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LONDON — Andy Burnham’s pick for chancellor will become the face of his economic vision for the country — and the person who takes the blame for any failures in turning things around.

For all the jostling and jockeying in Westminster, it might be the worst job in Britain.

The next occupant of No. 11 will have to jumpstart the economy — and fast — to win over voters increasingly despairing of politicians who have failed to make their lives better.

It’s an enormous challenge.

The British economy is stuck in the doldrums, weighed down by decades of persistently low economic growth, and boxed in by record borrowing rates, high taxes and big spending bills.

And there is little room for maneuver. The government is desperate for money to spend — see the headaches current Prime Minister Keir Starmer has faced getting the numbers to stack up for defense spending — but businesses and taxpayers can’t stomach higher taxes, and any attempt to borrow more could spook the country’s creditors in the bond market.

Climate Change and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband, who one senior civil servant predicted would take a more “muscular,” whole-of-government approach than other chancellors, at a London Climate Week reception on June 24, 2026. | Yui Mok/AFP via Getty Images

To make matters worse, U.S. President Donald Trump’s war in Iran threatens to push up energy prices, spiral inflation again and force the Bank of England to keep rates higher for longer — crimping the economy further while making voters feel the pinch.

“The choice of chancellor is pretty critical to how the premiership is going to go,” said Ruth Curtice, chief executive of the left-leaning Resolution Foundation think tank.

Yet, despite all those pitfalls, there is no shortage of contenders for the job.

Westminster is rife with briefings back and forth from admirers and detractors over who’s garnering favor with Burnham’s inner circle. Burnham, who still needs to clear party hurdles before he can become prime minister, isn’t expected to name key Cabinet posts until the days before or after he officially takes up residence in Downing Street — but the names most commonly touted for the key economic role so far include top Burnham ally Ed Miliband, current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, as well as others including Burnham’s former leadership rival Wes Streeting.

“Andy wants a chancellor who he feels completely aligned with … he wants someone he feels he’s very politically aligned with so there is no sense of friction between No. 10 and No. 11,” said one close Burnham ally, granted anonymity to speak freely.

The King of the North speaks

Burnham’s march on Westminster comes with a pledge to do things differently. He’s pitched for more “public control” of key industries driven by his experience as Greater Manchester mayor.

The man dubbed the “King of the North” by some supporters will start to spell out exactly what that could mean at a national level in a speech on Monday in his home city focusing on the economy and devolution.

He will pledge to put no less than a “circuit-breaker” on an economic model that he says favors the prosperous south of England over the former industrial north.

Burnham will promise to create an outpost of 10 Downing Street in the north, reform state procurement and devolve more control of funding and investment decisions to regional leaders than any previous prime minister. Aides are looking at letting regional authorities keep and reinvest 100 percent of the income tax they generate in their area, alongside existing plans to let them keep 100 percent of business rates.

But it is Burnham’s choice of chancellor that will most clearly signal which direction he is planning on taking the country as a whole.

The different names in the frame represent very different visions on the economy.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, to the left of the party, has been touted as an obvious frontrunner for the job, with significant experience in the Treasury under former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the late 2010s. He was in close contact with Burnham in recent months, having one-to-one phone calls with the presumptive PM.

Wes Streeting, who backed Burnham after considering a tilt at the leadership himself, speaking in London on June 16, 2026. | Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images

“He saw Gordon’s budgets up close,” said one Miliband-backing Labour MP. “He was the one fundamentally writing the budgets at the end of it all. Gordon was setting the vision, but it was Ed Miliband and Ed Balls doing the actual grunt work.”

“Ed is our best economic brain,” said a second pro-Miliband Labour MP. “He is the best on affordability.”

Perhaps the greatest argument for — and against — Miliband is that a Treasury he ran would be about more than just the Treasury.

As energy secretary, he has a reputation for attending cross-cutting meetings in other departments that could help build net zero infrastructure when other ministers in his position wouldn’t have bothered.

One senior civil servant predicted he would take a more “muscular,” whole-of-government approach than other chancellors.

A Labour official remarked: “He would pretty much be running the whole government.”

Don’t forget the bond markets

But Miliband could also be a risky appointment for Burnham— as shown by the nerves and whispering campaign against him among many MPs in Westminster.

The Greater Manchester mayor has been forced to walk back comments that the country shouldn’t be “in hock” to the bond markets.

Should bond markets turn against Burnham, it could blow billions from the Treasury’s coffers to meet higher interest payments.

Former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss tested the power of bond traders to her detriment in 2022 when her plans for debt-funded tax cuts and an energy bailout blew up the market and forced her resignation.

Current Chancellor Rachel Reeves has won over the markets by sticking to firm borrowing and spending rules, which Burnham has pledged to follow.

