New Manchester mayor is now the most powerful Labour woman outside Westminster - a diehard Corbynista with a £3bn budget who wants Andy Burnham to introduce a wealth tax

Published: 12:32, 1 August 2026 | Updated: 12:36, 1 August 2026 Newly elected Manchester mayor Bev Craig is now the most powerful Labour woman outside Westminster - a diehard Corbynista with a £3bn budget who wants Andy Burnham to introduce a wealth tax. She claimed victory in the Mayoral race to fill Andy Burnham’s still warm seat despite failing to win over 50 per cent of the first preference vote and a very low turnout of under a quarter of the electorate. Nevertheless, she fought off the Reform UK threat, beating Reform’s candidate Sian Astley into second place after second preference votes were counted giving her 309,525 votes over Ms Astley’s 157,178, eventually winning 66.3 per cent of the vote, slightly more than Burnham’s 63 per cent in 2024. Despite the low turnout, it was still a success for the party after Reform UK won 106 seats across Greater Manchester’s ten local authorities at the May council elections, and Labour haemorrhaged 100 seats. While Ms Craig bullishly claimed Reform and the Greens were ‘past their peak’, she admitted that despite ‘Andy’s successful tenure’, it did not mean ‘automatically that what comes after him will be Labour’. And Ms Craig, 41, who ran for mayor after Burnham stood down after winning the Makerfield by election which set him on a path to No 10, is no stranger to Manchester. In fact, many credit this tough Northern Irishwoman, who previously headed Manchester City Council for five years, with being the power behind the throne of Burnham’s Manchester success story. And if she wielded power quietly when Burnham was in the north west spotlight, it is nothing to the power she has now plus the influence of being such a close ally to the now PM and proximity to the burgeoning No 10 North project. Newly elected Manchester mayor Bev Craig is now the most powerful Labour woman outside Westminster Craig, who has been supported by partner Tracy Sloane (right), said: ‘I never believed as a girl growing up on a council estate that I would have a chance to stand for the place that I love’ She will now oversee a £3bn budget with vast power across housing, health, policing and transport in the region– exactly the platform which Burnham used so successfully to plot his messianic return to Westminster. And she has previously admitted she has no qualms about ‘arguing for more power and control’ for the region, believing No 10 North could be transformational for the city with people ‘looking at it in a different light’. ‘Suddenly they’re asking us questions that they’ve not been asking us for 15, 20 years,’ said Craig, who has led Manchester city council since 2021, recently. ‘How have we grown our economy? How is it the case that in Manchester we’ve been able to reduce temporary accommodation when it’s ballooned across the country?’ And during her election campaign she took care to campaign on issues which resonated with residents including affordable housing and free bus travel for 11 to 18 year olds. Despite her woman of the people approach, travelling in an old school red and yellow battle bus around all of Greater Manchester’s ten boroughs, her campaign was tightly managed by a team well aware of the impact of social media and potential missteps. It is perhaps the reason for her volte face about talking about her personal background on a tough working class estate in a protestant area just outside Belfast where she was born in 1985. Her father, who died last year, was a panel beater and mechanic struggling with and eventually overcoming alcoholism. Craig, who came out as gay aged 14 and was the first woman and first gay woman to lead the city council, only spoke about this as she prepared to run for mayor, saying last month that she had changed her mind about her previous comment that she was ‘not one of those politicians who want to use other people’s life experiences to make them look more credible’. Should local leaders like Manchester’s new mayor have the power to introduce wealth taxes? What's your view? Prime Minister Andy Burnham takes a selfie as he joins the newly elected Mayor of Greater Manchester Ms Craig celebrating her victory at an event in Manchester on Saturday to thank party activists and supporters She said at the time: ‘“Mum told me, ‘The reality is, unless you tell people about your hardship, people won’t get what you’re about.’” Talking about how it had helped her realise that life is about ‘choices’, she said her father was ‘given a choice by Mum, either he stops drinking or he loses his family’. ‘We grew up with Alcoholics Anonymous posters in the house. He went every single day,’ she told the Sunday Times last month. ‘Dad lost a lot by giving up his drinking. He lost all his friends. He lost his social network. And he probably was never as respected on the estate after he stopped drinking. ‘But I remember as a teenager going to a dinner where he was celebrating his ten years of sobriety and recognising that life is about choices. You have to know what you stand for. On a personal level, that’s the biggest thing for me.’ She came to Manchester University to study politics and modern history after being the first member of her family to pass GCSEs, working hard at school and in part-time jobs at TK Maxx and in a Chinese restaurant. She went on to complete a PhD on class and diversity in parliament and headed into politics, working at trade union Unison before standing successfully as a local councillor in Burnage, south Manchester, in 2011, in her 20s. A meteoric rise in local politics where she was seen as a successful policy maker saw her in 2021 succeed veteran council leader Sir Richard Leese as leader of Manchester city council, where he had reigned for 25 years. She was lauded last year when her brief tribute to the victims of the Manchester synagogue attack at the Heaton vigil minutes after Labour’s then Deputy Leader David Lammy was jeered by crowds shifted the crowd’s mood. But Craig perhaps signals an ever greater move to the left for the city than Burnham. She backed former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign in 2015, when he defeated Burnham as one of his challengers. However, she later worked closely with Burnham in the north west, building an alliance which insiders say will work to her favour now. Ms Craig stood next to Green Party candidate Geraldine Coggins as the votes were read out last night ‘Her relationship with Andy was always interesting. She’s the effective one who quietly gets things done behind the scenes and she was often irritated by Andy’s public pronouncements against the party line, because she worried it would hurt Greater Manchester,’ one said She was said to have worked so hard before Labour’s general election win to build strong relationships in the region to the level that she was more practically powerful than the mayor himself. ‘A lot of Andy’s legacy is her legacy,’ Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said. If true, Burnham may well be pleased that her ambitions are said to remain in the north west and that she is said to have turned down standing as Labour’s candidate in the Gorton & Denton by election earlier this year. Like Corbyn, Craig strongly supports wealth taxes and says Labour should look at ‘models of wealth tax’. She also backs greater fiscal devolution meaning she may well be in a position to impose her own wealth tax in Greater Manchester, When she was quizzed about popular Labour wealth tax models such as a 2 per cent levy on assets of more than £10 million and reforms to capital gains tax, Craig said: ‘I’m not running to be an MP. If I wanted to debate national policy issues, I’d be in parliament. But I can say to you straight up that I think of course we need to look at models of wealth tax.’ Also on the agenda could be a revival of HS2 plans between Birmingham and Manchester with Craig previously saying ‘I think you can use a route similar to HS2 but you can do it in a way that isn’t repeating some of the mistakes of the past that HS2 Ltd carried out’. Speaking after the vote, Craig said: 'I am honoured, I am humbled, and I stand ready to serve the three million people that live across this fantastic city region.’ Craig, who has been supported by partner Tracy Sloane, added: ‘I never believed as a girl growing up on a council estate that one day I would have a chance to stand for the place that I love.’