Who is Andy Burnham?

Summary

Podcast Summary: BBC Newscast – “Who is Andy Burnham?”
Date: July 17, 2026

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Overview:

This special Newscast episode profiles Andy Burnham, newly elected Labour Party leader and poised to become the next UK Prime Minister. With interviews, first-hand accounts, and political analysis, the episode explores Burnham's background, political journey, defining moments, and what his premiership might bring. Guests include BBC correspondents Adam Fleming (host), Chris Mason, Judith Moritz, and Steve Rotheram – Metro Mayor of Liverpool City Region and Burnham’s close friend.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Andy Burnham's Background & Upbringing

• Birth/Early Life: Born in 1970 in Aintree, Liverpool. Raised near Warrington, son of a telephone engineer and a GP receptionist.
• Political Awakening: “His political awakening sounds like it was a TV show. The Boys from the Black Stuff.” (Adam Fleming, 06:22)
• Formative Influence: The 1980s TV drama about unemployment in Liverpool made a deep impression, exposing Burnham to hardship and local politics (Steve Rotheram, 06:56).

2. Education & Early Career

• Cambridge: Studied English, struggled to fit in, more interested in football than student politics (Chris Mason, 08:33).
• Journalism: Wrote for niche trade magazines (notably “Tank World”) before moving into politics.
• Personal Life: Met wife, Marie-France Van Heel, at university. Humorous anecdote about her Blind Date TV show appearance surfaced (Judith Moritz, 10:31).

3. Rise in Westminster

• New Labour Era: Entered politics as an aide to Tessa Jowell; played football in “Demon Eyes” team with future Labour heavyweights (13:13).
• Ministerial Posts:
  • MP for Leigh (2001).
  • Home Office Minister (2005).
  • Health Minister (2006).
  • Cabinet: Chief Secretary to the Treasury (2007), then Culture Secretary.
• Political Loyalty & Critique: Supported successive Labour leaders but later developed stronger independent views, particularly after mayoral experience.

  “He’s a loyalist…but he’s developed more of a personality and a policy direction since those days.” (Steve Rotheram, 15:31)

4. The Hillsborough Turning Point

• Defining Moment: As Culture Secretary in 2009, represented Government at Hillsborough Disaster’s 20th anniversary at Anfield.
  • Crowd Chanted 'Justice': Marked a sea change—“The whole atmosphere changed with that singular shout” (Steve Rotheram, 24:21).
• Aftermath: Burnham’s promise to act led to key policy shifts on government file disclosure and the Justice campaign (Judith Moritz, 28:44).

  “You can draw a line…back to that point that day at Anfield.” (Judith Moritz, 29:34)

5. Leadership Ambition & Failures

• Labour Leadership Bids: Ran twice (2010, 2015) but lost both.
• Shadow Cabinet: Served under Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Home Secretary; notable for his loyalty even as colleagues refused to serve.
• Roots of a New Political Identity: Became a leading advocate for devolution and regional voices during and after his Westminster years.

6. Metro Mayors & “King of the North”

• Greater Manchester Mayor (2017): Shifted to local politics with encouragement from Steve Rotheram.
• Manchester Arena Attack:
  • Crucial Test of Leadership: “He had a more human touch and probably defined the role of a metro mayor in that moment.” (Steve Rotheram, 45:37)
  • Handled aftermath with empathy, supporting survivors and families personally.
• Covid Leadership:
  • Clash with Government: Burnham stood up for Manchester during Covid restrictions, demanding fairer funding.

  “I mean, it’s brutal, to be honest, isn’t it? This isn’t a way to run the country in a national crisis.” (Andy Burnham, 50:04)

• Public Persona:
  • Nicknamed “King of the North” for championing regional voices and challenging central government (“David versus Goliath” dynamic).

7. Philosophy, Policy, and Style

• Favours “politics of place”, strong local governance, and public service reform.
• Character:

  “He’s a really poor mimic of a phony politician. …His orderliness shines through.” (Steve Rotheram, 14:31)

• Leadership Style:
  • Friendly, empathetic, and direct—more “boyish” and approachable than many predecessors.
• Competitive Nature:
  • “The competitiveness is a really strong streak.” (Steve Rotheram, 14:09)

8. Challenges As New Prime Minister

• From Outsider to Insider: How Burnham’s “firebrand, outsider sensibility” will translate to national leadership is an open question (Judith Moritz, 59:17).
• Managing Devolution: Likely to pursue major devolution of powers but faces balancing act between centre and regions (Chris Mason, 53:11).
• Maintaining Authenticity Under Pressure:

  “To what extent does Brand Burnham…survive contact with taking on the job of Prime Minister at this time?” (Chris Mason, 58:04)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Becoming Labour Leader:

  “We are united and we put the power that comes from that unity at the service of people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to let them hope again…I'm ready.” – Andy Burnham (00:46)

• On Hillsborough & Justice:

  “He was devastated. He was literally cut to the quick about what had happened…he did, which I don’t think any other politician at the time would have done, was not to try to talk over when the cries of justice…were ringing out, but to stand back and wait till the whole thing subsided.” – Steve Rotheram (32:01)

• On His Leadership Motivation:

  “We still live in a country where the postcode of the bed you’re born in pretty much determines where you end up in life. Things I believe in, I believe in very deeply and passionately. And I’m doing this to try and change the country.” – Andy Burnham (36:56)

• During Covid Stand-off:

  “This is no way to run the country in a national crisis. It isn’t. This is not right.” – Andy Burnham (50:04)

• On Burnham as “David” Becoming “Goliath”:

  “…That sort of firebrand, David versus Goliath outsider sensibility that he has…I think we will see those moments…But now he’s absolutely the pinnacle of the inside. So…how somebody whose brand has been built on being David becomes Goliath.” – Judith Moritz (59:17)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:46 – Andy Burnham’s leadership speech
• 06:56 – Early influences: “Boys from the Black Stuff”
• 10:31 – The “Blind Date” anecdote about Burnham’s wife
• 13:13 – Entry into Labour politics and “Demon Eyes” team
• 17:25 – Treasury experience & impact of “Green Book” funding formulas
• 21:01-26:14 – Hillsborough anniversary: defining personal and political moment
• 33:49 – Recap of failed Labour leadership bids
• 36:53 – Burnham expresses his values and motivation for leadership
• 42:21 – Manchester Arena attack: Burnham’s response as Mayor
• 50:04 – Covid pandemic, Burnham’s stand-off with government
• 58:04 – Challenges ahead for “Brand Burnham” as national leader
• 59:17 – Judith Moritz on Burnham’s future as PM

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Conclusion:

The episode paints a nuanced portrait of Andy Burnham: working-class, principled, empathetic, and unusually rooted in local identity for a national politician. His trajectory from Scouse outsider to Westminster insider—and now to Prime Minister—captures a pivotal shift in British politics. The Newscast team and guests raise critical questions about whether his style, shaped by major crises and regional advocacy, will withstand the demands and scrutiny of national office. All eyes are on how “David” handles becoming “Goliath.”