But the City of London would eye his intentions more skeptically should he appoint Miliband.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, whose name still comes up to work on the economy but reportedly doesn’t want the job, arrives at 10 Downing Street to attend a cabinet meeting on June 23, 2026. | Toby Shepheard/AFP via Getty Images

“If he wants to reassure the City, he should not appoint Ed Miliband,” said one City executive. “Even if we’re going down the route of ‘Miliband might not be as bad as people think’, that’s still going to take a lot of explaining, and there isn’t really time.”

Burnham’s task will be to signal there is change coming to voters, while making sure he is credible with the City at the same time.

“You’ve got to have a narrative of change and doing things differently, haven’t you?” the executive said. “But at the same time, you’ve got to recognize the geopolitics, the economic environment, the interconnectedness of everything, and the bond markets really do matter.”

The City also fears a swing to the left in No. 11 could bring a tax raid on London’s banks, which would immediately set a different tone than the friendly relationship under Reeves.

And it’s not just business getting nervous.

Some of the country’s biggest trade unions are also fearful of Miliband because they believe his drive for net zero is putting jobs at risk — though many increasingly expect a compromise around new drilling in the North Sea.

Runners and riders

With so much pushback to Miliband, Burnham could instead look for a figure to the center or right of the party.

Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who backed Burnham after considering a tilt at the leadership himself, has been floated and could help buttress concerns.

“Bond markets are not bond villains,” he said in a speech earlier this month after resigning from government. He’s also pledged to bring in tougher wealth taxes.

Despite Burnham’s team insisting that the conversation is still live, one person who is close to the incoming PM said the idea of Streeting as Chancellor is “not on the cards at all” and claimed “he is trying to brief himself into existence.”

Then there’s Shabana Mahmood, who reportedly doesn’t want the job .

However, the idea of Mahmood working on the economy has persisted. Months before Burnham had a firm prospect of returning to parliament, MPs allied to the home secretary, who sits on Labour’s economically left-wing but socially conservative “Blue Labour” flank, were talking up her views on the economy.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, whose name comes up persistently in the Treasury speculation, arriving for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street on June 23, 2026. | Ben Montgomery/Getty Images

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden’s name comes up persistently in the Treasury speculation among Burnham allies, despite his record as a Blairite fiscal hawk.

“There is a sense among Labour MPs that he’s been moving stuff in the right direction on skills and welfare,” said one Labour official supportive of McFadden. He has been in touch with Burnham’s team since the Makerfield by-election, and traveled up during the campaign to speak to Burnham about youth employment policies.

Or there’s Darren Jones, the former chief secretary to the Treasury who is on Labour’s centrist wing — and said he was persuaded by a conversation with Burnham on the economy. However, he was until recently an ardent defender of outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer. One ally of Burnham responded to the idea of Jones as chancellor with a crying-with-laughter emoji.

And there’s always the continuity candidate, Reeves herself, who has been trying to cling to the job despite briefings from Burnham’s camp that she would be moved to a lesser role.

Move fast, don’t break things

But perhaps the biggest problem for Burnham and his choice for No. 11 will be the need for speed.

A difficult budget is expected in the fall, and a countdown of economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility will start ticking 10 weeks before the chancellor delivers it.

Curtice said it is possible to tweak some definitions under Britain’s fiscal rules to allow more borrowing for investment, as Reeves has done, but “I don’t think there is scope, however you design your rules, to borrow loads more money. And therefore we shouldn’t get distracted from the question of — are the current spending plans the right ones? Or does he want to spend more than that and if so, how will he pay for that?”

Since winning the by-election, Burnham has also brought in credible economists, namely former Bank of England economist Andy Haldane and Jim O’Neill, a former chief economist at Goldman Sachs, who have their own ideas for what should come next.

Those range from splitting up the Treasury, raising war bonds, streamlining the tax system and bringing utilities into public ownership to allowing more borrowing to drive investment into infrastructure projects and regional development.

Some of those plans could take years to bear fruit — all while Reeves’ existing plans, such as tighter public spending in the late 2020s and freezes on income tax thresholds, have yet to work their way through the system.

Reeves has repeatedly insisted she has the right roadmap for the economy — but bruised voters may not have the patience to wait around to see if she’s right.

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The first time a top-10 drugmaker called AI scientist company FutureHouse, offering $30 million to use the nonprofit’s artificial intelligence agents for drug discovery, CEO Sam Rodriques thought there was a misunderstanding; the offer couldn’t be real, he said.

Then it happened again. The head of AI at another big pharma company came knocking. “‘We could just build our own [AI] agents on top of OpenAI or Anthropic, but you guys are the Ferrari of agents. … What would the point be?’” Rodriques, who formerly ran the Applied Biotechnology Lab at the Francis Crick Institute, recalled the executive saying.

Rodriques and his co-founder Andrew White, a former chemical engineering professor at the University of Rochester, founded FutureHouse in 2023. The goal: scale scientific discovery by giving every scientist AI agents that could reason on their own. But when pharma came calling, they realized there was a demand for a commercial product. So they spun off Edison Scientific as its own company in late 2025, with $70 million in venture funding .

