After Starmer: a Burnham government, and what it means for Filipino migrants and women in Britain

On Monday, Keir Starmer stood outside Downing Street and resigned as leader of the Labour Party. By that afternoon Andy Burnham, who only days earlier had won back a seat in Parliament, had been sworn in and confirmed that he will stand to replace him. With one of his rivals already backing him, he may face little real opposition. Britain could have a new prime minister by late July, and on present form it will be him.

I came to this country from Manila, and I have spent more than twenty years representing the people who hold it up, most of them women: the nurse terrified of losing her registration, the carer whose sponsor has just lost its licence, the wife kept on the other side of the world by a salary figure. So I do not read a change of leader as Westminster drama. I read it by one test. Will it make life safer and fairer for migrant women and their families, or not.

Let me be honest rather than reassuring. Burnham brings a warmer voice than the one we have grown used to, and on the protection of people who are exploited his instincts may genuinely help. But on the substance that decides whether a Filipino woman can work, settle, bring her family and stay, he has already signalled that he broadly accepts the tightening of the last two years. On the campaign trail he said net migration still needs to fall further, and that he supports the broad direction of what the Home Secretary has been doing. He has not promised to reopen what has been closed. So read this as a guide to protecting ourselves, and a list of the fights still worth having.

The women who hold up the NHS
The Filipino story in this country is in large part a story of women in uniform. Filipino nurses number in the tens of thousands and are among the largest groups of overseas nurses on the register. We have nursed this country through ordinary winters and through a pandemic that took some of our own.

There is some reassurance here. When overseas recruitment was shut in July 2025, it was care workers who were locked out, not registered nurses, who can still come on the Health and Care Worker visa. Burnham of all people should understand their worth, because he actually ran the Department of Health in government under Gordon Brown, and as Health Secretary he proposed a National Care Service of free social care at the point of use. His instinct on health and care is publicly funded and home grown.

But two things trouble me. Far fewer Filipino nurses are now coming, with new arrivals from the Philippines down by more than two thirds in the most recent figures, driven away by costs and warmer welcomes elsewhere. Burnham's answer, train and recruit at home, does nothing for the wards that are short tonight. And Filipino nurses are referred to their regulator at rates out of all proportion to their numbers, with cultural difference read as rudeness and an accent as incompetence. The regulator has admitted it has disparities to fix. A government led by a man who knows the health service, and who talks about discrimination, should be pressed to make that fairness real.

The carers left in limbo
For care workers the picture is harder. Since July 2025 no care worker can be recruited from abroad at all. Those already here may stay and change employer only until July 2028, and many live in suspended fear: a sponsor loses its licence, the clock starts, there are weeks to find another or fall out of status, and no safety net to fall into because public funds are barred.

Nothing Burnham has said suggests he will reopen this door. His remedy for the care crisis is better pay and domestic recruitment, not overseas hiring. I understand the principle; I also sit across from the woman it leaves stranded. Any relief is likely to be slow and reactive, prompted by the sector breaking rather than generosity. My advice to carers in transition is simple: do not wait for the politics, get your position reviewed now.

The women kept apart by a number
A word of care here, because two different rules get muddled and the difference matters. If you are in the UK on a work visa, a nurse or carer on the Health and Care Worker route, your husband or wife can usually join you as your dependant, and that carries only a maintenance requirement, not the £29,000 figure people fear. The high threshold belongs to a different route, and it is worth saying so plainly, because the fear of it keeps couples apart who were never caught by it in the first place.

That threshold, the minimum income requirement under the family rules, bites when the sponsor is a British citizen or already settled. It now stands at £29,000, raised from £18,600 in 2024, with the last government having planned to push it towards £38,700 before that was paused. Last summer the Government's own advisers recommended against any further rise and said it should come down, towards £23,000 to £25,000.

So the figure lands later, and on a particular group: the British Filipina, or the woman who has worked her way to settlement, who then wants to bring a husband from home, and the British man married to a Filipina. For them this is dressed up as economics, but it is a women's and families' rights issue. It is also the one reform a Burnham government could deliver without contradicting its message on numbers, because the advice to lower the bar already sits on the desk. I would not promise it will happen, because sounding tough still wins votes. But it is the change most worth pressing for.

The women behind closed doors
Many migrant domestic workers in this country are Filipino women, and the visa most of them arrive on still ties them to one household for six months, with no real right to leave and no renewal. We see where that leads: the confiscated passport, the unpaid months, the abuse that only becomes visible once it has hardened into trafficking. A tied visa does not prevent this, it enables it.

The Government has been reviewing this visa quietly, and that review is not due to report until the end of 2026, which places it in the hands of whoever is prime minister by then. Burnham has not spoken about restoring the older protections that once let a domestic worker change employer. But this may be where his instincts help, because he has a record of concern about modern slavery and opposed recent asylum laws partly to protect victims of trafficking. If anything moves here, it will move as worker protection and the prevention of slavery, not as a loosening of migration, and that framing is what makes it possible. The same caution applies more widely: many trafficked workers only reach safety through the system for identifying victims of modern slavery, and we will need to watch that protection is not eroded in the rush to look firm on numbers.
Settlement and citizenship: the security worth securing now
The change that worries me most for ordinary families is the reshaping of settlement. The route to indefinite leave is being stretched, in most cases to ten years rather than five, with an earned settlement test and a higher English standard arriving from 2027. More than a million and a half people were on track to settle under the old rules. Many are ours, and many are women who came as nurses, carers and wives and have given this country the better part of their lives.

When these plans first appeared, Burnham sounded sympathetic to the unfairness of moving the finishing line mid race. By the time he was campaigning, he was supporting their broad direction. So plan on the basis that a Burnham government keeps the longer, harder road. If you can settle under the current rules, settle. If you can become a British citizen, do it, because citizenship is the one status a future change of rules cannot quietly strip away.

Kitchens and hotels
The Filipino footprint in hospitality is large and often unseen, in hotel corridors and in the kitchens of the restaurants that feed our homesickness. Raising the skilled worker bar to graduate level in 2025 pushed most of these roles out of the sponsored system unless they sit on a shortage list, and I see no appetite in Burnham to loosen that. Employers who depend on overseas talent should treat their sponsor licence as precious and keep their records audit ready.

What I am asking of our community
A Burnham government is likely to feel warmer, and tone is not nothing, because it shapes how a woman is treated at the counter and in the tribunal. But warmth is not reversal. On settlement, on the closed care route, on the income bar that keeps families apart, expect continuity, not rescue. The brighter possibilities are specific and worth fighting for: a fairer regulator for our nurses, protection for domestic workers, and a lower income threshold to reunite our families.

To the women of our community especially: if you can settle, settle. If you can naturalise, do it. If you are a carer running out of time, a nurse facing the regulator, a wife kept apart by a salary line, or a domestic worker in a house that frightens you, get proper advice now and do not carry it alone. Governments come and go. The strength of a settled status, and of a community that knows its rights, does not. We have held up this country's wards and homes for two generations. We are not going anywhere, and neither is our voice.