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Transcript

[Adam Fleming]

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[Andy Burnham]

we are united and we put the power that comes from that unity at the service of people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to let them hope again. That's what we're going to do, everybody. We're going to give them hope back. This is a proud moment you have given me and my family today, and an emotional one. But it is one for which I am ready. I am ready.

[Adam Fleming]

That was Andy Burnham officially becoming leader of the Labour Party, which happened on Friday lunchtime. But he will not be Prime Minister until Monday lunchtime. He was speaking to a room full of activists and politicians at an event in central London where he promised them that they were going to witness the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years. A big, bold claim. He also said he hadn't decided who would be in his cabinet yet. Which means we've got time for the latest newscast gimmick, which I will tell you about at the end of this episode and you will not want to miss your opportunity to join in. But watch what we will do before that is look at Andy Burnham, the man, the person, the politician. And we will do that with some people who have got to know him pretty well. And we recorded this bit of this episode of newscast on Wednesday afternoon.

[Steve Rotheram]

Newscast.

[Judith Moritz]

Newscast from the BBC.

[Andy Burnham]

Are you ready for this? For God's sake, get some new running shorts. You're missing the crown there. This is no way to run the country in a national crisis. It isn't.

[Judith Moritz]

Can you remind us what the fiscal rules are?

[Andy Burnham]

I'm not going to go through a discussion. You know, I like my buses.

[Adam Fleming]

I'll on to them. Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio. Chris Mason is at Westminster. Hello, Chris.

[Chris Mason]

Hi.

[Adam Fleming]

Joining us from the BBC in Salford is BBC correspondent Judith Moritz. Hello, Judith.

[Judith Moritz]

Hi, Adam.

[Adam Fleming]

And joining us from Liverpool is the mayor of the Liverpool City region and very good friend of Andy Burnham, Steve Rotherham. Hello, Mr. Mayor.

[Steve Rotheram]

Good morning. And Is that what I'm going to be forever titled now, the Friend of the Prime Minister?

[Adam Fleming]

I mean, obviously, if you were here to just talk about Liverpool, we'd say he's the Mayor of this city region. But you are here to talk about Andy Burnham, so I think that's a fair introduction.

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, I'll accept that.

[Adam Fleming]

I mean, Steve, how long have you been mates with him?

[Steve Rotheram]

Well, we sort of first met in a bit of a sliding doors moment, so I was the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, so the one, the ceremonial mayor with the chain on during our 2008 European capital of Culture celebration. And he then was, first of all Chief Secretary to the treasury, and then he became the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. And being from this part of the world, he wanted to spend as much time not in Sadler's Wells and those sorts of places, but in Liverpool when it was the European capital culture. And so we met each other on several occasions and obviously formed a friendship.

[Adam Fleming]

And Judith, you've been reporting on the north of England for a long time, so you've seen Andy Burnham's whole mayoral career.

[Judith Moritz]

Yeah, and before that, the first time I remember meeting him was moments after he came off the pitch at anfield at the 20th anniversary service. I know we'll come on to talk about this, but the Hillsborough memorial service in 2009 and I was there for the BBC's news channel interviewing people who'd been at the service. And yeah, I interviewed him a short time after. I think that must have been the first time I met him, when we had a chance to speak to each other. And I've. Yeah, I've been in the north of England ever since, through Manchester arena, what happened there, watching his mayoralty and getting to know him. Yeah, through all of those moments, lots to discuss.

[Adam Fleming]

And Chris, I mean, Andy Barnum's been a feature of our political reporting career since we started in the early noughties.

[Chris Mason]

Yeah, that's right, yeah. So here he was at Westminster, first as a Special advisor and then becoming the MP for leed, neighbouring, where he's the MP for right now in the northwest of England between Liverpool and Manchester, and then, yeah, rising up the. Rising up the ranks, becoming a minister, becoming a Cabinet minister, and then I think the curiosity of, as we record right now in a couple of days ahead of Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister and having Steve with us on newscast and Judith, you referring there to the 20th anniversary service in 2009 at Anfield in the Connect, as far as Hillsborough is concerned, is the how central for Both and Steve can talk about this how central Hillsborough and the campaign around Hillsborough for both Steve and for Andy Burnham has been in their politics then their politics since and then it coming to a head extraordinarily really in the couple of days before Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister. With what happened in the House of Commons this week and this law that is coming down the track, it's not quite there yet to ensure that there's a duty of candor when there are investigations following events like Hillsborough. So it's quite something the arc and significance of the politics that has surrounded the Hillsborough campaign in the politics of Andy Burnham and indeed. But it's not for me to say because Steve is with us. Steve's. Steve's politics as well.

[Adam Fleming]

Well, lots of timelines converging there but I wonder if actually we wind the clock back even further and we start with Andrew Murray Burnham being born on 7th January 1970 in Aintree in Liverpool. So he is a Scouser although he GRE up closer to Warrington. His dad was a telephone engineer, his mom was a GP receptionist. Although interestingly I don't feel that we've heard his parents job titles as much as maybe Keir Starmer used to cite his dad being a tool maker. And when you go back and, and read the, the, the book that Andy co wrote with you, Steve, he says that actually his political awakening sounds like it was a TV show. The Boys from the Black Stuff.

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, it's a real pivotal moment I think in, in most of our lives. You have to go back and imagine for those people who are young who are listening to this, that there weren't the range of channels that you've currently got and there was no stream and, and I, I'm not, I don't think we had DVDs then. I think it must have been videos at best. And this thing came on about the area that you're from. So we watched it absolutely religiously and you didn't get the next episode until the week after. And so you literally, you know, you arrange your, your whole day around watching this thing called Boys from the Black

[Adam Fleming]

Stuff which is basically unemployed, unemployed Dockers trying to find work. And the stress, the stress of being unemployed is the theme of that show, isn't it?

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, I mean the Black stuff refers to they go to tarmac roads and it's about the journey of five of the characters and. But honestly it's really seminal. If anybody hasn't watched it, they really should watch because this is again against the backdrop of what was happening politically in across the UK with Thatcher and Thatcherism. And obviously this is a city that stood up against Thatcherism. But the, the individual portrayals of these lives by some very, very renowned now but previously unknown actors is just. Well, it's a piece that stands the test of time.

[Adam Fleming]

And Chris, he then went to Cambridge to study English. But actually it doesn't sound like he was one of these kind of classic Oxbridge proto politicians when he was there.

