London [UK], July 20 (ANI): King Charles III on Monday held an audience with Andrew Burnham and invited him to form a new government, the Royal Family announced.
In a post on X, the Royal Family said, “His Majesty received in Audience the Rt. Hon. Andrew Burnham MP and requested him to form a new Administration.”
According to the Royal Family, Burnham accepted the King’s invitation during the meeting and was formally appointed Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.
“The Rt. Hon. Andrew Burnham MP accepted The King’s offer and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury,” the post said.
Burnham became the United Kingdom’s 59th prime minister on Monday after Keir Starmer tendered his resignation at Buckingham Palace. In his first address, he said, “Britain needs to show the world that we can regain our stability once again,” becoming the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade.
He formally accepted the King’s invitation in the ceremony traditionally known as “kissing hands.”
Buckingham Palace announced on X that Starmer had resigned before Burnham’s appointment.
Burnham, 56, arrived at 10 Downing Street with his wife, Marie-France van Heel, and addressed a public he said had grown weary of political instability.
“Britain needs to show the world that we can regain our stability once again, and that is our challenge: to make politics work, to make it work better. I know people at home are fed up with politics,” he said.
Burnham pledged to act as a “circuit breaker for Britain,” promising to deliver the country’s biggest changes in the past 40 years.
“I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last ten years to walk up this street — the seventh prime minister since 2016 — making this a moment for reflection and new resolution,” Burnham said. “It requires my generation of politicians to raise our game and rise to the new challenge.”
Acknowledging widespread public frustration, Burnham said, “I know people at home are fed up with politics. I hear you, and I want to be honest with you — we have not been good enough, and we need to be better.”
The centerpiece of his speech was a pledge to move away from the economic and political model that has shaped Britain since the 1980s. Drawing on his experience as a metro mayor, Burnham vowed to dismantle what he described as the country’s highly centralized system of governance.
“A new political model and a new economic model. In the 1980s, Britain took some wrong turns,” Burnham said. “Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, large parts of the country industrialised, and they still haven’t recovered… And that’s why we will change politics, to make it more collaborative, more about problem solving than point scoring.”
Looking ahead, Burnham called for a shift toward what he described as a “preventative state,” focused on investing in people rather than paying to address long-term social challenges.
Among his immediate priorities, he pledged to help more young people enter the workforce by reforming the education system and expanding access to essential support services, particularly mental health care.
“That work starts now,” Burnham concluded. (ANI)
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