The heartbreaking health scare faced by Andy Burnham’s wife – and how it could shape the sort of ‘first lady’ she might be

When Andy Burnham told his wife, Marie-France van Heel, of his plans to return to Westminster, her reply was “probably a two-word answer”, according to the former mayor of Greater Manchester. She was “probably half-joking”, Burnham added, but you can surely use your imagination to fill in the blanks and guess exactly what those two words were. And who can blame her if she was feeling ever so slightly exasperated by the “King of the North’s” change of direction?

Fifty-six-year-old Van Heel, who tends to go by Frankie and met Burnham when they were both students at Cambridge, has watched her husband go from New Labour MP to health secretary to leadership race loser (twice) to popular Manchester mayor. But she has never shown much interest in following the “political wife” trope or indeed in courting the spotlight herself. But should Burnham end up in Downing Street as the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years, that spotlight might be harder to avoid.

Aside from a campaign video uploaded to the YouTube channel “Andy4Leader” about a decade ago, in which she teases Burnham about his student-y aesthetic during their early relationship – “the long hair and the good looks… and the monobrow” – it’s rare for her to give an interview. Mention her name to political insiders and the general consensus is she’s “very nice”, but beyond that, you’ll be hard-pressed to get much more.

These few insights into a deeply private woman seem to paint her as no-nonsense and straight-talking. But her perspective has been shaped by tragedy – the loss of her sister to breast cancer at the age of just 39. Soon after, her mother and her other sister were treated for the disease, and she had to make the difficult decision to undergo a double mastectomy. Against the backdrop of such heartbreak, you can only imagine how photocalls, cosy interviews and the political rumour mill might come to seem deeply unimportant.

While her husband will be keen to shake off any comparisons between him and Keir Starmer, insiders suggest that Van Heel is much like the outgoing PM’s wife, Victoria, in that she “prefers to stay in the background”. And although she is happy to show up for the big occasions – attending the vote count for the Makerfield by-election last Friday with the couple’s middle child, 24-year-old Rosie, for example – she very much “has her own life”, working in marketing in green energy and holding her own outside of Burnham’s ambitions. In fact, Burnham once joked that she “takes no interest in my day-to-day job whatsoever”.

As a politician, Burnham has crafted a persona as the bloke who understands the concerns of ordinary people; perhaps having a partner who seems resolutely unfazed by the trappings of power and who has faced real battles, not just those of the Westminster kind, has helped him to keep those Adidas Gazelle-clad feet firmly on the ground.

Van Heel was born in Holland and grew up in Belgium before heading to England to study at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. She met Burnham on her very first day; apparently, he immediately told her of his ambition to become an MP. Clearly that didn’t put her off; neither did the fact that he apparently warned her that he would want to head back to a constituency in the north. “Don’t stay with me if you want to live in London, because I won’t be doing that,” he said.

According to one of Burnham’s English tutors, Frankie was “the coolest girl in the college”, and when they became a couple, “there was some surprise and a feeling that he had scooped the pools”, The Times has reported. But when producers for ITV’s Blind Date turned up at their college to hold auditions, the fledgling relationship faced its first test.

Van Heel asked Burnham whether he’d mind if she tried out for the show. He told her to go for it, but “had second thoughts when she got on the show”, he later admitted. Signing up for a TV dating show might seem like a somewhat counterintuitive move for someone who clearly values privacy. But back in those days, Van Heel later explained in an online Q&A for a previous employer, she harboured a desire to be a children’s TV presenter, and thought “that appearing on a dating show might raise my profile and help my career”.

When she made it onto ITV, Burnham watched the episode from “behind the sofa through my fingers”. Luckily for him, though, she wasn’t too impressed with her onscreen date. In fact, there may have been a political mismatch between her and her would-be TV suitor.

Out of three potential love interests, Van Heel picked “Will from Surrey”, a young man with a thatch of blonde hair and a penchant for dressing like a kids’ TV character in dungarees (“I used to like Andy Pandy – and you’ve got a real live one,” host Cilla Black told her – a sentence that would surely be the death knell of even the most promising romance).

After their date, he called her a “cold fish”, and she threw a cushion at him. No love lost there, then. Later, “Will from Surrey” would become a marketing director for the Conservatives, and the Burnhams would run into him in a Commons bar. “I got a lot of teasing from a lot of other Labour MPs,” he told the Daily Mail.

Once they’d graduated, Van Heel embarked on a career in marketing and branding, working with big brands such as BSkyB and MTV – you have to wonder whether her professional eye has helped to shape Burnham’s image too.

She launched her own company, MVH Marketing, in 2008, which she steered for three years, and Burnham later proudly alluded to her experience as a business owner during a previous Labour leadership campaign, when he said that he had learned from her experience of working in the private sector. These days, she works for Be.EV, the electric vehicle charging network, although she recently deleted her LinkedIn account; you’ll no longer find her on Twitter/X, either, where she once publicly railed against the Tories.

The couple’s eldest child, Jimmy, was born in 2000, and Burnham admitted that Van Heel’s first pregnancy was “a complete shock”. His first thought, he said, was “Oh my God, we’ll have to get married” – which they did soon afterwards. They went on to have two more children, Rosie and 21-year-old Annie (and also have a rescue dog called Axel, a bichon frise).

Her sister’s struggle with breast cancer, leaving behind four children under the age of eight, was one of the most difficult periods in their marriage. Then, in another heartbreaking blow, her mother Bea was diagnosed with the same disease soon afterwards, having “missed her own screening appointments” while she was caring for Claire, Burnham later told the Daily Mirror. Her other sister, Louise, received a diagnosis too. Van Heel was tested for the BRCA1 gene, a process that confirmed she had a mutation that could increase the likelihood of her getting the disease.

She then opted to undergo a double mastectomy in 2010, a decision that Burnham later explained was “liberating rather than depressing because it shifted the cloud of fear. She did what she did because she’d seen the devastation breast cancer had caused to her sisters and mother. “We more than most know what could have happened and we had to find a way to get beyond it.”

According to friends of the couple, her decision was “all the more poignant” because she was thinking of her two young daughters, the Evening Standard reported.

After coming face to face with such loss and tough choices, it is not surprising that Van Heel seems to have a clear idea about what actually matters to her and her family, and what is just political bluster.

While her husband’s profile looks set to rise and rise, Burnham may need to renege on his early promise to her because they might be heading to London after all. Just don’t expect her to go down the classic political spouse route. She is, insiders say, far more likely to mimic Vic Starmer’s style. She might not always appear by her husband’s side, but she’ll certainly be on his side.