[Chris Mason]

No. So I, I think the impression that he leaves in the, in the book that he's co written with, with Steve is of feeling a sense of struggling to fit in, at least at first. Being very aware of his Northwest of England roots, indulging in his sort of lifelong obsession with football and not doing the thing that we hear plenty of politicians doing, which is the kind of, you know, the student debating and if you like, the sort of training ground for a wannabe. A wannabe politician, even if perhaps some of those political ambitions might have been, might have been there. He met his wife at university, so they've been together for what, 35 odd odd years and then after that went off to work in journalism for some various, various specialist, specialist magazines. The kind of which. I think he refers to this in the book, the kind of which to get the mickey taken out of him on have I Got News for your Tank World, I think. Was that right?

[Adam Fleming]

Tank World, yeah, but not tanks as in the heavy armored vehicle Tanks as in the thing that you put industrial liquids in.

[Chris Mason]

Oh, is that right?

[Adam Fleming]

I didn't rename it and it's now been renamed Bulk Distributor.

[Chris Mason]

I didn't realize, I assumed it was kind of things with caterpillar tracks. I hadn't realised that.

[Adam Fleming]

Oh, not as cool as that. Much lamer than that. Also, before we get onto his illustrious journalism career in Tank World, talking about lubricants, etc. Judith, we should just do a little sidebar here because Chris mentioned Andy Burnham meeting his wife, Mary France Van Heel. And there's a weird little subplot where she ended up being on a show called Blind Date, where she ended up being set up on a date with somebody who then went and worked in the Conservative Party. And these clips go viral every now and then, but not to turn into a 1980s TV podcast, but can you just remind newscasters what the format of Blind Date was?

[Judith Moritz]

Oh, wow. I never thought this was a question I'd be asked on a BBC interview. Cilla Black, legendary presenter, Saturday nights was it? I remember watching this and you'd go on the show. You contestants would go on the show and be given. I think it was three. They could go on. If So, a woman could go on and be given the option of three. Behind a screen, there'd be three men who would be answering questions and the woman at the end would get to pick which man she wants to go out with, vice versa. A man would be on the other side of the screen waiting to hear answers from three women. And at the end of this sort of. This protracted experience of listening to answers but not seeing the contestants on the other side of the screen, the winners, the two, you know, they go off on a date and from now. I did not watch the episode in question at the time, although, as you say, it's gone viral since online. Thank you, YouTube. But yeah, I don't think that date was terribly successful, much to Andy Burnham's obvious relief, because they were already seeing each other by then, I think. Why did you describe her as, you know, fish like, cold fish like.

[Adam Fleming]

Well, it's fantastic.

[Judith Moritz]

She doesn't hurt that I didn't fanc. Now the troops coming out now. Tell me more, Frankie. Well, he thought it was fish. Cause I didn't jump on him and rip his clothes off or something. Oh, wait, that's fish like, fine. I was a bit fishy then, really.

[Adam Fleming]

And I'm just trying to conjure a sort of 80s 90s vibe so that we get a sense of the milieu from which Andy Burnham sprang. I mean, Chris, the other huge thing happening in the mid to late 90s is the rise of New labor and then Tony Blair's eventual massive election win in 1997, which Andy Burnham had a sort of bit part in at that point.

[Chris Mason]

Yeah. So whilst he was playing his sort of journalistic trade and was becoming interested in politics, as you say, at that time. It was the period where the long years of Conservative rule in the 80s and 90s was, as we now know, coming towards an end. And Labour were putting together an electable opposition. You then have Andy Burnham doing his Tank World stuff, but being interested in politics. And I think there was a sort of chance connection, wasn't there, involving Tessa Jowl and the chance to work in her office. The sort of luminary figure, if you like, of the. Of the new. Of the New Labour years. And that was. That was Andy Burnham's sort of entry point, if you like, into the whole business of kind of Westminster and SW1 and a postcode that he came to sort of love and then not love and perhaps is going to learn to love again.

[Adam Fleming]

And Steve at that point, he was in this, this football team called the Demon Eyes, which was named after a conservative advert criticizing Tony Blair. And that team involved James Purnell, Liam Halligan, the economics journalist Ed Balls and David Miliband. What a squad.

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, but none of them could play football.

[Global Story Podcast Host]

Okay,

[Adam Fleming]

maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe it was more social. Oh, does that mean Andy can't play football either?

[Steve Rotheram]

Or is he quite thinks he can. But I've played against him on a number of occasions and I mean, on one of them, if anybody who plays at the back will know this, that, you know, you stay very tight to the, the forward, which he was. So we were playing against, directly against each other. And I eventually won a ball with taking him out first and he jumped off and went straight to the referee and said, you've got to send them off. I went, what was this friendship we're supposed to have?

[Chris Mason]

Is that, does that say something about his competitiveness?

[Steve Rotheram]

Oh, honestly, we are uber competitive, not just against each other, but obviously in what we wanted to do in Liverpool and Manchester being sort of rivals, if you like. But yeah, the, the competitiveness is a really strong streak.

[Adam Fleming]

Interesting. And it's because he's trying to combine that with a, with a kinder politics, isn't he?

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, and he will because that's the type of person that he is. So he's not trying to pretend to be somebody else. He's a really poor mimic of a phony politician. So I just said to him, don't ever do that. Be yourself. And I think that's why people have taken to him. You know, it'll probably get sneered at by some people, but his orderliness shines through.

[Adam Fleming]

Okay, well, let's talk a bit more about his, his career then. So labor win the election big time in 1997. They then win again in 2000. That's when Andy Burnham becomes the MP for Lee quite quickly. He becomes a Home office minister in 2005. He's then a health minister in 2006. And he makes it into the cabinet in 2007 when Gordon Brown takes over as Prime Minister and he becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Steve, do we think at that point Andy Burnham is a Blairite or a Brown eye or a bit of both?

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, I think he was influenced by the politicians of the day. And I think, as we all are, everybody is, but I do think that he wanted to clearly associate himself with the party and the direction the party was going. And, you know, he is a loyalist to all of those leaders. But I think he's developed more of a personality and a policy direction since those days. I think he's much more clear in his own mind of what he wants to do. But how you can achieve that. What's the delivery plan? Not just what the strategy is.

[Chris Mason]

I suppose. Steve, the counter, if you like, argument that some would make to the idea of his loyalty to leaders, which is arguably a sort of admirable thing, is a sense that he sort of blew with the wind a bit. And perhaps particularly then, is there any fairness in. In that critique? I hear what you're saying about how he's perhaps developed a greater sense of his kind of political creed in his years away from Westminster since.

[Steve Rotheram]

Look, it's a real difficult one for all politicians because sometimes you have to go with the flow. I. I've been in Westminster and on one occasion, just one occasion, and because I thought the party was about to implode, I voted against.

[Chris Mason]

Oh, the welfare.

[Steve Rotheram]

Something that's. Yeah, it's. It was inherently the wrong thing. Thing principally to do, but we were trying to do something that would stabilize the party during this really difficult process that we're going through, which is the new leader at the time. So, yeah, we've all had to shape ourselves with all of those considerations being weighed against each other. You know, you've got your constituency, you've got your party, you've got your local clp, you know, all of those things. A major factors when you're trying to come up with a decision in the. The Chamber.

