The Andy Burnham I know

Summary

Today in Focus – “The Andy Burnham I Know”

Date: July 16, 2026
Host: Helen Pidd
Podcast: The Guardian’s Today in Focus

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Episode Overview

This episode of "Today in Focus," hosted by Helen Pidd, profiles Andy Burnham as he prepares to enter Downing Street as Britain’s next Prime Minister. Through conversations with those who know Burnham best—from his university professor to political colleagues and close collaborators—the episode seeks to answer what kind of leader Burnham will be. The program traces his journey from Merseyside schoolboy to King of the North, highlighting moments of ambition, adversity, and transformation that define his political and personal character.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life and Academic Ambitions (03:49–08:00)

• Background: Born in Liverpool in 1970, Burnham grew up in a sports-mad, working-class family, with early academic promise.
• School & Politics: Joined Labour at 15; encouraged to apply to Cambridge, although he didn’t think it “was for people like him.”
• University Experience: At Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, Burnham studied English Literature.
  • John Mullen, Professor: “[Burnham] was rather a cheeky chappie, very quick, very, very keen on football… took his academic studies seriously…” (06:16)

2. Early Career and Move into Politics (09:00–12:30)

• Journalism Detour: Attempted journalism, including at the Middleton Guardian and as editor of the niche Tank World magazine.
• Political Break: Secured a role as parliamentary researcher for Tessa Jowell, facilitated by journalist Eleanor Mills.
  • Eleanor Mills: “He was very passionate about social mobility … talked a lot about, you know, bright kids in his class for whom there was no route out.” (11:13)
• Entry to Westminster: Mills’ family connections help Burnham breach the Westminster “penguin huddle.”

3. Legacy under New Labour and Labour Leadership Bids (12:30–18:53)

• Mentorship: Sir David Blunkett recalls Burnham’s effectiveness and humour as a ministerial aide and later as Secretary of State.
  • “He’s very comfortable, as they say, in his own skin … used to come to our team meetings and we were dealing with some of the really big issues at the time.” – Blunkett (13:34)
• Leadership Runs: Ran for Labour leadership post-Brown (2010) and after Miliband (2015), often seen as a centrist who shifted with the party’s centre of gravity.
• “Shape-shifter” Reputation:
  • “A Blairite, a Brownite, and a Corbynite walk into a bar and the barman says, hello, Andy…” (16:08)
• Rebecca Long Bailey on Burnham and Labour’s left: “I think Andy Burnham was always, and still is, Labour… he’s always swung behind the leader of the time … but it comes at a great cost sometimes to be that collaborative.” (18:01)

4. Greater Manchester Mayoralty – Identity and Defining Moments (19:18–26:25)

• Mayoral Move: Burnham’s switch from Westminster to Greater Manchester was originally met with local skepticism (not least from local leader Richard Lees).
• Leadership Style: Demonstrated a “consensual” approach, respecting the collective structure of Greater Manchester’s devolved authority.
• Policy Legacy:
  • Ending Rough Sleeping: Ambitious but ultimately reframed; creation of “Bed Every Night” initiative.
    • Lees: “He stuck really with the commitment … and delivered it to the extent it could be delivered.” (23:15)
  • Manchester Arena Bombing: Praised for empathy, restraint, and focus on victims during city’s crisis.
  • Bus Re-regulation: Created the “Bee Network,” reforming public transport despite significant opposition.

5. Standing Up to Central Government (COVID & “King of the North” Moment) (28:06–30:42)

• Pandemic Leadership:
  • Burnham coordinated local procurement and mutual aid in the face of government indifference.
  • Standoff with Boris Johnson’s government over COVID-19 measures—fought for fair financial support for Manchester during Tier 3 lockdown negotiations.
    • Burnham (on national government): “This is no way to run the country in a national crisis. It isn’t.” (30:30)
• Public Persona: Gained “King of the North” nickname; became a local celebrity and national political figure.

