‘Coolest girl’: British PM Burnham’s wife Marie-France van Heel

LONDON – Wives of British prime ministers do not have official positions, but can help with public image.

The question for new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is how his Dutch-born wife will react to the spotlight, with early reports suggesting she will eschew Downing Street to stay in their Manchester home.

Marie-France van Heel, reportedly also known as M.F. and Frankie, is a 56-year-old marketing executive who grew up in the Netherlands and Belgium before moving to Britain.

She has kept a low profile during his recent campaign to become an MP for the north-western Makerfield constituency, as well as during Burnham’s decade as Greater Manchester’s mayor.

Burnham met his future wife in 1989 when they were students at the same college at the University of Cambridge, where he did a degree in English literature.

She was known as the “coolest girl in college” when they started dating, Burnham’s former university professor John Mullan wrote in The Times.

“There was some surprise and a feeling that he had scooped the pools,” Mullan wrote about the match, referring to the idea that Burnham had hit the jackpot.

The pair briefly parted ways when van Heel decided to go on TV dating show Blind Date, appearing on-screen in the 1990s with her bobbed hair and flares.

They reunited soon after. Van Heel and Burnham had their first child, Jimmy, in March 2000, after which they tied the knot. The pair have two daughters, Rosie and Annie.

“It’s a partnership, but I can’t see her glad-handing at summits,” an acquaintance told The Guardian, adding that van Heel “won’t be interested in moving to London”.

Van Heel has previously worked in marketing and strategy with Sky Digital and MTV Europe.

According to a business profile, she won in 2025 an award as the “region’s best marketing professional” for her work at a Manchester-based electric vehicle charging company.

She also reportedly helped design Burnham’s striking cartoon campaign logo.

During Burnham’s Makerfield campaign, misinformation about her executive job at Iduna, which owns parts of Manchester’s electric vehicle charging network, snowballed on social media.

As the then-mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham declared the conflict of interest, although some falsely claimed he favoured her company for contracts.

Van Heel’s grandmother, mother and sister died from breast cancer, and in 2010 van Heel underwent a preventative double mastectomy after discovering a gene mutation.

“Breast cancer runs in my family and has taken the lives of my gran, mum and sister,” van Heel wrote in a fund-raiser for the Cancer Research charity in 2026.

In 2012, when he was a health spokesman in the Labour opposition, Burnham said his wife’s decision was “hard” but “liberating” for her, as it had “lifted the cloud of fear”.

“She did what she did because she’d seen the devastation breast cancer had caused to her sisters and mother,” the politician told the Daily Mirror at the time.

Van Heel was not expected to leave their home in Manchester to move into Downing Street, the BBC reported, with the prime minister expected to split his time between the capital and Manchester.

Their three children are now adults and not expected to move to the official residence either. It was not clear where the family dog, Axel, a white rescue bichon poodle cross, would live. AFP