[Adam Fleming]

And then if we. We just focus on that period when he was Chief Secretary to the treasury, because I think that's a period in his life that maybe gets a bit underestimated. But Chris, he write. He writes in the book Head north that he did with Steve that. That was his introduction to the. The Green book. Yeah, the sort of. The textbook that. How civil servants make decisions about where to spend money, which inevitably means that the south get lots of money because it's the richest part. So therefore the return on investment is the greatest.

[Chris Mason]

This is the key. So it's sort of Westminster nerdery, if you like, but it's absolutely fundamental, I think, to understanding kind of Andy Burnham's outlook on politics and his time there, as you say, as Chief Secretary of the treasury, coinciding with the whole business of putting together funding for London's Crossrail project, the Elizabeth Line, as it's now known and is up and running and is sort of hugely well used. But the argument grounded in the sort of formulas of the treasury in the Green Book is, yeah, how do you get the maximum bang for your taxpayer book when you're investing in public infrastructure? And of course, the danger, if you see it as that, from the perspective of someone arguing for the north of England, for instance, is that all loads of the money goes to London because the return on the investment is better, but is that the best way to measure what might be a return on an investment? And that was a big moment, I think, for Andy Burnham, in seeing how the models, if you like, were configured. So, in other words, and I think he says this in the book, it wasn't just a sense that there might be a, if you like, a cultural bias towards the southeast of England and London. He concluded in that job that there was a. That there was one that was. That was written down, it was in the formulas, it was baked into the very models of how governments looked at this stuff.

[Adam Fleming]

And then he becomes Culture Secretary. And that's my first memory of being in a room with him in that. I was on some kind of training scheme which meant I was doing a few days a week at our office of Westminster because I'd been on Newsround, the Kids show at that point.

[Chris Mason]

Training, you've got a lot to answer for.

[Adam Fleming]

Yes. And so I was sent to the Old Vic Theater in London because the Culture Secretary was unveiling this thing about how the Government was going to give five hours of access to culture to every school kid. And I remember being in a briefing with Andy Burnham where he was briefing political and arts journalists on this policy. And it became very clear within about two minutes that he had a big idea, but there was no detail about how it was going to be funded, delivered, implemented, whether it would work, what the trade offs were. And I just remember all these journalists lining up to basically hammer him on the details of this policy. And I remember feeling quite conflicted as a very, very young journalist, very new to politics, going, well, it was very clear in the first couple of minutes that he had an idea but didn't have it all worked out. But all these journalists were like, well, no, our job is to scrutinize him and maybe reveal the fact that it's just a big idea rather than lots of plans and implementation attached to it. So that was a formative moment, probably for both, both he and me. Judith. The other huge formative moment for him as Culture Secretary, and we've nodded to it a few times already, is the anniversary, the 20th anniversary of the. The Hillsborough disaster. So the loss of 97 football fans being. It's being commemorated at Anfield in Liverpool on 15th April 2009 Just conjure the scene for us of what's actually happening there.

[Judith Moritz]

The first thing to say is that those memorial services in Stevall speak to this as well. They were happening every year, but not. They wouldn't always draw the size of crowd that turned up that day for the 20th anniversary. I remember going to the ground and thinking. I was standing outside thinking, gosh, you know, I know it's a big number anniversary. There was a sense, though, I think, that because of where the campaign for justice was or wasn't, if you like, at the time around Hillsborough, that that just people in the city needed, and from further afield who were following that needed to be there that day. And it started off with being, you know, a few hundred people and it started to fill. I was outside, I went and I thought, crikey, the ground is really filling up here. I think they got to about 30,000, 35,000 people that day. And the service ran as the service always did, with a range of different readings and prayers. But Andy Byrne had been invited to go. Now, you need to understand here that he, as a. Well, I'm going to say as a Scouser, you know, others locally might call him a woollyback. Steve again, can speak to this, that he spent most of his time living outside of Liverpool along the M62 corridor. But as an evidence, we've got to

[Chris Mason]

explain this woolly back thing. Go on, Steve. Or Judith, explain Steve, go on.

[Judith Moritz]

What's a woolly back?

[Steve Rotheram]

So I'll. The actual story of where it comes from is historic and it's to do with sheep. And they used to put the. The skin of the sheep over them, so to keep them warm. And that was the wally back. But in the Scouse colloquialism, it's more about that if you're not from Liverpool, then you're a wolf, you're a woolly back. And it's. It used to be used as a really derogative or derogatory term. It's less so now. It's just like, you shut up. You will.

[Adam Fleming]

Yes. So let's go back into Anfield in this really powerful moment and actually we can hear a little bit of it now about how it unfolded when. When Andy Burnham was there as the representative of the government at the time.

[Andy Burnham]

Hillsborough left deep wounds that will never heal. Its horror is not diminished by the passage of time. The TV images still harrowing to watch. But today, as the Prime Minister has asked me to convey, we can at least pledge that 96 fellow football supporters who died will never be forgotten. And he asked us to think at this time.

[Adam Fleming]

And that chant of justice for the 96. Because at that point, the number of victims from Hillsborough was 96. It was later 97. Steve, just. Just reflecting on that moment. I mean, I'm guessing you were there. What did that moment mean?

[Steve Rotheram]

So I was, in my capacity as the Lord Mayor there, so. And I. I was. After Andy had spoken, I was the next person to. To. To be speaking and it was just raw. The whole atmosphere changed with that singular shout of justice. And then everybody exploded. Myself and Andy have subsequently met the person who shouted out justice. And what a turning point that was for everybody. But there was a sense on that day that this was the last opportunity to do something about this great injustice that for two decades, successive governments hadn't taken seriously and hadn't done anything really, to alleviate the fact that fans were still being blamed for something that they knew wasn't their fault. And that we believe that people could have been saved if the authorities had done their jobs, which the. The. The inquest, the second inquests found out to be the case, and, and they exonerated Liverpool fans completely and said they played no part. It was catastrophic policing, but also that many, many fans could have been saved if the authorities had. Have acted in the manner that they should have done. In other words, if they ever let the ambulances, for instance, onto the pitch, if first hate had been given when people were brought out still in a. Obviously some sort of state of trauma. But all of those things were weighing heavily on people. And this was the opportunity to send a message to government via Andy Burnham that enough was enough and that justice needed something to be seen to be done.

[Chris Mason]

And, Steve, you were pretty central, weren't you, in ensuring that Andy Burnham was there on that day?