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Personal Traits, Strengths, and Criticisms

Strengths & Leadership Qualities (33:40–39:00)

• Empathy: Noted consistently by collaborators across his career.
• Resilience and Adaptability: Successfully moved from national to local to national stage, growing with each phase.
  • Blunkett: “The great strength of Andy Burnham, from my point of view, is just how much he’s matured, just how much he’s learned in the nine years…”
• Political Skill: Recognized as a consensus builder who knows the levers of government intimately.

Criticisms and Weaknesses (33:40–35:50)

• Tardiness: Multiple interviewees joke about Burnham’s habitual lateness.
• Need to Be Liked: Caution that this trait, while endearing, might hinder tough decision-making as PM.
  • Blunkett: “We do like to be liked. And I can’t always be liked and neither can he.” (34:11)
  • Rebecca Long Bailey: “He wants to help and he wants to be liked. And sometimes when you’re Prime Minister that’s not always possible.” (34:21)
• Clean Air Zone U-Turn: Backtracked on clean air plans after controversy, spotlighting a tendency to bend to public opinion.

Policy Preview as Prime Minister (36:26–39:59)

• Vision for Governance:
  • “Change will be driven… through an extended operation based here in Manchester.” (36:26)
  • Committed to devolving greater control over essential services—housing, energy, transport—to all UK regions.
  • Signals intent to bridge divisions within Labour, running a “broad church” and prioritizing unity.
• Political Contrast to Predecessors: Expected to govern with more ideological clarity and practical expertise.
  • “He knows where the levers are, unlike somebody like Sir Keir Starmer…” (38:25)
  • Dismisses trappings of the Westminster establishment.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Wealth and Power Structure:
  • “It doesn’t work. I mean, I think we’ve seen it again. The model of government doesn’t work. The kind of overall structure of a top-down… It doesn’t work. It never did and it definitely doesn’t work now.” – Andy Burnham (02:10)
• On Political Identity:
  • “A Blairite, a Brownite, and a Corbynite walk into a bar and the barman says, hello, Andy…” (16:08)
• On Mayoral Leadership:
  • “He was very sensitive that this was really about the victims, this wasn’t about politicians exploiting [the Arena bombing].” – Richard Lees (24:11)
• On National Crisis:
  • “This is no way to run the country in a national crisis. It isn’t.” – Andy Burnham (30:30)
• On Vision as PM:
  • “We will ensure all parts of the UK are able to take greater public control of essential services like war, housing, energy and transport.” – Andy Burnham (36:45)
• On Learning and Maturity:
  • “The great strength of Andy Burnham, from my point of view, is just how much he’s matured, just how much he’s learned in the nine years he’s been heading… Greater Manchester.” – David Blunkett (39:00)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Burnham’s Ambitions & Philosophy on Power: 01:53–02:37
• Academic Years and University Influences: 04:46–08:00
• Early Career and Move Into Parliament: 09:45–12:30
• Government Service and Labour Leadership Bids: 12:30–18:53
• Rebecca Long Bailey on Labour’s Factions: 17:01–18:53, 37:38–38:25
• Becoming Greater Manchester Mayor, Approach to Local Government: 19:18–22:35
• Manchester Arena Attack – Response and Identity: 23:35–25:41
• Standing up to Boris Johnson During Covid: 28:06–30:42
• Criticisms and Character Weaknesses: 33:40–35:50
• PM Policy Preview and Political Strengths: 36:26–39:59

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Episode Tone and Reflections

The episode blends wry humour with warm insight, capturing Burnham’s down-to-earth demeanour and deepened political conviction. Interviewees are candid, often affectionate, and sometimes teasing (“the late Andy Burnham”) but stress his evolution from eager outsider to a pragmatic movement-builder. Ultimately, Burnham emerges as a leader shaped as much by adversity, and a commitment to consent and unity, as by his political ambitions.

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Conclusion

Helen Pidd and her guests suggest Andy Burnham’s premiership will be one to watch: driven by his experience outside Westminster, his pursuit of devolved power, and a hard-won understanding of Britain’s regions. Whether his need to be liked will undermine his new authority remains to be seen, but his empathy, tenacity, and popular touch are already the stuff of legend—eyelashes and all.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Helen Peard]

This is the Guardian.

Today, the andy burnham I know.

