On Monday, Britain’s new prime minister Andy Burnham met with King Charles at Buckingham Palace. They did the hand-kissing thing where the king asks his new PM to form a government in his name. By now, Charles has gotten used to this, given that Burnham is his fourth PM in not even four full years. But just a few hours before that palace meeting, Burnham did something unusual – he stopped by a homeless center in London to highlight the issue on his first day as PM. He stopped by The Passage, which counts Prince William as its royal patron. On his first day, Burnham also said this: “On my first day as prime minister, I’m announcing this Government’s commitment to finally end long-term rough sleeping across the UK at the earliest opportunity. We’ll get to work immediately, bringing together national and local Government with the investment needed to get it done.” “Rough sleeping” means… sleeping on the streets in the UK. So, is Burnham a not-so-secret fan of Prince William? Are they going to join forces to end homelessness?

Andy Burnham used his first speech as Prime Minister to pledge “to end rough sleeping in our country” – a mammoth task which requires “a significant shift away from a series of expensive temporary fixes”, according to the charity Crisis.

Before King Charles invited him to form a government, Mr Burnham spent the morning at The Passage, an organisation helping the homeless population of London, which has Prince William as its Patron. It’s famous as the location Princess Diana brought her eldest son when he was a boy, and last December the future King brought Prince George along to help serve Christmas lunch.

The issue of homelessness, however, runs deeper than a standard patronage for Prince William. In 2023, he launched Homewards: a five-year project, producing six blueprints in target locations across the UK, to demonstrate homelessness can be ended – making the issue rare, brief and unrepeated.

By coincidence, a certain Mayor of Greater Manchester supported the prince and his Royal Foundation through the launch. Andy Burnham told the BBC in 2023: “I think it’s a tremendous development to be honest that The Prince of Wales would show this leadership on this particular issue. They will feel seen today, and they will feel that their work matters, because that endorsement has come from the prince. But also everybody who worries about homelessness. Anybody who’s at risk of homelessness. Everybody who is homeless I think today will feel seen too. I think this is a real positive move by The Prince and the Royal Foundation and in Greater Manchester we’re going to be supporting the Royal Foundation with all of their work.”

Representatives of Prince William’s project met with Mr Burnham recently to discuss early homelessness prevention in Manchester, particularly successes in an Upstream pilot that is being tested in the northern city and Homewards locations.

[From GB News]

There are two scenarios. Either William is going to be extremely smug about Burnham seemingly cosigning all of his homeless work, or William is going to throw a tantrum about “homelessness is MINE!” Which will it be? For now, it’s nothing. William is on vacation. You can tell because his staff didn’t do a damn thing about Burnham’s speech or visit to the Passage. This would have been a wonderful opportunity for a professional royal office to issue a statement welcoming Burnham and his focus on homelessness. William’s office could have used Burnham to promote Homewards and their pilot programs and all of that. Instead, William’s on a beach somewhere, sipping on his tenth pina colada, and his staffers are doing f–k all.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Kensington Palace’s Instagram.