The spotlight will shine on Andy Burnham as he navigates a tricky Manchester by-election to propel himself back into parliament and quite possibly Downing Street.
But there is a question over whether the country’s potential seventh prime minister in a decade could be of a calibre different to the rest to reverse Labour's decline.
Popular he certainly appears to be, successfully managing the upwards trajectory of a thriving Manchester that he inherited as mayor in 2017; a city benefiting in part from significant Abu Dhabi investment.
Mr Burnham is now the firm favourite to become prime minister, with Keir Starmer’s authority evaporating after disastrous local elections. It’s been a week of turmoil in which Health Secretary Wes Streeting resigned and a Labour MP has stepped aside for the Manchester mayor, forcing a by-election.
If the northern politician wins that - and with the hard-right Reform sweeping all the wards in last week’s elections that is not guaranteed - he will head to Westminster as the man most likely to become the next Labour leader, perhaps even without a contest. An appropriate coronation for the man they call “King of the North”.
Westminster absentee
Mr Burnham’s current popularity is perhaps founded on being 'out-of-London', a man who speaks his mind and has that innate ability to connect with people.
“He tells it as it is,” said one Labour MP supporter. “People think he’s on their side because he genuinely sounds like he is.”
But one Labour official suggested that being prime minister would be an altogether different experience. “All Andy has proved is that he can run buses on time in Manchester - it’s very different in Westminster,” he told The National.
There are detractors who deride his “weather vane” politics, deftly moving in whichever direction the political wind is blowing. The joke doing the rounds in parliament currently goes: “A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a bar. ‘Hello, Mr Burnham,’ the barman says.”
But that might also be part of his appeal, that all factions of a much fractured and bruised party can unite behind him.
That instinct has carried him through several political lives already, from an adviser in Tony Blair’s government, a minister under Gordon Brown and then shadow home secretary under Jeremy Corbyn, before dumping Westminster for Manchester.
Northern lad
Raised in Culcheth, a Cheshire village between Manchester and Merseyside, he frequently references his working-class upbringing. His father worked as a BT engineer while his mother was employed as a GP receptionist. It was a Catholic household steeped in Labour loyalties, where Mr Burnham was politically radicalised by the miners’ strike in the 1980s.
By 14 he had joined the Labour party, then went on to study English at Cambridge, where he met his future wife Marie-France van Heel, who is Dutch. They have three children.
While he later admitted feeling like an “impostor” among his privately educated contemporaries at Cambridge, Mr Burnham’s northern identity has become an asset rather than a handicap. Obsessed with football, as an Everton supporter, and Manchester music - The Smiths and The Stone Roses - he has cultivated an approachable image of a man who understands people.
Ministerial promotion
He first entered parliament as an MP in 2001, then under Mr Brown rose rapidly, becoming chief secretary to the Treasury, culture secretary, then health secretary by the age of 39.
Yet the flight of political success never quite took off as he twice entered the leadership ballot. In 2010 he finished fourth and five years later he came a distant second to Mr Corbyn.
While he served as shadow home secretary, it looked as if his career had run its course. But in 2017, possibly to escape the toxicity of the Corbyn leadership, he took a risk and stood for mayor of Greater Manchester.
Here he found a role that suited both populist instincts and an appetite for visible change. His signature achievement was bringing buses back under local control, which now run on time and are affordable and popular.
Another eye-catching move has been to donate 15 per cent of his £110,000 mayoral salary to homeless charities. His instinct for a popular touch may well be to repeat this as prime minister.
Sometimes his choices, while building a reputation, have been curious. He opposed the Prevent counter-extremism programme, which he once compared to internment in Northern Ireland, where alleged IRA supporters were imprisoned without trial in the 1970s.
King of the North
But it was the Covid-19 pandemic that turned Mr Burnham into a national figure. During the bitter 2020 row over lockdown restrictions and financial support for northern England, Mr Burnham stood outside Manchester’s town hall and accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of treating the north with “contempt” by not giving it enough financial backing.
That image of a northern politician facing down a former Etonian Tory prime minister resonated far beyond Labour circles, earning him the title of “King of the North”.
But there are some who note similarities with Mr Johnson himself, of excellent media skills, adept at personal branding but often ideologically adaptable. “People who make good mayors are not necessarily great prime ministers,” one colleague noted.
Ideologically he sits on Labour’s soft left, backing wealth taxes, stronger workers’ rights and public ownership. He also supported Mr Starmer in 2020, calling him “a brilliant man”.
At 56, the plain-speaking people’s champion until of late ignored by London politics is hoping to make a triumphant return south. If he makes it into Downing Street he will find a party and a country in disarray and will face the sternest examination of whether a man who made his city’s buses run on time can reset the clock for Britain.