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[Helen Peard]

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[Helen Peard]

It's August 2020 and Andy Burnham and I are sitting on a bench in a park near where he lives in Wigan, watching the ducks. We're deep in Covid, which is why we're meeting outside rather than in his office. It's sunny, he's wearing Birkenstocks, he's relaxed but frustrated. Would you swap places with Boris Johnson if somebody did say, there you go, wait for Budget one?

[Quo/Aura Advertisement Voice]

Would you want.

[Helen Peard]

Would you want to be. Yeah.

[Andy Burnham]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Helen Peard]

Even right now, at this point in history, I would think it'd be awful. No easy solutions.

[Andy Burnham]

There's no point me saying no because, you know, I. I've tried to lead the Labour Party in the past and therefore I've tried to want to be Prime Minister.

[Helen Peard]

Yeah. But I wondered if you've changed your mind on that.

[Andy Burnham]

No. Although what I've changed my mind upon is, you know, the way in which power needs to be sort of distributed around this country. You know, it doesn't work. I mean, I think we've seen it again. The model of government doesn't work. The kind of overall structure of a top down. We'll decide in Whitehall and we'll just throw stuff out at you all. It doesn't work. It never did and it definitely doesn't work now.

[Helen Peard]

Back then I was the Guardian's north of England editor and Burnham was three years into his stint as the Mayor of Greater Manchester. I think you can hear it in my voice that I was pretty surprised to hear that he still harboured ambitions to be The Prime Minister. I'm not too proud to admit that I thought back then, good luck with that. I thought he'd missed the boat and that his path back to Westminster was too difficult. How wrong I was. On Monday, Andy Burnham will move into Downing Street. But what kind of Prime Minister will he be? To answer that question, I'm going to talk to the people who've worked closest with Andy Burnham, from his Cambridge professor to his new Labour mentor all through the Corbyn years to his rebirth as the King of the North. From the Guardian, I'm Helen Peard. Today in focus, Britain's next Prime Minister, by the people who know him best. Andrew Murray Burnham was born in Liverpool in 1970 in the garden of Number

[Andy Burnham]

10 Conservative leader Edward Heath, with his

[Helen Peard]

new cabinet Chancellor of the Exchequer Ian MacLeod. April 10, 1970. Today, Beatle Paul McCartney announced that the Beadle are breaking up. Here's the news as reported. The middle of three boys born to Roy, a telephone engineer, and Eileen, a receptionist. The family lived in Culcheth, a village on the border between Merseyside, Cheshire and Greater Manchester, and they were sports mad. Burnham played cricket for Lancashire schoolboys and was a fanatic Everton supporter. But he was academic too, one of the brightest students at St Allred's Catholic High School in Newton Le Willows in Merseyside. It was there, aged 15, that he joined the Labour Party and it was where he was encouraged to apply to Cambridge, reluctantly, according to his old head teacher who said that the young Burnham didn't think it was for people like him.

[John Mullen]

I didn't think this guy's going to be Prime Minister. I guess somebody seeing David Cameron or Michael Heseltine as a student might have known where they were going. I did definitely think, this guy's going to be okay in life.

[Helen Peard]

This is John Mullen, a professor of English at University College London. But over 32 years ago, he taught English literature to Andy Burnham at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

[John Mullen]

I interviewed him for entrance to Cambridge and I do remember, I believe, that he was quite smartly dressed. I mean, it's a generalization, but I think it's only overconfident candidates from a certain kind of perhaps privileged background who have the gall to dress casually. Pretty sure he was. I'm pretty sure I remember him wearing a jacket and tie. He was quite earnest and serious about the whole thing, but obviously had a sense of humor. I mean, he was confident enough to. To laugh at things sometimes in the interview. And I do also remember that my colleague Ruth, who was a Medievalist really took a shine to him. I think he was quite keen on Chaucer. I don't know if that came afterwards or if he said that in his interview, but that might have been a reason for her liking him. I remember him as a sort of. Was a bit of a character around the college. He was a bit of a cheeky chappie, I would say, very quick, very, very keen on football and actually would wear an Everton shirt round as casual wear. And I would say he was rather respectful actually of me as his teacher, I would say took his academic studies seriously, you know, non fanatico, but he'd obviously had to work hard and be a good student to get there and he was going to go on doing that.

