burnham also reflected on his "Burnhamism" politics, which he described as "aspirational socialism". Quipping, "It's the Manchester way", Burnham stressed the need for secure housing and affordable services, arguing: "That's what Britain had in the postwar period. We've got to get back to speaking to working-class ambition." As per a Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) report published in 2024, Burnham earns an annual salary of £118,267 as mayor. As of April 2024, the PM is entitled to a gross annual salary of £172,153, made up of a basic MP salary of £91,346, plus an additional £80,807 PM entitlement. But for now at least, the Burnham family are nowhere near Downing Street, instead residing in Leigh, Greater Manchester, with his wife and three children. We are, however, starting to get ideas of what a "Burnhamism" government might look like. In his 2025 New Statesman interview, Burnham asserted that "the old way of doing things in Westminster with minimal change" was an unattractive prospect, but that he was prepared to "work with anybody who wants to... put in place a plan to turn the country around." He explained: "I'm happy to play any role... because the threat we're facing is increasingly an existential one." Calling for increased public control of housing, energy, water and rail, and to "get back to speaking to working-class ambition", Burnham also indicated at the time that he would be willing to work alongside the Lib Dems and Jeremy Corbyn . Burnham applied to stand as Labour's candidate in the 2026 Gorton and Denton by-election in January, but he was blocked in an 8–1 vote by the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, which includes Starmer. Labour said at the time that Burnham had been denied permission so as to "avoid an unnecessary mayoral election, which would use substantial amounts of taxpayers' money and resources". Green Party's Hannah Spencer instead took the seat. Expressing disappointment over the committee's decision at the time, Burnham said: "The fact that the media was informed of the NEC decision before I was tells you everything you need to know about the way the Labour Party is being run these days". Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner this week expressed the view that blocking Burnham had been a "mistake", while clarifying that she did not endorse him as a leadership candidate. Do you have a story to share? Email me at julia.banim@reachplc.com