Legally, This Is a Process That Concerns the Museum

However, I fully support Britain using cultural diplomacy. During his time as a parliamentarian, Burnham backed amending the 1963 law that prevents the British Museum from permanently returning the sculptures. In 2023, while serving as Mayor of Greater Manchester, he said the Parthenon Sculptures should be returned to Greece "unconditionally" and stressed that British Museum Director George Osborne should hand them back.

Greek newspaper Ta Nea had written that Burnham "could be Greece's strongest ally in Downing Street so far. A British Museum official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Burnham's apparent shift: "I thought something like this might happen. There is a difference between what you say as a parliamentarian and what you say as prime minister.

Apparently, this is not an issue on which political capital will be spent. In a statement to the Financial Times, the British Museum said talks with Greece over the return of the sculptures were progressing constructively. The Parthenon Sculptures were sent piece by piece to London between 1801 and 1804 by Lord Elgin, the UK's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and were sold to the British Museum in 1816. Nearly half of the fragments of the Parthenon, built in Athens in the 5th century BC, are displayed at the British Museum. Greece made its first official request for their return in 1983.