[Helen Peard]

Yeah. And he also met his future wife, Marie France Van Heel, at Fitzwilliam College. Do you remember anything about her? Were they like the power couple on campus?

[John Mullen]

I remember Frankie, as she was called. I didn't know her very well, I knew Andy, but she was a big character in the college and she was quite a kind of cool, glamorous person.

[Helen Peard]

The pair had been dating for a while when Frankie went on one of the biggest TV shows of the early 90s. Do you remember her going on blind date?

[John Mullen]

I remember seeing it on the tv, yes.

[Andy Burnham]

But my interests were entirely honorable.

[Helen Peard]

I didn't have any interest at all.

[John Mullen]

And in some ways it wasn't so surprising because she was super confident person. But for a Cambridge student to go on blind dates seemed a really cool thing to do. And I remember Scylla saying, you know, and so you're a student, Luffy, where are you a student? And Frankie said, oh, at Cambridge University. And the whole audio just went, woo.

[Helen Peard]

And in terms of the course that he did at university, choosing to do English literature at somewhere like Cambridge, what skills do you think he learned in your tutorials and through the reading that has equipped him for everything?

[John Mullen]

Oh, gosh, that's a good question, isn't it? I mean, first of all, his choosing to do English is itself quite striking, I think, because from his background, you know, his parents didn't go to university very often, of course, especially boys from that sort of background will choose to do something which is much more obviously careerist. Law, economics, medicine, all that sort of stuff. So choosing to do English shows, I hope. But he has a vein of imagination and idealism, not just political idealism, but actually sort of intellectual idealism. But I don't want to stretch this, this hope too far, but you'd hope that somebody who said that they love Middlemarch, George Eliot's great novel, which is all about imagine what other people are thinking. I hope it's given him ability to sort of sometimes step outside himself and imagine what it would be like from somebody else's point of view.

[Helen Peard]

After graduating with a 2:1, Burnham headed back home to the Northwest and set about trying to become a journalist. He did work experience on the Middleton Guardian in Rochdale and once told me that he tried to get a job with us, the other Guardian, but we didn't write back. Sorry, Andy. But he didn't hold a grudge. He still read the Guardian and he used to wear a T shirt with the classic 1980s Guardian logo along with a bucket hat. In October 1991, he wrote into our letters page to complain that Philip Larkin had not made the newspapers League of Great Poets proclaiming Larkin's love songs in age as the century's greatest poem. A few years later he was down in London working in the less glamorous end of the journalism industry.

I first met Andy Burnham when he was my boss on Tank World magazine.

This is Eleanor Mills, a journalist who went on to be the editorial director of the Sunday Times.

This is back in 1993. Tank World is the world's. I don't know if it still exists, but back then it was the world's premier bulk liquid transportation publication.

[John Mullen]

Wow.

[Helen Peard]

He was the editor of Tank World and I was his editorial assistant and there were only two employees on Tank World. Me and Andy Burnham were Tank World. So it was high octane stuff.

And what were your first impressions of him? Do you remember meeting him for the first time?

And I can remember Andy getting up from his computer and saying hello and he had the most incredible eyelashes I've ever seen on a man. So that became a long running joke between us about how had he applied his mascara that morning? And he was funn. We used to spend quite a lot of time in the nearby pub in Brentford. He liked to pint and crisps and very fat sandwiches. We both kind of graduated out of university into a bit of a recession. I wanted to be a, you know, big Fleet street journalist and Andy at that point was desperate to get into politics. He'd been a member of the Labour Party since he was 15 and he was very passionate about social mobility. We used to do a lot of putting the world to rights in the pub. My stepmother was Tessa Jow. She was MP for Dulwich. She'd always been a Labour Party kind of activist and Tessa was very much part of that Kind of New Labour inner circle. So I grew up in a very kind of Labour political family. So we had a lot of discussions about the effects of Thatcherism and what had happened to the kids that Andy had been to school with. And he was really passionate then about how he, you know, he was clever, academically clever, so he'd got out and gone to Cambridge. But he talked a lot about, you know, bright kids in his class for whom there was no route out. He felt very angry about the waste of talent and also about how the British establishment was very hard to get into. He'd been at Cambridge, he'd been a real political activist for quite a long time and he couldn't break into Westminster, which is where he wanted to be. I used to think of it very much as like a penguin huddle and somebody needs to open the huddle to let you in. And I thought Andy really had what it took. And so one Sunday lunch I was sitting around with my stepmother Tessa, and Tessa said she needed a new parlor elementary researcher. And I immediately said, I've got just the chat for you. Lo and behold, he went along for a few interviews and he got the job.