[Steve Rotheram]

Just one of those weird moments that you have in life where we were actually at a funeral service, both of us in our official capacities, for a young lad, a Nevertonian, who'd been stabbed abroad and killed, and the authorities in Spain wouldn't release his body for like, like years. And so we'd both campaigned to get his body repatriated, which he'd done at this funeral. I turned around to him and said, listen, because I started to know him really well by then, we were friends and I said, I'm gonna get you an invite to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough service at anfield and he said what? He just sort of what for? And I said, because we need somebody in government who will fight this case. Because all of the avenues at that stage were basically closed to us and we needed a new angle for this. And then I thought with Andy, we had the perfect person to take that fight into the heart of government. And then in 2010, a year later, I actually get elected to the House of Commons myself for Liverpool Walton. And then we started to work, you know, behind the scenes, incessantly on this.

[Adam Fleming]

So just to be clear, you invited Andy Burnham to that now infamous event. And at first he wasn't sure about going.

[Steve Rotheram]

No, he wasn't. No, he wasn't. So, I mean, Andy's another one who has got a very close family. I've got a very close family. And Andy's got a close family as well. And so he sought advice off his brother and his brother said, well, look, if there's something that you can do, go, but if you can't, don't, because you're just a hindrance. So he had made his mind up by going that he was going to do something. And then the way it played out with that, that siren voice of justice, what happened then was that he went back to Liverpool Town hall with me, where the families were receiving scrolls, which is the Freedom of the City of Liverpool. And he spoke to individual mothers and fathers of those who'd been lost. And you could just tell that he was absolutely determined that he wanted to do everything that he could, which the government had failed to do, but he wanted to do that and he would see it through.

[Judith Moritz]

I remember speaking to Andy Burnham moments after that, because he did a round of. Before he left for the Freedom of the City event at the Town hall, he did a round of interviews at Anfield and I turned up for the BBC. And I remember in the moment looking at him after that extraordinary point, you know, and I was saying before that, the ground was full. You can hear it on the tape, 35,000 people. And he looked kind of shell shocked. And I remember saying to him, I was a junior journalist, he was a cabinet minister. So it was perhaps a bit odd. Are you okay? And I looked at him and I was like. Cause he looked really. But actually. And he said, yeah, no, I am absolutely. It was an important moment. Something along those lines, what I now know subsequently from both speaking to him and also this is set out in the book that he's written with Steve. Is that what happened? He was looking. Not shell shocked necessarily, but there was a Sort of also, I think, a sense of steely resolution. It was not an unexpected moment, perhaps the way it unfolded, that was unexpected. But I think that he knew something that day significant could happen. He gave it time for the heckle. What started as a heckle and became that big CR to reverberate around the ground. I don't think that he went there naively and I think straight after that moment, pretty much straight after we know that he picked up the phone and spoke to Gordon Brown and it was agreed that he could bring the matter of Hillsborough up at Cabinet. The next time there was a Cabinet meeting, I think, was the following day. And you can draw a line now from that moment for historians of Hillsborough to look back through the labyrinth that that disaster has been and its aftermath, its legal aftermath, and everything that's spun is still spinning out. I mean, gosh, you know, this week we're still talking about Hillsborough because of the Hillsborough law, that legacy of the Hillsborough Law. You can draw a line back to that moment in 2009, because what happened was, after he spoke to Gordon Brown and raised it at Cabinet, was it paved the way for the 30 year rule to be waived, for the disclosure of documentation to be allowed early, 10 years ahead of schedule around Hillsborough. And when that began, and then there was an independent panel and that flowed from that flowed the new inquests, the findings of unlawful killing, the quashing of previous inquest verdicts before those inquests, criminal cases, all of the different things that have happened since, and now the Hillsborough law. I think you can take the line back to that point that day at Anfield, and it's sort of where that history, if you like, began, because things had been floundering before that. There'd been other inquiries, as we know, but it was the disclosure of all that material and the opening of the files that started all of this.

[Adam Fleming]

Judith, I'm just thinking about that point you made about when you asked him if he was okay. And I'm just thinking, I don't think any of us would have asked Margaret Thatcher or John Major or Tony Blair or David Cameron whether they were okay. And I wonder, is there something about Andy Burnham, Steve, that makes people sort of, I don't know, what's the right word? It kind of gets back to the eyelashes thing, isn't it, that he's a bit. He's a bit boyish?

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. I always say that he's got a haircut looking for a decade, because it's never changed, you know what I mean? And he's just that same person that I've known for all these years now that he was back then. And he's very approachable and he was devastated. He was literally cut to the quick about what had happened whilst we had quite rightly spoken about what the likely reaction would be. Until you go through that, you don't realize the enormity of how that affects you. And the one thing that he did, which I don't think any other politician at the time would have done, was not to try to talk over when the. The cries of justice for the 96 were ringing out, but to stand back and for wait till the whole thing. It waited for the whole thing to subside and then he continued, but only after he had allowed that outpouring of frustration, anger, determination from the fans who were there and all four sides of the ground were full. I'd been to every Hillsborough service other than the first one in the Cathedral, and there'd never been that number of people there. And that's why I think it really struck home that this city wasn't given up. A whole city had cried injustice for 20 years. And yeah, as Andy said, the people in Westminster had cocked a deaf ear to what was happening. And he then went, and on behalf of all of those people that he promised, he went and used the system, the machine in government to try to change things.

[Adam Fleming]

Now, Chris, let's do a bit of a high speed fast forward through his two attempts to become Labour leader. Short version, he failed spectacularly in both

[Chris Mason]

he did, and occasionally people jibe that he then also lost to leaders who went on to lose general elections. So, yeah, his run of. Of attempts at the leadership were failures in the first two instances. But I think what was telling, just to state the obvious really, was the underlying ambition. You know, to come around a second time shows a certain ambition when you've already had a tilt at it five years previously and failed. And here he is, as he was joking in a social media video the other day, hoping as it will be for him this time, that it's that it's third time lucky. But he was beginning. There was an embryonic argument in both of those leadership races. I was journalistically more involved in the second one in 2015 than I was in the first. But there was an embryonic argument in both of them about, as he saw it, the London centricity of politics. The London centricity in particular of the Labour Party was part of the critique then. And sometimes the Inability of Westminster to get things done. Which is an argument he. He has clearly built up and developed on both in his time as Mayor of Greater Manchester and then indeed, as is pitched to be Prime Minister.

[Adam Fleming]

And Chris, you famously did a carpool karaoke style interview with all the candidates in that leadership election, didn't you?

[Chris Mason]

I did.

[Adam Fleming]

Do you remember your ride with Andy Barnum?

[Chris Mason]

I do. So this was. We'd never get this past Health and Safety these days, but this is involved.

[Adam Fleming]

You have to sit in a car park.

