Prime Minister Andy Burnham has cancelled official engagements on Monday and Tuesday following the death of his father Roy, who had Alzheimer’s. He had been due to host a meeting of business leaders in Downing Street on Monday, and was expected to speak at the annual trade union TUC Congress in Brighton on Tuesday. In July, Burnham spoke about his father’s condition and said it had influenced his drive to reform adult social care in England. He had also said his father’s illness was so advanced that he did not know his son had become prime minister.
Burnham told the BBC that while his father could not be there when he entered No 10 to take up the role, he and his mother had “exchanged a few words about my dad and how proud he would be”. “That’s a little hard, but then again I’ve said, it’s their achievement”, he told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg in July. “The emotion of that moment was, well, bittersweet – it was painful in one way but beautiful in another.” The prime minister later said care home staff had shown his father footage of him entering Downing Street, calling it a “wonderful” thing. Burnham said he wanted to help “my dad and the millions like him” when setting out plans to reform adult social care.
He said he had been “overwhelmed” by the skills and professionalism of care workers supporting his father. Burnham has described how his father, a former telephone engineer, had raised him with “laughter, love and support” alongside his mother Eileen in Culcheth, Cheshire. In his 2024 book Look North, he wrote that neither of his parents had attended university, but could have done had they “grown up in a different time and different place”. “Their knowledge of that fact seemed to make them all the more determined that their three sons would go.” Opposition politicians have offered their condolences to Burnham and his family.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “No matter how old you are, or how much you try to prepare, losing your father is a profoundly painful experience. “A part of your life that has always been there is suddenly gone forever and it can feel as though a part of you won’t ever be the same again.” Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “My heart goes out to the prime minister on the loss of his dad. “From our conversations he sounded like a wonderful man.” Green party leader Zack Polanski said: “There are moments in life such as this sad time that transcend politics and I join the whole country in sending condolences.”
