Andy Burnham reveals his wife warned against third bid for the Labour leadership, saying: 'They have told you twice they don't want you!'

By JASON GROVES, POLITICAL EDITOR Published: 00:01, 5 August 2026 | Updated: 00:01, 5 August 2026 Andy Burnham's wife advised him against standing for the Labour leadership, warning him: 'They have told you twice they don't want you.' The Prime Minister said his wife Marie-France van Heel 'took some persuading' that he should try to topple Keir Starmer by launching a third bid for the Labour leadership. In an interview with Elizabeth Day's How to Fail podcast, he said her initial reaction to his decision to make another bid for No 10 was: 'What? Not again.' 'She's quite blunt in telling me about my failures in past endeavours and she doesn't hold back and there's no soft landing there,' he said. 'She was like, "What? Not again. They told you twice they don't want you. Why are you doing it again?"' In the end, Mr Burnham was able to engineer a 'coronation' which meant that neither Labour members nor the wider public had any say in choosing Starmer's successor as Prime Minister. Mr Burnham met his Dutch wife, known as Frankie, while they were studying at Cambridge University in the late 1980s. He revealed that she was sharply critical of his early media performances when he first became an MP in the early 2000s. 'I'd go in and do these interviews and (be) thinking I'd done really well because I had taken the handout from the whip's office and I'd done an interview where I'd not strayed from the line at all,' he said. 'And I would come out and I'd turn my phone on, the old Nokia mobile phone and first text in block capitals from said person, this is what it would read, "ANSWER THE F***ING QUESTION."' Andy Burnham succeeded in seizing power last month despite his wife, Marie-France van Heel, warning him against it Mr Burnham launched two previous bids for the Labour leadership, trailing in fourth behind the Miliband brothers and Ed Balls in 2010 and coming a poor second to Jeremy Corbyn five years later. He then quit parliament in 2017 to stand successfully for the Greater Manchester mayoralty. In his latest interview, he said he became 'a much better politician in the end for not getting the position at that time because I probably hadn't thought things through enough. 'The Westminster world puts you on a certain track and makes you think a certain way, speak a certain way even,' he said. 'You've got the whips telling you what to say in interviews and how to vote in the lobbies, and it's not about being your authentic self.' Ms van Heel, a brand marketing executive, accompanied Mr Burnham to Downing Street when he assumed power last month but is not expected to live there permanently, preferring the couple's Greater Manchester base where he has now established his new No 10 North outpost. Yesterday, No 10 released a new official portrait of the PM standing in the No 10 Garden dressed smartly in a dark suit and green tie. Mr Burnham also revealed that his father Roy, who has Alzheimer's, has only fleeting awareness that he is now Prime Minister. He said care home staff had sat and watched his arrival in Downing Street with his father. The care home manager told him he had turned to them and 'momentarily, they said, "We thought he knew"'.  The PM also reiterated his determination to tackle the social care crisis. He said he would not be knocked off course by criticism of his previous 'death tax' proposal, saying that he believed voters are ready to embrace something 'quite radical' to deal with the issue.