Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has gambled his political career on winning the Makerfield by-election and making a potential bid to be the next PM.

But who is 56-year-old Burnham and how did he get here?

In a special episode of Northern Spin, co-hosts Chris Maguire and Frank McKenna profile the man who wants to be the next PM.

The man described as the King of the North was born in Liverpool in 1970 and was one of three brothers.

He was inspired to join the Labour Party at the age of 14 after watching the BBC TV drama Boys from the Blackstuff, about life on the dole in Liverpool.

Burnham studied English at Cambridge, where he met his future wife, Marie-France van Heel, known as Frankie.

The couple got married in 2000 and have three children.

Known for his love of music, he’s a huge fan of Northern bands such as The Smiths and The Stone Roses.

According to McKenna, he was always destined to be a politician and got his first break when he landed a job as a researcher for the late Tessa Jowell MP.

In 2001, he became the MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester, twice standing for the Labour leadership in 2010 and 2015, losing to Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn respectively.

One of his defining moments came when he attended the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster in 2009 as the then sports minister and was famously interrupted by the crowd with chants of ‘Justice for the 96’.

Hillsborough was a defining moment

Burnham went on to play a crucial role in securing justice for the victims of Hillsborough and McKenna told the Northern Spin podcast: “He demonstrated three things that day: empathy, intuition and courage.”

In 2016, he announced his intention to stand to be Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017 after growing disillusioned with the Westminster bubble and Brexit.

He went on to secure an impressive 63 per cent of the vote and even had a cheeky dig at his good friend Steve Rotheram, who became Mayor of Liverpool with 59 per cent of the vote.

Burnham said he wanted to do politics differently and donated 15 per cent of his salary to tackling homelessness.

A few weeks after his election, the city was rocked by the Manchester Arena bombing and Burnham told the world: “After our darkest of nights, Manchester is today waking up to the most difficult of dawns.”

Maguire, who has interviewed Burnham countless times, said: “Burnham is the master communicator. He’s always at his most comfortable when talking to the public. That’s when he comes alive.”

Famous for turning up to events at the last minute, he spoke at BusinessCloud’s inaugural Northern Leaders Awards in January 2025, which were inspired by the late chief executive of Manchester City Council, Sir Howard Bernstein.

He said ‘Northerners can’t be treated as second-class citizens’ and gave a passionate, unscripted speech to the audience.

In 2020, he famously stood in his navy worker’s jacket when he told Boris Johnson’s Conservative government that Greater Manchester wouldn’t accept any more crippling Covid restrictions.

Burnham told the Northern Spin podcast in 2023 that one of his proudest achievements was the Bee Network and that his biggest frustration was the scrapped Greater Manchester Clean Air Zone.

A lifelong Everton fan, he supported a campaign by former player Trevor Steven to raise awareness of the mental health struggles and high suicide rates among workers in the UK construction sector.

On the wall of his office in Manchester, Burnham has a quote from a resident called Jo Barker-Marsh, whom he met at a Debt Justice hustings in Harpurhey.

It reads: “Never stop fighting for change. This is your debt to us. This should be the price of your power, that you never give up.”

It’s against this backdrop that Burnham has taken the biggest political gamble of his career by deciding to stand in the Makerfield by-election on June 18.

Win and he’s the red-hot favourite to become the next PM, but lose and he faces the political wilderness.

You can listen to the latest episode of Northern Spin here.