[David Blunkett]

I had met Andy because my very long standing friend, sadly deceased Tessa Jowl, employed Andy as a researcher. And I realized when Andy came into parliament in 2001 that he was going to go places.

[Helen Peard]

This is David Blunkett, who served as Tony Blair's work and pension secretary, Education Secretary and Home Secretary. It was in the Home Office that Burnham came to work for him.

[David Blunkett]

And one of the starting points was to be a parliamentary private secretary. And the job of the PPS is to watch your back. It's to be there in the Commons picking up when people are unhappy, when there's gonna be a rebellion against a particular policy, feedback when things are going well, alerting you and being your voice as well, standing up for you and making sure that people get the messages. So it's a real foundation, a grounding in parliamentary politics.

[Helen Peard]

And are there any memories that really stick with you of your time working closely with him?

[David Blunkett]

He has a sense of hu, which is always very helpful. He could do the glad handing very well indeed because he's very comfortable, as they say, in his own skin and easy to get on with. So that made it very easy. He used to come to our team meetings and we were dealing with some of the really big issues at the time. There'd been the attack on the World Trade center and beyond that led to enormous emphasis on security and intelligence and of course there's the Secretary of State for the Home Office. I was in charge of MI5, so there was a lot of learning to be done by all of us and Andy Burnham was part of that.

[Helen Peard]

After Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as prime minister in 2007, Burnham was rapidly promoted up the ranks. He served as Chief Secretary to the treasury in the midst of the financial crash and then was promoted to Culture Secretary.

[David Blunkett]

Hon Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State

[Andy Burnham]

for Culture, Media and Sport.

[Helen Peard]

It was in that job where he faced what he now says was a pivotal moment in his political career.

[Andy Burnham]

But today, as the Prime Minister has

[Helen Peard]

asked us, he turned up to an event to commemorate 20 years since the Hillsborough football disaster, that 96 fellow football

[Andy Burnham]

supporters who died will never be forgotten,

[Helen Peard]

and was booed and heckled.

[Andy Burnham]

And he asked us to think at this time,

[Helen Peard]

prompting him to commission an inquiry into the deadly crush. I first had contact with Burnham in 2009 when he'd been promoted to Health Secretary. Ever the loyal Guardian reader, he'd read that I'd been investigating child abduction cases and rang me up out of the blue to flag the case of one of his constituents whose daughter had been abducted to Libya. He ended up flying to Tripoli to negotiate the little girl's return to Britain. In 2010, Labour lost the election and Gordon Brown stood down. Burnham threw his hat in the ring to replace him as leader.

[Andy Burnham]

Andy Burnham, why does your campaign have all the hallmarks of a slow motion car crash? Thanks very much. I think it's building very nicely. Thank you very much, Andrew. I've got CLPs around the country.

[Helen Peard]

He stood on a platform of aspirational socialism, a phrase you haven't heard bandied about much during the New Labour era.

[Andy Burnham]

I mean, you launched your campaign. It was unnoticed when you launched it and it's been pretty unnoticed since. Well, I don't accept that. I mean, I've put the biggest policy idea on the table in this.

[Helen Peard]

He's often been accused of shape shifting, being hard to pin down politically. There's that joke which is often ruled out. A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a bar and the barman says, hello, Andy, when you worked with him 20 years ago, how would you have described his politics? And do you think that they've changed?