[Chris Mason]

Yeah, no, exactly. Or even a studio. I'd be in the newscast studio these days. That's where I'd be. Yeah. So we wired up a higher car with all these kind of GoPro cameras. They weren't quite as sophisticated, these cameras, 10 years ago, as they are now. Because not least because I remember, never mind the camera technology, just like, you know, the sucker thing, like the thing that you lick on your sat nav to stick it to the window, those things weren't any good. So I've been doing these interviews with these kind of senior politicians who were aspiring to lead their party and one day wanted to be Prime Minister. And I'm trying to ask them sort of vaguely kind of intelligible questions whilst going round a roundabout and whilst the suckers on some of these cameras are falling off and they're sort of falling into the footwell or whatever. Anyway, we did this little lap round the block and we ended up at Westminster. You know, he was. I remember. Cause this clip occasionally does the rounds in the years since. I remember being stuck at the traffic lights in Parliament Square where, you know, you turn left and you head down past Parliament and you turn right and you go up Whitehall towards Downing Street. And I remember saying to him, it's all about getting it, it's all about in the end moving it into the House, up the road, isn't it? In other words, being Prime Minister, you know, and. And his Prime Ministerial ambition, which some people can be quite shy about articulating, was absolutely there. And I guess, well, all of this boils down to, as we get back to Westminster, potentially being Prime Minister.

[Andy Burnham]

Yep.

[Chris Mason]

I guess you're up for that. I guess that's what it has to boil down to.

[Andy Burnham]

Yes, I am. Why am I up for it? Because here we are in 2015 and for all the social progress we've made in those 70 years since the post war Labour government, we still live in a country where the postcode of the bed you're born in pretty much determines where you end up. In life. Things I believe in, I believe in very deeply and passionately. And I'm doing this to try and change the country. Did you pass your test first time?

[Chris Mason]

I did. And if you like, the wheels were turning, pardon the pun, in the context of car share, around how he might approach doing that job were he to one day get it.

[Adam Fleming]

And then in 2015, Jeremy Corbyn famously won the Labour leadership and Andy Burnham served under him in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Home Secretary, at a time when lots of his parliamentary colleagues were saying, well, we're not gonna have anything to do with Jeremy Corbyn's shadow Cabinet. Everyone was presented with a choice at that point. And Steve, that's these new Metro mayor jobs are being created and you're having conversations with your very good friend about who should go for what and why.

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah. By then, seven and a bit years, I'd become really frustrated with the whole machinery of national government and the glacial pace in which you tried to get change. That's where I said to him, look, there's going to be these new opportunities. The cold Metro mayors. Just imagine if you. We both did it. You could do great in Manchester. I could do La Pilsisi region, you know, Talking about nearly 5 million people and certainly more in the functional economic geography of those areas. We could bring them closer together because we wanted to get beyond the tribalism.

[Adam Fleming]

And did he need much convincing?

[Judith Moritz]

A bit, yeah.

[Steve Rotheram]

Because obviously he set his sights very much on a parliamentary career. And as you say, I mean, I was running most of the day to day stuff on the second attempt to become labor leader, and I had a big whiteboard in the office, in my office with all the names of people who'd promised support. And then when Jeremy, if you remember, at a sort of later stage, was the choice of the left, then I was just going. And there was gaps in between where all these names were, where people had just withdrawn and said they were going to vote. Jeremy. And then we just knew it was going to be really, really difficult. And that turned out obviously to be so.

[Chris Mason]

And Steve, fast forward a little bit to the point where you've both decided that you're gonna go for these new mayoral positions. And there's a story involving a chocolate fountain and some champagne flutes.

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there was a. Every year at the sort of Christmas period, the party would do something to try and foster a bit of camaraderie. And so they decided to have some drinks. And I do remember we had Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, who were doing Sonny and cheer. I got you, babe. And all that sort of stuff that sticks in my mind. And so it was a bit of fun. And then afterwards, Tom Watson said, listen, we're going for another drink. Do you fancy it? And myself and Andy never drank with all of those people. We went somewhere else and just had a sort of a chat that. And we said, yeah, go on, we'll, we'll, we'll come for one more. And he went to this place called Little Italy and he took us in this bar upstairs and they sat us down and it was table service and I just said, a couple of lagers. Anyway, they come up with a bucket of champagne in ice, a chocolate fountain, two flutes and some other stuff. And we said, oh, sorry, like, like, wrong table, we haven't ordered this. And he said, oh, no, this is, this is for you. I've never drank champagne in my life, so I wasn't going to partake anyway, but was one. I just said, can I just have a beer? And then as we were talking to each other, a rather good looking young lady came over and.

[Chris Mason]

So you're beginning to think this is all a bit too good to be true about you?

[Steve Rotheram]

Well, well, yeah. Have you seen us? So, but then sat in the middle of us and she's going, oh, what's your name? And what's your name? And then I just looked to sort of past here to the right and I could see that there was a camera being set up. I just thought, oh, no. So I literally just grabbed him or kicked him first and said, we're going. He said, oh, no, let's just. I said, no, we're going, and dragged them out. Otherwise. Yeah, I think there was a.

[Chris Mason]

So do you ever get to the bottom of who. Who was trying to. Who was trying to entrap you?

[Steve Rotheram]

I think it was Chris Mason.

[Chris Mason]

Not guilty. I plead to that.

[Steve Rotheram]

Anyway, listen, there's no way that Chris Mason would have paid for a bottle of champagne.

[Adam Fleming]

Prosecco at best.

[Chris Mason]

Exactly right.

[Andy Burnham]

Right.

[Adam Fleming]

So, Steve, you're conjuring up the environment at Westminster that made both you and Andy Burnham want to leave and, and fight for these mayoral jobs in the Northwest, which Andy Burnham does very successfully, becoming the Mayor of Greater Manchester on 5 May 2017, having won Shed loads and shed loads of votes in that region. Then, Jud, there's a real tragedy and it's the bombing at Manchester arena at the Ariana Grande concert. And Andy Burnham very quickly has to grow into the role of kind of statesman for Manchester.

[Judith Moritz]

Yeah, I think it was two weeks to the day after he was elected. He barely had his feet under the desk in the mayoral office. And, you know, I was thinking about that 2015 leadership as a bit of a sliding doors moment, what it then led to for him, because, yeah, as you say, he became the May there in 2017 and was immediately, within that first two weeks, dealing with a tragedy which. Well, you know, I don't need to go through it all again, you know, about the Manchester arena bombing, what it meant for those who were involved and for the city, for Manchester, but also even further afield, for the whole country. The glare of publicity, the focus that was on the city that. That time in the days and weeks and months afterwards, but also pulling. It's leading the city through that, beginning the recovery, helping people to heal, to feel a sense of place. And actually a sense of place, I think, is really key to Andy Burnham's politics. Politics of place is a big. Is a big thing. And nowhere more have we seen that than that moment in Manchester. And, you know, I said earlier, you know, he's thought of as jokingly as a woolly somebody, a woolly back, who is sort of part way between the two cities. But I can't think of anyone else who has so successfully managed to plant a foot so firmly in both Liverpool and Manchester and be respected in both cities, to be seen as a son of both cities for different reasons. Obviously, with Hillsborough and Liverpool and. And with what happened in Manchester, the mayoralty and everything that followed is part of that. But that moment at Manchester arena was the first test of his leadership. And I know, having watched the way he managed that, that he brought a lot of what he'd learned through Hillsborough into his dealings with the Manchester arena victims and survivors, the bereaved, the families, the way the system was gearing up to look into what happened. He knew that they'd want answers really quickly. He commissioned a report himself as mayor, very quickly, the Kerslake Report. And then subsequently after that, there was a public inquiry. And as we went through all of that as well, there was moments of him, I think, offering handholding to an extent to people who were close to it. I remember talking to him and seeing that he. I know he'd given his phone number to families, that he was making himself available to talk to them quietly, behind the scenes and to make sure that they felt they were being heard. And that, I think, is because of the experience he'd had in all of the preceding years with Hillsborough. So there's definitely a relationship between those two Points those two experiences for him.

