Andy Burnham has just won a parliamentary seat, and he could become prime minister. After his decisive victory in the Makerfield by-election this week, the former Greater Manchester mayor used his win to signal a direct challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and, by extension, the country.
So, if Burnham does end up in Downing Street, what would it actually mean for LGBTQ+ people in Britain?
The record speaks for itself – mostly
Burnham’s voting history is, by most measures, strong. As a teenager, he marched against Section 28, the law that banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools – and later said the experience shaped his politics. He went on to vote for its repeal, backed the Civil Partnership Act, and supported anti-discrimination protections in goods and services.
As Mayor of Greater Manchester, that record has continued. He formally apologised to LGBTQ+ people for decades of discriminatory treatment by Greater Manchester Police, calling it “shameful”. He set up the UK’s first city-region LGBTQ+ Advisory Panel, appointed the country’s first LGBTQ+ mayoral advisor, and committed Greater Manchester to refusing public funding to any organisation involved in conversion therapy.
So, it’s clear he is a genuine ally.
But his record is not spotless
It would be dishonest to leave it there. During his 2015 Labour leadership bid, Burnham faced serious scrutiny over a 2008 voting record that included backing amendments restricting lesbian couples’ access to IVF, on the basis that children needed a “named father figure”.
He also abstained on several same-sex adoption votes around the same time. At the time, commentators noted his was the weakest LGBT voting record of that leadership field.
More recently, comments on trans rights and single-sex spaces have drawn criticism from some quarters, even as he’s publicly stated his support for trans rights, “and I want that to be known.”
Why it matters now
None of this happened in a vacuum. He’s stepping back into frontline politics at a moment when LGBTQ+ rights — particularly trans rights — have become one of the most contested fault lines in British politics, and any future Labour leader will be under pressure to define where they actually stand, not just where they’ve stood before.
If Burnham becomes Labour leader – and potentially Prime Minister – his early voting record and his more recent actions as mayor will both be back under the microscope. For now, what we can say is this: the receipts show a politician who has, for the most part, been on the right side of LGBTQ+ history. Whether that holds at the very top of British politics is the question this community will be watching closely.