[David Blunkett]

I don't think he's a shifter. I've heard people say it, but they've often said it on the back of having met somebody who claimed that they'd once met Andy. By the way, the joke's a very funny one, but it's about the recognition of Andy Burnham as opposed to other politicians. So I think we should take that with a. A good pinch of salt. All of us reflect, all of us change our minds over a period of time.

[Helen Peard]

Burnham, of course, did not become leader in 2010. Ed Miliband did. But after Miliband lost the 2015 election, Burnham stood once again to replace him. And at the start, at least, he was seen as the left's choice.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

So I remember Andy was the left's preferred candidate from the start. We were all planning to swing behind Andy at that particular point in time.

[Helen Peard]

This is Rebecca Long Bailey, a young socialist who had been newly elected as MP for Salford and Eccles.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

And then we had the infamous welfare vote in Parliament, where the party at the time had asked us to abstain on the vote, which was basically going to bring in terrible cuts in a way that were going to impact our communities quite badly. And some of us decided to vote against Andy at the time, you know, he followed the party line and abstained. And then eventually that Jeremy put himself forward, which resulted in a lot of the left then swinging in behind Jeremy. But I think had it not been for that welfare vote, we probably could have seen Andy being the leader far sooner.

[Helen Peard]

Did you get a sense when he was still in Parliament last time that he was fully signed up to the Corbyn vision of Britain?

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

Yeah, I think Andy Burnham was always, and still is Labour. You know, he'll work with whichever leader's in power. And I think that's because, like a lot of Labour politicians, he's always swung behind the leader of the time and had his own views about what they've got wrong and what they've got right and all of the rest of it. And that can be difficult as well, because then when you do that and you don't speak out vocally sometimes on key issues and you're always supportive of the leader, then it creates the impression that you're in support of what's being done as well. So it comes at a great cost sometimes to be that collaborative.

[Helen Peard]

When Burnham announced in 2016 that he planned to leave Westminster to run as Greater Manchester's first ever mayor, I was pretty suspicious. Some people might look at your candidacy as the ultimate proof that those in the highest echelon of Labour do not truly believe going to win the general election in 2020, and it's you thinking, right, okay, I don't want to be in opposition for another term, I'm going to go for this job instead.

[Andy Burnham]

No, I mean, I would say, in fact, precisely the opposite.

[Helen Peard]

That interview was in April 2016, two months before the Brexit referendum, and he said something that seems quite prescient now.

[Andy Burnham]

I think there is a concern that may even be kind of brought on by the European referendum that Labour is losing its. Its connection, its grit with its traditional supporters. You know, if you do have a London centric approach to politics, it's not surprising that over time, people just hear that perspective through the national media and feel that people aren't really addressing the concerns that matter to them. And I kind of. I'm worried, actually, about where Labour stands now in the north.

[Helen Peard]

Having seen Burnham went on to become Greater Manchester's inaugural mayor in 2017.

[Andy Burnham]

Therefore, I declare that Andy Burnham is duly elected as the mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

[Helen Peard]

But he was not the favourite candidate of some local politicians when he first returned north. Richard Lees, who'd been the leader of Manchester city council since 1996, was unimpressed and didn't vote for him to become Labour's candidate.

[Richard Lees]

There were three strong candidates. I thought the other candidates were better. He had not been very enthusiastic about some aspects of devolution a couple of years previously when we were looking at health devolution. But I think Andy had looked at what had happened in Greater Manchester since 2011, and I think I've recognised that there's something a bit special going on here. And it did offer a really quite serious alternative to a life in Westminster that he perhaps wasn't enjoying very much.

[Helen Peard]

As I remember it, Leeds didn't really hide his disdain for Burnham in the early days, so I was surprised when Burnham asked him to be his number two.

[Richard Lees]

He asked me fairly soon after the election if I was willing to be deputy mayor, if I'd keep the economic portfolio, which I'd held since 2012. And yet I said I'd be happy to do that. And I take that as an indicator that Andy wasn't interested in old battles. He wanted to get things done.