[Adam Fleming]

Steve, thinking back on that horrible day in May 2017, in the aftermath, was there a particular Andy Burnham, some thing on display there for how he brought the city and the region together around that horrible moment?

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah. If you'd seen the way heads of state had acted previously when there was a catastrophic event, I think he had a more human touch there, I say it, and probably defined the role of a metro mayor in that moment. And obviously I. I was very closely associated with what happened in Greater Manchester at a personal level as well, with my kids and.

[Adam Fleming]

Because they were there at the concert.

[Steve Rotheram]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my. My two girls had gone and they'd. So I'll. I'll just rewind on that one if I can. So I. I'm in a. A meeting with the American ambassador two weeks into this new job, listening intently to how we could potentially forge stronger links between Liverpool and the States. And. And my phone is literally ringing in my pocket off its. You know, off the. The wall. And I said to the American ambassador, listen, can I just take this call? Because people know not to. To phone me. I was on silence and I looked and it was about four missed calls from my wife. So I said, can I take the call? He said, yeah. So I took the call and Sander said to me, the girls have phoned in a panic because they said that they think a bomb has gone off in the arena when they've gone to a concert in Manchester. So I said, look, leave her with me and I'll phone Andy and I'll come back to you. So I phoned Andy and I said, listen, this is what's happened. The girls are saying that there could have been something happening in the arena in Manchester. And he said, no. He said, I've been looking at reports coming in and all that sort of stuff. I don't think so, lad. And at that moment, his phone then rings and it's the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester. And he said, listen, mate, I'll phone you back in a minute. So about three or four minutes later, he phones me back and he just said, listen, there might be something in there. I can't provide any details, but can you get the girls out of Manchester? And that was when your blood literally runs cold. And I said, yeah, we'll. We'll sort that out. And, you know, thankfully, thankfully, they were safe, but not so for some of the families, obviously, who lost loved ones on that tragic occasion.

[Adam Fleming]

And also we should say, Steve, you're now a granddad because your. Your daughters who are Ariana Grande concert going age then, are older now, getting their own kids.

[Steve Rotheram]

It's the, it's genuinely the best feeling in the world.

[Adam Fleming]

Judith. Right, let's get back to the timeline then. And the next moment where Andy Burnham as, as mayor becomes a really national figure is during the coronavirus pandemic. Just explain the context of, of why his, his sort of star was rising at that point.

[Judith Moritz]

Well, because, and this is where I think that the, the phrase king of the north got coined by some of the papers. He, he, he was seen to be standing up, I think, in Manchester for, for the welfare of, of the, the north. It was a sort of north, south, Manchester, London sort of, you know, sense that there was an imbalance of support. There was a, you remember all the different tiers going back now six years to the, the world of COVID which feels like a different lifetime, but when there were different tiers in different places. And what had happened was there was a particular moment here, I think that you can pin it down to where he was standing giving a press conference. He was outside the Bridgewater hall in Manchester and he'd been arguing for better financial support for the folk up here in Manchester. And he was passed a mobile phone during the course of the press conference and was shown that the amount of money that the government was prepared to pay to support folk in Manchester, I think it was £22 million. I don't want to quote this incorrectly, but it wasn't the right amount. It was far in Andy Burnham's eyes, far sufficient for what it should be. And he railed against it.

[Andy Burnham]

I mean, it's brutal, to be honest, isn't it? This isn't a way, this is no way to run the country in a national crisis. It isn't. This is not right. They should not be doing this, grinding people down, trying to accept the least that they can get away with 22 million pounds to fight the situation that we are in is frankly disgraceful.

[Judith Moritz]

It was a kind of David versus Goliath moment, I think. But it's also where he was cemented in the national mind as a figure because, you know, years have passed now from when Burnham was in the Cabinet and had national profile. We have Manchester Arena. But if you were, I suppose, sitting in Watford on an Eaton and you were asked about Andy Burnham in perhaps 2018, 2019, I'm not sure how much you'd have known. It was watching him again on those news bulletins around the time of COVID when he was shouting for better parity for Parity for financial support that I think brought him back into the national mind probably.

[Adam Fleming]

And Chris, that big moment of kind of box office television was happening just before one of the daily Covid news conferences on BBC1 at 5pm which had millions of viewers.

[Chris Mason]

Exactly that. And I think, Adam, it emphasizes something that the pandemic more broadly emphasized, which is it made obvious to a somebody paying a passing interest in how we are governed. Exactly that how we are governed. And at a time of a national crisis, if you like a pandemic, those structures of government became much, much clearer to anyone paying attention than they had done previously because of the gravity of the news. We saw that with the, the first ministers beyond England and in that clip we absolutely saw it in terms of the platform that directly elected metro mayors in England can and do have. And I think we can, if you like, extrapolate from that, that what we are now getting is the second Prime Minister whose previous political springboard having been in Parliament earlier than that, was becoming the mayor of a big English city. We saw it with Boris Johnson in London, we're now seeing it with Andy Burnham in Manchester. And you know, the very nature and idea of the mayoral model is that you put a politician on something of a pedestal, they become a first name terms politician and you know, there's arguments as to whether that governance model is better than a different one, et cetera, et cetera. One of the clear realities of that governance model is as I say, the extent to which that individual stands above other politicians in their region and therefore the capacity that they have to get notice, they would argue, to get stuff done. But then it can clearly be, as we've seen twice now, a springboard to the, to the highest office.

[Adam Fleming]

Although I'm just thinking officials in Whitehall on that day will not have said Prime Minister, let's stuff Manchester and Liverpool. Ha ha ha ha ha. It would have been logical consequences of the policy that we're working on. So I just think Andy Burnham will be in meetings with the same sort of logic applied in different situations and it'll be so interesting to see which wins the, the Whitehall based logic where it seems to make sense or the actual end product feeling in a further away place completely.

