After being selected as Labour's candidate for the new Greater Manchester Mayoralty, Burnham stood down as Shadow Home Secretary in 2016 and as an MP at the 2017 general election.

Following the 1997 election, he was a parliamentary officer for the NHS Confederation from August to December 1997, before taking up the post as an administrator with the Football Task Force for a year.

[6][10] In 1998, he became a special adviser to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, a position he remained in until he was elected to the House of Commons in 2001.

Following the retirement of Lawrence Cunliffe, Burnham successfully applied to be the parliamentary candidate for Leigh in Greater Manchester, then a safe Labour seat.

[12] Following the 2005 election Burnham was promoted to serve in the Government as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, with responsibility for implementing the Identity Cards Act 2006.

[13] In Gordon Brown's first cabinet, announced on 28 June 2007, Burnham was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a position he held until 2008.

[14] In a re-shuffle in January 2008, Burnham was promoted to the position of Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, replacing James Purnell.

[15] In June 2008, he apologised to the director of pressure group Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, after she threatened to sue him for libel for smearing her reputation in an article Burnham had written for Progress magazine.

[16] In late 2008, Burnham announced government plans to tighten controls on internet content in order to "even up" what he described as an imbalance with TV regulations.

In July 2009, a month after he became health secretary, Burnham launched an independent inquiry chaired by the QC Robert Francis into unusually high mortality rates at Stafford Hospital.

[23] The inquiry found systematic failures at the hospital, and was critical of care provided by the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

[26][27] After leaving office, reports claimed that Burnham and his predecessor as health secretary, Alan Johnson, had rejected 81 requests for an inquiry sitting in public to examine the high rate of deaths at Stafford hospital.

[30] Burnham stood on his philosophy of "aspirational socialism", aligning himself with Intern Aware's campaign to end unpaid internships.

In July 2013 The Daily Telegraph reported that Burnham's staff had edited his Wikipedia page to remove criticisms of his handling of the Stafford Hospital scandal.

[34] He attracted press criticism for claiming £17,000 in expenses to rent a London flat, despite owning another within walking distance of the House of Commons.

A spokesperson for Burnham said that renting out the original flat was necessary to "cover his costs" as parliamentary rule changes meant he was no longer able to claim for mortgage interest expenses.

[46][47] On 5 May 2016, a spokesperson for Burnham confirmed that he had been approached by party officials in Greater Manchester, asking him to consider resigning from the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn in order to run in the upcoming mayoral election in 2017.

[61] In 2020, Burnham signed off on a new £10 yearly charge for pensioners who wished to continue to use their TFGM travel passes on the region's trains and trams.

[67] He welcomed the additional measures implemented across Greater Manchester and Lancashire by Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock in July during the pandemic, in the knowledge that (at the time) some areas across North West England had lower infection rates than the rest of the country.

[68] On 15 October 2020 Burnham, along with other North West leaders, backed away from government talks to place Greater Manchester in tier 3 – the most restrictive level – of a new three-tier categorisation.

[69] He cited the grants system for businesses and 60% furlough scheme for employees as insufficient, saying they would push people into poverty and destitution which would outweigh the impact of the virus if mitigated correctly.

[70] Many of the concerns such as the impact on businesses and employees were shared by local Conservative MPs in Greater Manchester and surrounding areas.

[73] Shortly after first being elected as Mayor in 2017, Burnham initiated a review of historical child sexual abuse allegations in Manchester and Rochdale, later expanding the scope of the investigation to Oldham.

[74] In January 2025, Burnham backed calls for a national public inquiry with limited scope into group-based child sexual exploitation and the power to compel people to give evidence.

[76][77][78] Following this perceived success, and several by-election losses for Labour in 2021,[79] Burnham was touted by many commentators as a potential future leader of the party.

[84] In 2024, Burham co-authored Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain with Liverpool's metro mayor Steve Rotheram.

[98] In an interview in The Daily Telegraph in October 2007, Burnham said: "I think it's better when children are in a home where their parents are married" and "it's not wrong that the tax system should recognise commitment and marriage".

[104] In his leadership bid, Burnham's key economic policies included a new levy to fund social care, extending the higher minimum wage to under-25s, and banning zero-hour contracts.

[105] Burnham described the mansion tax proposed by Ed Miliband as "the politics of envy", saying he knew it would lose votes when his mother phoned and told him it represented a return to the 1970s.

[117] In a newspaper interview during the contest he stated that he had been repeatedly at odds with the Catholic Church all the time that he had been an MP and that this had resulted in strained personal relationships.