UK leader Burnham gathers his Cabinet after sweeping away Starmer supporters

New U.K. Prime Min­is­ter Andy Burn­ham gath­ered his Cab­i­net for its first meet­ing on Tues­day and vowed to take a “one-team ap­proach” de­spite purg­ing al­lies of pre­de­ces­sor Keir Starmer from the gov­ern­ment.

Burn­ham told his top team that he would lead a “cost-of-liv­ing gov­ern­ment” fo­cused on eas­ing the eco­nom­ic bur­den felt by mil­lions of peo­ple.

“We need to think every day, what can we do just to take that lit­tle bit of pres­sure off peo­ple’s shoul­ders, to give them that lit­tle ex­tra sense that help is com­ing, so they can have that bit of hope that things are get­ting bet­ter,” Burn­ham said.

He made a small down pay­ment on that pledge by an­nounc­ing a tax cut on en­er­gy bills that will save the av­er­age house­hold about 45 pounds ($60) a year. The cut will take ef­fect Oct. 1, Burn­ham said, with the fund­ing com­ing from scrap­ping a plan for dig­i­tal ID cards an­nounced by Starmer.

The for­mer may­or of Greater Man­ches­ter en­tered Down­ing St. on Mon­day af­ter re­plac­ing Starmer as leader of the gov­ern­ing Labour Par­ty, be­com­ing Britain’s sev­enth prime min­is­ter since 2016. Starmer re­signed just two years af­ter win­ning a land­slide elec­tion vic­to­ry, forced out by his par­ty af­ter mis­steps and U-turns.

In his first speech as prime min­is­ter, Burn­ham pledged to ease the cost of liv­ing, de­cen­tral­ize po­lit­i­cal pow­er, re­vi­tal­ize in­dus­try and end street sleep­ing by home­less peo­ple — a tall or­der, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en Britain’s slug­gish eco­nom­ic growth in re­cent years.

Burn­ham ac­knowl­edged at the Cab­i­net meet­ing that the gov­ern­ment would have to make dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions and “take a re­al­ly hard look at what our pri­or­i­ties are.”

Starmer loy­al­ists re­moved from of­fice

Af­ter tak­ing of­fice Mon­day, Burn­ham set about re­mak­ing the gov­ern­ment.

Starmer’s fi­nance min­is­ter, Rachel Reeves, was oust­ed, re­placed by John Healey, a for­mer de­fense sec­re­tary who re­signed in June and ac­cused the Trea­sury of fail­ing to spend enough on the mil­i­tary at a time of ris­ing threats. In an in­ter­view af­ter he quit, Healey called the Trea­sury “a dead hand on dy­nam­ic gov­ern­ment” and “in de­nial.”

Healey has said de­fense spend­ing, due to be 2.6% of GDP next year, should rise to 3% by 2030. Now he will have to find the mon­ey.

Wes Street­ing, whose res­ig­na­tion as health sec­re­tary in May helped top­ple Starmer, took over the de­fense port­fo­lio.

Oth­er key Cab­i­net ap­pointees in­clude For­eign Sec­re­tary Ed Miliband, Hous­ing Sec­re­tary An­gela Rayn­er and Busi­ness Sec­re­tary Jonathan Reynolds, who has an ex­pand­ed brief that in­cludes in­no­va­tion and sci­ence.

Louise Haigh, a key Burn­ham al­ly who helped en­gi­neer his rise to the top, was named First Sec­re­tary of State and Chan­cel­lor of the Duchy of Lan­cast­er, ef­fec­tive­ly the deputy prime min­is­ter.

Home Sec­re­tary Sha­bana Mah­mood, who has over­seen con­tentious rules de­signed to re­duce im­mi­gra­tion, kept her job.

Burn­ham has huge sup­port from the par­ty that is des­per­ate for a new leader to re­verse its de­cline in pop­u­lar­i­ty un­der Starmer. But there is some grum­bling af­ter Burn­ham re­moved sev­er­al of Starmer’s se­nior min­is­ters in­clud­ing ex-Deputy Prime Min­is­ter David Lam­my, for­mer Busi­ness Sec­re­tary Pe­ter Kyle and Starmer’s chief sec­re­tary, Dar­ren Jones.

For­eign pol­i­cy chal­lenges lie ahead

Burn­ham has lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence of for­eign pol­i­cy and faces a stack of chal­lenges in­clud­ing wars in Ukraine and the Mid­dle East and man­ag­ing re­la­tions with U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who first warmed to Starmer be­fore sour­ing on him.

Burn­ham’s of­fice said he spoke to Trump in one of his first calls as prime min­is­ter and “un­der­lined his com­mit­ment to de­fense and se­cu­ri­ty.” Trump post­ed on so­cial me­dia that the men had “a very good con­ver­sa­tion” and would be “meet­ing in the not too dis­tant fu­ture for top­ics of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.”

The prime min­is­ter al­so spoke to Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy, French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron, Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz and lead­ers of the Eu­ro­pean Union and NA­TO.

Burn­ham told NA­TO Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Mark Rutte that putting for­mer de­fense chief Healey in charge of the na­tion’s fi­nances “was a sig­nal of his in­tent.”

In a re­minder of the grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ten­sions Britain faces, a Russ­ian war­ship car­ried out a live-fire weapons ex­er­cise in the Eng­lish Chan­nel on Mon­day, the day Burn­ham took of­fice.

The Min­istry of De­fense said the frigate Neustrashimy was be­ing shad­owed by the Roy­al Navy when it con­duct­ed the ex­er­cise in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters about 46 miles (74 kilo­me­ters) south of Ply­mouth, off south­west Eng­land. It said the navy “con­tin­ues to track the ves­sel’s ac­tiv­i­ty close­ly and stands ready to pro­tect U.K. na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

Street­ing, the new de­fense sec­re­tary, said the Russ­ian ship’s ac­tions were “per­for­ma­tive and ir­re­spon­si­ble.”

“Rus­sia should be in no doubt about the re­solve of this gov­ern­ment and this prime min­is­ter, our re­solve to stand against Russ­ian ag­gres­sion in Ukraine but al­so Russ­ian ag­gres­sion against all of our al­lies,” he said at a news con­fer­ence.

Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov said Russ­ian war­ships al­ways act­ed “in strict ac­cor­dance” with in­ter­na­tion­al and mar­itime law.

Asked whether the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment felt re­la­tions with the U.K. would im­prove un­der the new prime min­is­ter, Peskov said it had “no such hopes.” —LON­DON (AP)

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Sto­ry by JILL LAW­LESS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press