[Chris Mason]

Not least because he could find himself, depending on how long he's in office, he could find himself in a, in a similar position to Conservatives did at that point, which is where you see the political consequences of the political structures that you yourself have created. So those, as we were, as we were hearing from Steve, those mayoral positions just Take those two that we've been talking about. Liverpool City region and Greater Manchester were constructs of the Conservative period of national government. And then in the context of a pandemic, they are then seeing that devolution playing back in opposition voices from the likes of Mr. Burnham. And if we head down the track that Andy Burnham has set out in that speech he gave in Manchester a few weeks back about really turbocharging Devolution. Yeah. Where do we get to down the track in terms of those tensions between, between the national and the regional?

[Adam Fleming]

I mean we're running out of time now. We could do a whole other episode about, about the years that followed and culminating in the Makerfield by election. But Steve, I just wanted to ask you, you two things. First of all, when did he realize that potentially he was gonna have to move against Starmer?

[Steve Rotheram]

I think what had happened was after the general election and the results, which were more much better than I think anybody expected. We knew there was going to be a bit of a honeymoon period. Let's get some of the great stuff that we've got as ideas, let's get it out there, let's use devolution to try and get more acceleration in delivery and all that. And it just didn't happen as we expected it to happen. And then we had the local elections, the first ones and the second ones, which really were painting a very, very different picture of how the country was seeing the labor government. And that's when we knew that either labor had to change direction and it appeared that Kia wasn't prepared to do that or that somebody else would have to do the rebuilding of the party because we'd started to fragment again and get behind some radical but fairly normalized in, in our world as Metro mayors policies. You know, the fact that devolution can get you at a bigger bang for your book. So it's not always about the quantum of funding, it's about the methodology of delivering whatever it is that you're doing. And we wanted that to happen for everybody in every part of the uk.

[Adam Fleming]

And Steve, last question to you. Has he talked to you candidly about how different Prime Minister is going to be from being mayor of a big region?

[Steve Rotheram]

Kitchen. We've sort of seen her already because I'm going down there on Sunday and we'd just meet up in a pub and with our wives and, and have a few drinks and something to eat that's not going to be available anymore. So his life has already changed. You know, the kids all have to do things differently which is really unfortunate because it shouldn't affect your whole family. But of course it does. And we've seen, haven't we, with Anne with a curse that there are still dangers after David Amos and Jo Cox, we've seen that politics can be a scary place. So there's all of those considerations now which were not same or to the same degree as they were in the. The previous role Nahi had. But look, he knows exactly what he wants to do. You know, I know some of the things that he's going to do and it genuinely excites me. And I think there's a lot of change that will come to the country and there will be things that happen locally that people would have been saying, well, we've been waiting an awful long time for that eventuality. I just think we can speed things up. We can get delivery, we can get growth, we can give people hope for the future. And that's because we'll have of Andy Burnham as our Prime Minister.

[Adam Fleming]

And Chris, what's the last thought you want to leave us with? As Andrew Murray Burnham, date of birth, 7th of January, 1970, Aintree, Liverpool, is about to partially relocate to number 10 Downing Street, SW1.

[Chris Mason]

So the key thought that I have in my mind is to what extent, if you like, does Brand Burnham the guy, the politician, the leader that we've been poring over, if you like, the biography of on this episode of Newscast, to what extent does that survive contact with taking on the job of Prime Minister at this time, where clearly being Prime Minister is not remotely straightforward? It's never been straightforward, but the clear evidence of the last few years points in the direction of it being particularly challenging now, for all the reasons that we unpack on Newscast pretty much every day. That, for me is the kind of central question that will sit in my mind at least between Monday and Christmas

[Adam Fleming]

or the next election, whenever that will be, which may be before Christmas?

[Chris Mason]

Well, probably unlikely, but you never know.

[Adam Fleming]

And Judith, I'll let you have the last word. And maybe it's another moment from his time as mayor of Greater Manchester or something that's happened in Manchester that you would like to just tell the rest of the country about. As Andy Burnham is on the Precipice of number 10, there's probably quite a

[Judith Moritz]

lot of things he'd like me to tell the country about that maybe get missed. Yeah, exactly. The yellow buses. Look, that's the point, isn't it? You know, what Steve just said or the question you've just posed, Is it going to be the Same running the country than running a city region like this. Well, you know, till now he's been doing things like the phone in on Radio Manchester, taking calls from punters here, that is now, you know, what's that got to do with Prime Minister's questions? What's running the buses? Technical education in Manchester, which has been something he's been really a strong advocate for. Is he going to extrapolate all of those interests, those values, those priorities that he's shown in Manchester to the national stage? How does that mix in with running the country on the global stage? It's gonna be fascinating to watch. Really interesting. I'm just going to be interested to see how much of the Burnham that we know up in the north becomes the same Burnham that we see nationally and globally. Because I think we will see flashes of all of that. I think we'll see those moments that he has lived through with Hillsborough, Manchester arena and Covid here in Manchester. That sort of firebrand David versus Goliath outsider sensibility that he has. I think we'll see that. But of course, now he's absolutely the pinnacle of the inside. So it's going to be so interesting to see how somebody whose brand has been built on being David becomes Goliath, if you like. That's gonna be really interesting to watch.

[Adam Fleming]

We shall see. Steve, thank you very much, lot. And Judith, thanks to you too.

[Judith Moritz]

Thanks, Adam.

[Adam Fleming]

Chris, thank you very much.

[Judith Moritz]

The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary.

[Global Story Podcast Host]

And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe.

[Adam Fleming]

We have this ability to export our story and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well.

[Judith Moritz]

From the BBC, it's the United States

[Global Story Podcast Host]

at 250 listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Adam Fleming]

So that was our little profile of the man who's about to become our Prime Minister. One of the first big jobs he'll have to do, though, is fill out his cabinet. And that's where our new newscast gimmick comes in and you can participate. It's called the Great Office Sweepstake.

[Andy Burnham]

Get it?

[Adam Fleming]

We're still trying to recapture the World cup vibe there with the sweepstake thing. We want you to give us your predictions for who will get the great offices of State Chancellor, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary in an Andy Burnham government email. Your best guesses to newscastbc.co.uk or you can WhatsApp us on 033-01-239480 and I'm posting a little graphic on social media that's got a sort of wall chart feel if you wanted to do your entry as a drawing or a scribble or a cartoon. Right, that's all for this episode of Newscast. Laura and Paddy will be with you over the weekend, probably doing a bit more previewing about what the Andy Burnham Premiership is going to look like. But for me it's bye bye.

[Judith Moritz]

Newscast, Newscast from the BB BBC.

[Newscast Outro Host]

From one newscaster to another, thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode. You clearly do, in the words of Chris Mason, ooze stamina. Can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Tell everyone you know and don't forget, you can email us [e-mail] or if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp or plus 440-330-1239480 be assured, I promise, we listen to everyone.

[Judith Moritz]

The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary.

[Global Story Podcast Host]

And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe.

[Adam Fleming]

We have this ability to export our story and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well.

[Judith Moritz]

From the BBC, it's the United States

[Global Story Podcast Host]

at 250 listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.