[Helen Peard]

And what were your impressions of him in those early weeks? Did you get a sense of him thinking, oh, God, what have I done? Why have I left Westminster and now I'm gonna have to sit through all these boring local authority meetings? Or did you get a sense of somebody who was finding renewed kind of vigour and enthusiasm for politics?

[Richard Lees]

Well, he certainly wasn't worried about sitting through lots of boring local authority meetings because he arranged more of them, did he? He was very keen to work and engage with particularly the leaders of local authorities who were his cabinet. And one of the conversations I had with Andy very early on was that he had a cabinet that he. He didn't. A point that he couldn't sack and he couldn't tell them what to do.

[Helen Peard]

What Lees is referring to here is a system that he and the other nine Greater Manchester leaders had crowbarred into the devolution deal that they struck with George Osborne, then the Tory Chancellor, which meant that the Mayor could do almost nothing without their approval.

[Richard Lees]

To be fair to him, he adopted that new way of consensual working, working in. In partnership. But very early on, Andy clearly stood for election with a manifesto. And it's absolutely clear that the manifesto was law, that he was going to do everything possible to deliver.

[Andy Burnham]

Because I've come to the city centre to speak to people who've been here overnight, sleeping rough, promised to do something about it, and that's why I'm here.

[Helen Peard]

And one of his big pledges in that first manifesto was to end rough sleeping in Greater Manchester. What did you make of that pledge?

[Richard Lees]

When he made it, even Andy came to accept that in the way it was framed within his manifesto, it was a laudable thing to want to do, but it was not deliverable. I would give Andy credit for this, that in accepting that, he didn't give up on doing something to reduce the need for rough sleeping. So he came to the conclusion, okay, if I can't end rough sleeping, I can create circumstances in where nobody has to rough sleep. And that's where bed every night came from. So he stuck really with the commitment he made and delivered it to the extent it could be delivered.

[Helen Peard]

I think three weeks after he became mayor, there was the Manchester arena attack.

[John Mullen]

And eyewitnesses say that they heard a large bang, the sound of a bang.

[Helen Peard]

22 people were killed, including lots of children, by a suicide bomber at an Ariana Grande concert. What do you remember about how Burnham responded in the immediate aftermath and in the days, weeks afterwards?

[Richard Lees]

I think, like all of us, he was devastated. We did a press conference together around 6am the next morning, and it was a difficult press conference to do.

[Andy Burnham]

After our darkest of nights, Manchester is today waking up to the most difficult of dawns.

[Richard Lees]

But I think probably the biggest element of Andy's response, he demonstrated, I think, a remarkable level of empathy with, to the victims and the family of the victims. At some point on the morning after the bomb, he and I were in a car going out to police headquarters. The city council had already started planning the vigil that took place later that Day. And in the car, I turned to Andy and said, and we're not going to have any political speeches. You might think he's going to bridle against that. He'd just say no, I think that's right. He was very sensitive that this was really about the victims, this wasn't about politicians exploiting it.

[Helen Peard]

I was at the vigil that night and I remember tears rolling down my face. You had people in Man United shirts hugging people in city shirts and no politicians spoke. Instead, it was a poem from Tony Walsh.

[Andy Burnham]

This is the place in the north west of England. It's ace, it's the best and the songs that we sing from the stands from our band set the whole planet shaking. Our inventions are legends. There's now we can't make.

[Richard Lees]

To say that was an emotional moment is a bit of an understatement, really.

[David Blunkett]

Always remember,

[Helen Peard]

never forget

[David Blunkett]

forever. Manchester.

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Choose.

[David Blunkett]

Love, Manchester.

[Andy Burnham]

Thank you.

[Helen Peard]

And looking back, do you think it was coming so soon after Burnham had won that first election that it really sort of cemented in him this kind of Greater Manchester identity? He was one of the people who queued up for a B tattoo, wasn't he, at the time?

[Richard Lees]

Absolutely, that's the case. And I think people in Greater Manchester saw him as, and rightly so, this empathetic, caring person where this was really, really important to.

[Helen Peard]

When you look back at his nine years as Great Manchester mayor, what do you think is his legacy going to be? What can he specifically take credit for?

