Andy Burnham has won a decisive victory to become the first directly elected mayor of Greater Manchester in an election his friends and opponents said was won on the strength of his personal name recognition.

The 47-year-old quit his parliamentary seat in Leigh, Wigan, in order to win the inaugural ballot with 63% of the vote, taking 359,352 votes to secure victory in the first round.

Burnham defeated the Conservative Sean Anstee, who won 128,752 votes. Jane Brophy, the Liberal Democrat candidate followed on 34,334, with the Green party’s Will Patterson on 13,424. Ukip’s Shneur Odze was sixth on 10,583, behind the English Democrats’ candidate.

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His victory came as little surprise in a region where Labour controls nine of the 10 councils and has all but five of the 28 MPs, but the margin was seen as emphatic amid an otherwise difficult set of election results for Labour.

Noting that his 63% share of the vote beat that of his friend Steve Rotheram, who polled 59% in Liverpool, Burnham said: “So I think we can all say that today it’s Manchester one, Liverpool nil.”

He added: “This is the dawn of a new era, not just for this city region, but for politics in our country. It has been too London-centric for too long. The old political and party structures haven’t delivered for all people and for all places. They have created this crisis in politics which we are living through now. You know what, we can hold as many general elections as we like and that will never solve the problem.”

He pledged to make young people a priority for investment and also said: “Here older people won’t be treated as bed blockers but with respect.”

Burnham won votes by promising to eradicate rough sleeping on Greater Manchester’s streets by 2020, pledging 15% of his £110,000 salary to a new charity, the Mayor’s Homelessness Fund, which he will launch on Monday.

He said: “Here in this city we will never accept it as an inevitable consequence of modern life that for some people to succeed, others have to sleep rough on our cold streets. Rising homelessness is the issue that has defined this campaign.

“The fact it is barely getting a mention in the general election campaign tells you something about our dysfunctional political and media culture. But walk out of this building tonight and you will see the reality behind the election slogans.”



Robin Garrido, a Conservative councillor in Salford, said he was surprised by the scale of Burnham’s victory. “I think he won because he’s well known. Rather than being a Labour vote, I think this was an Andy Burnham vote,” he said.

Burnham’s campaign manager, Andrew Gwynne, the MP for Denton and Reddish in Greater Manchester, said voters warmed to Burnham’s personality and respected his campaigning work for the Hillsborough families. They wanted a mayor with real political experience, he added. “Greater Manchester has the most advanced devolution deal and I think a lot of people have realised the mayor has substantial powers and responsibility and want someone with his experience in government.”

Anstee, the Tory candidate, is the 29-year-old leader of the council in Trafford, Greater Manchester’s most affluent borough, who grew up in a council house. He was one of the architects of the devolution deal that saw Greater Manchester become the first city region to agree to an elected mayor in return for powers from Westminster, in November 2014.

By some measures, Burnham will now have more power than the mayor of London, his Labour colleague Sadiq Khan. He will have various Greater Manchester-wide powers and responsibilities including for the fire service, transport, planning and housing and those previously held by the police and crime commissioner (PCC), Tony Lloyd, who lost his job the moment the result was announced.



Burnham, a former health secretary, will also be the only elected mayor in the UK to have oversight of the health and social care budget, newly integrated and worth £6bn.