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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SNK told us how they managed to pull off one of Kenshiro's most iconic moves without sacrificing their Teen ESRB rating.

Kenshiro is the latest guest character from an anime to make a splash in a mainline fighting game, punching his way into Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves this June.

We got the chance to sit down with producer Shinya Tamaki and director Hayato Konya ahead of his release at Evo 2026, who explained the difficulties they faced in translating Hoktuo No Ken’s comparatively gory fighting style into Fatal Fury’s decidedly less grisly hand-to-hand combat.

Part of this problem necessitated finding a balance between Kenshiro’s status as a Bruce Lee-inspired martial artist and the use of his special technique, the Hokuto Shinken, which sees him press opponents’ pressure points, causing them to explode seconds later. It’s arguably the most iconic thing about the show, and despite how bloody it is, it’s something the team wanted to make sure they included in the game.

To fix this, they covered the character model of Ken’s opponents in a dark shadow against a deep red backdrop, where they then explode — but no blood is directly shown, and everything is implied. That doesn’t stop it from being any less satisfying, though.

“As you know, Kenshiro’s main fighting style uses channeling points on his opponents, and typically after he uses them, they explode in three seconds,” Tamaki told us. “It's a very striking feature of the show. But he's also a fighter, and for a fighting game, specifically, we wanted him to showcase both features. We wanted him to be a fighter and be able to use the channeling points as an actual gimmick. But of course, we couldn’t have our characters exploding on screen, so we had to balance accordingly and make sure that it's not too gory, but also have these parts that fans are expecting and want to see properly come to life in the gameplay.”

"Of course, we couldn't have our characters exploding on screen, so we had to balance accordingly."

Kenshiro Was a Perfect Fit for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves

Kenshiro isn’t the wildest addition to City of the Wolves by far, following the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Salvatore Ganacci. Tamaki admitted that Kenshiro was an obvious choice for a DLC pick, given his popularity both in Japan and abroad. But apart from being a seriously cool guest character, slotting in a face from such a beloved anime was also a big marketing play from the folks at SNK to help appeal to a broader audience outside of the fighting game community.

“The First of the North Star series and the brand are quite popular in Japan,” he began. “Just looking at that, and the fact that Kenshiro himself was also previously a fighting game character in another fighting game and how the overall aesthetic kind of fits with Fatal Fury, where it's the Wolves fighting for their own cause… it fits. So we just thought, ‘Alright, this is a great fit for our character. Everything aligns correctly, so we should go forward with developing the character, as well.’”

“Fighting games are a niche genre, for sure,” Tamaki continued. “I think one of the biggest hurdles that we need to address is getting people that are not typically interested in the whole fighting game thing to actually turn around and say, ‘Hey, what's that? I want to try that out, I want to play that.’ We want to get new faces, new people to touch these games, and I think this is one of the most popular ways to do it.”

“Our main focus when choosing a new character to join the game is to give the current fans something fun to play with, but also something to get other people that previously would not be interested in the fighting game to give it a look and say, ‘Oh, actually this looks interesting, we want to try this.’ It might be bold, but really, this is our main priority, and we try to achieve that every time we release a new character.”

The Kenshiro Hype Doesn't Mean a New Fist of the North Star Game is Coming from SNK

This is the latest fighting game Kenshiro has starred in following Arc System Works ’ 2005 Fist of the North Star . It’s been over 20 years since then, and the game still boasts a dedicated playerbase of fans who occasionally go viral on social media by sharing absurd clips of the wildly unbalanced but equally fun fighter. Of course, we had to ask the good folks at SNK if they had any interest in creating a new fighting game centered around the iconic eighties anime — and while Tamaki admitted that it's something the team would love to do, it’s not a project the company is looking to pursue.

“Of course, some of the developers at SNK would love the chance to make a First of the North Star fighting game,” he laughed. “Absolutely. But this version of Kenshiro is actually not based on the old anime TV series. This is [based on] the new reboot series. So we were able to have a good synergy with that. We have a new show coming out, and we’ll be in a good place to help support both [the game and the show]. The focus for this game is for the new character and his story, and we hope the fans enjoy that.”

"The Art of Fighting's Story Isn't Finished Yet"

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is the most recent old-school SNK title to get a new game, following Samurai Shodown in 2019. That just leaves the Art of Fighting series without a new iteration, but fans should take heart – Tamaki cautiously confirmed that a new AoF project is, indeed, in the works, but remained cagey as to what exactly that project entails.

“Previously, SNK announced that we are working on something, though we can't go into the specifics of what the plan is,” he said. “But that news is out there, and yeah, we are happy to say that there is something that we are working on. The Art of Fighting’s story isn’t finished yet. Please stay tuned for more information.”

At Evo 2026, SNK revealed The Path of the Warrior: Art of Fighting 3 R, an updated version of The Art of Fighting 3, which is set to release on Steam with rollback netcode, re-balanced gameplay, and two new characters on an as-yet unreleased date.

Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze .