‘Whole class act’: Marie-France van Heel is poised to be a really completely different PM’s spouse | Andy Burnham

Sarah Brown referred to as Gordon her hero, Samantha Cameron insisted David was “incredibly funny”, whereas Akshata Murty stated Rishi was her best friend. When Marie-France van Heel spoke about her husband, Andy Burnham, in a uncommon public interview a decade in the past, she joked that she had observed his “attractiveness … and monobrow”.

The spousal humanising of a celebration chief is a well-worn political instrument, however van Heel is prone to be a really completely different prime ministerial associate. The former senior advertising govt is poised to play a extra vital function in selling Britain than every other partner within the final 20 years, stepping up her political engagements after stepping again from her personal company profession.

Van heel has chosen a political adviser to assist her navigate the function at house and promote the UK’s pursuits abroad, the Guardian understands.

She has shifted her function at Be.EV, an electrical vehicle-charging community based mostly in Manchester, quitting her job as chief buyer officer to present her schedule extra flexibility, whereas remaining on the corporate’s board.

While it’s customary for the companions of prime ministers to have taxpayer-funded workplace assist, van Heel has taken on a former particular adviser to a cupboard member and is anticipated to play a extra vital function behind the scenes than the earlier prime minister Keir Starmer’s spouse, Victoria, who continued her work in occupational well being for the NHS all through her husband’s tenure.

Last week, she travelled with Burnham to the UN common meeting in New York, attending a lunch hosted by the US first woman, Melania Trump, in addition to holding conferences with Ukraine’s first woman, Olena Zelenska, and the Canadian prime minister’s spouse, Diana Fox Carney. The UK is holding the G20 presidency subsequent 12 months and the G7 presidency the 12 months after, and van Heel is seen as a priceless addition to the UK’s diplomatic vanguard.

At the Labour social gathering convention this week, she posed for pictures with the Labour Asians Society and attended a fringe occasion on apprenticeships. One gushing company communicator later wrote that she had spent half an hour making apprentices “really feel like crucial individuals within the room”, including that she was “a complete class act”.

Van heel and her crew at the moment are chatting with charities and leaders and weighing up how you can make finest use of her “spectacular” persona {and professional} expertise to champion causes. They shall be fortunate to have her, stated Rose Caldwell, the chief govt of Plan International UK, the place van Heel was a trustee till July. “She introduced priceless perception and unwavering dedication to the function,” she stated. “She actually made an enduring contribution to our mission of advancing equality for women.”

Born in Roslyn, Pennsylvania, to Dutch mother and father, van Heel grew up within the Netherlands and Belgium and met Burnham on her first day as a pupil on the University of Cambridge. In a marketing campaign video for his mayoral marketing campaign, she requested the long run PM if he remembered his response to her query about what he needed to do along with his life. “You stated you needed to be an MP,” she stated. “Yeah. And I left the room at that time.”

After nearly a decade in Manchester, van Heel is one thing of an unknown amount in Westminster, however insiders say she has already impressed workers behind the scenes. “She’s extremely cool,” stated one supply. “She’s very good, very good … she simply will get it.”

The clearest image of the prime minister’s associate has come from Burnham himself. Speaking to Elizabeth Day for the How to Fail podcast, he stated that his spouse of 26 years was “forthright” when she thought he had bought one thing flawed. “She’s Dutch, and so they don’t maintain again,” he stated. “They’re fairly plain talking, and yeah, I’ve been on the receiving finish of a whole lot of that over time.”

Burnham has recalled ending an interview when he was an MP and seeing a textual content from his spouse exhorting him to “ANSWER THE F***ING QUESTION”. When he instructed van Heel he was planning to run to be Labour chief earlier this 12 months, after failed bids in 2010 and 2015, she didn’t maintain again. “She was like, ‘Oh, not once more! They’ve instructed you twice. They don’t need you. Why once more?’” Burnham stated. “She took some persuading, to be trustworthy, as a result of I suppose she didn’t wish to see me undergo all of it once more […] But she offers me good recommendation.”

But there are earlier hints, too. Much has been written of van Heel’s look on the Cilla Black TV present Blind Date in 1992, when she punctured the non-public faculty hubris of “Will from Surrey” – in any other case generally known as Will Harris, who later turned the advertising director for the Conservative social gathering.

But a full viewing of the video – through which van Heel flicks Harris’s wandering hand off her knee, earlier than smacking her unlucky date with a cushion when he calls her a “fridge” – offers a way of her blunt confidence and fast wit. When Harris says his “pursuits had been honourable”, she retorts: “I didn’t have any curiosity in any respect.”

Officially, Downing Street will say solely that van Heel, who has three grownup youngsters with Burnham, is supporting her husband and “advancing UK pursuits” as spouses have executed earlier than.

Where van Heel’s power shall be directed now that her husband has reached No 10 remains to be being mapped out, however it’s probably that she would be the most lively – and doubtlessly influential – prime minister’s spouse since Sarah Brown initially of the century. Brown’s diaries from Downing Street observe there’s “no formal partner job to step into […] no everlasting workplace, no wage, no allowance, no pre-set duties or official function, not even an official title” for the prime minister’s spouse. It is a job that van Heel didn’t ask for, and should not even need – nevertheless it seems to be probably she is going to make it her personal.