Mumbai: Andy Burnham travelled to Kyiv on his first overseas visit as British prime minister with missiles, battlefield technology, and Ukraine’s air defences on the agenda. Somewhere between meetings and military briefings, however, the former Greater Manchester mayor found himself with an electric guitar in his hands, playing The Smiths alongside Ukrainian soldiers.
The song was ‘Rustholme Ruffians’, from the Manchester band’s 1985 album Meat Is Murder.
Burnham was visiting Cultural Forces, a Ukrainian military and artistic unit that sends musicians to front-line positions, hospitals, and rehabilitation centres, when he stepped inside its mobile recording studio and was handed a guitar.
“I’m out of practice, a little bit,” Burnham said before picking out the riff. Asked what he was playing, he told those around him it was by “a Manchester band called The Smiths”.
He stopped short of providing vocals. The Ukrainian soldiers later responded with another piece of Manchester music, singing a song by the rock band Oasis.
The guitar Burnham used was locally made. Built in Kyiv by WM Guitars, the silver electric guitar carried Cultural Forces’ emblem. The British prime minister later posted a video of the incident on Instagram.
“It was an honour to spend time with Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv. Not sure if they regret handing me that guitar now,” he wrote in the caption.
For Burnham, the choice of song was fitting. Before moving into 10 Downing Street, he spent more than nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester. The job made him one of the most recognisable political figures outside Westminster and tied him closely to a city whose musical exports include The Smiths, Oasis, Joy Division, and The Stone Roses.
The guitar session lasted only a few minutes in a trip dominated by war and security. But for Burnham, it offered a more personal diplomatic flourish.
His appearance in Kyiv came barely five weeks after a rapid return to national politics.
Burnham became Britain’s prime minister on 20 July, four days after being elected Labour leader. He had returned to Parliament only the previous month as MP for Makerfield, nearly a decade after leaving Westminster to run Greater Manchester.
Ukraine was a carefully chosen first foreign destination for the new prime minister.
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What Burnham did in Ukraine
Burnham arrived in Kyiv on 24 August, Ukraine’s Independence Day, and met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He also co-chaired a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing alongside Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Britain used the visit to announce further defence cooperation, including allowing MBDA to share classified information on British components used in the SCALP cruise missile, the French counterpart of Storm Shadow, to support plans for missile assembly in Ukraine.
Burnham and Zelenskyy also signed an agreement giving Britain access to data from Ukraine’s Avengers AI Labs, collected from battlefield cameras and sensors and used to train military AI systems.
Burnham met wounded Ukrainian soldiers and visited a Kyiv shopping centre damaged in a Russian attack.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)