[Richard Lees]

I think he should take credit for coming into a new position in what a lot of people has argued a position of strength to a convation that was already going in the right direction. You should take credit rather than trying to turn it on its head, that he's built on that and he's maintained momentum. Certainly he should take credit for bus re regulation.

[Helen Peard]

I could not believe how dysfunctional Greater Manchester's buses were. When I moved back north in 2013, it was a free for all, with bus companies piling into the most profitable routes and ignoring huge swathes of the region. With ticket prices 2, 3, sometimes 4 times higher than in London, Burnham fought the bus companies in court to bring the whole network under one umbrella, which he named the Bee Network, after Manchester's civic symbol of the worker bee. I put to Leah's a key criticism of Burnham, that he can't make tough decisions. He disagrees, citing his sacking of the local police chief in 2020 after an inspection had found that Greater Manchester Police had failed to record 80,000 crimes, including plenty of violent crimes.

[Richard Lees]

It's taken strong decisions in other areas and our police force was put into special measures. It was performing really, really badly. And he is, in his police and crime commissioner role, brought in a chief constable that was very much a traditional police officer and believed the job of the police was to catch criminals, actually was a strong decision.

[Helen Peard]

When I met with him in the summer of 2020, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, he wanted to make clear that he was trying to put aside political differences to work with the Boris Johnson led Conservative government because he said he wanted to get the best result for Greater Manchester. But some of the frustrations that led him to leave Westminster were starting to bubble up again.

[Andy Burnham]

We bought 19 million items of PPE completely separate to the national system. We ran a mutual aid system across health and social care for ppe. Loads of things that we've done purely off our own back. And yeah, it is a bit, but obviously we're in a situation where the money's dried up and with no money for the trams, we know money for local government, so we have to ask for funding.

[Helen Peard]

This ultimately came to a head in October. Later that year, in what is now considered one of his most defining moments as mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham stood outside the Bridgewater hall in Manchester with all of the leaders of the local authority and he was explaining why talks had collapsed with Boris Johnson's government, which wanted to put Greater Manchester under a Tier 3 lockdown, closing all but essential businesses.

[Andy Burnham]

In summary, at no point today were we offered enough to protect the poorest people in our communities through the punishing reality of the winter to come.

[Helen Peard]

They were offering an insultingly small level of support, he said. Then suddenly, mid speech, Lee stepped forward to show Burnham something on his phone.

[Richard Lees]

Yeah, yeah.

[Helen Peard]

Thompson's government, it seemed, was threatening to withdraw the entire 60 million pound package.

[Richard Lees]

There is a video clip somewhere of me showing him on my phone what government had just announced, try and pick off individual councils. There was a palpable anger and that we believed, evidence later is that Greater Manchester was being first of all treated in an unfair way, but also by a government that was, wherever it was during lockdown, was not really looking after the best interest of the people we represented. Clearly he, with the backing of leaders, had really was fighting against that, had taken on Boris Johnson in number 10 over what he was doing.

[Andy Burnham]

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.

[Helen Peard]

A new nickname materialised from this moment, with Burnham, dubbed the King of the North. Boers in Manchester offered him free pints. And there was even a Vogue article entitled, suddenly, inexplicably, we all fancy Andy Burnham. He was a celebrity. Now coming up, people might fancy him, they might want to buy him a pint. But will Andy Burnham make a good Prime Minister?

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[Helen Peard]

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[Helen Peard]

Funnily enough, it's quite hard getting people to criticise someone who's about to become Prime Minister. Well, most people. What are his irritating habits? What would Frustrate you, Lateness. The late Andy Burnham.

[Richard Lees]

This is also, for me, a Westminster habit. My experience over a long time of ministers turning up on time was never.

[Helen Peard]

I once went round to his mum and dad's house to interview him and he was so late I ended up watching the cricket with his big brother, a headteacher. But one thing that's come up time and again is his need to be liked.

[David Blunkett]

The one thing that Andy Burnham and I seem to have in common is we do like to be liked. And I can't always be liked and neither can he.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

He wants to help and he wants to be liked. And sometimes when you're the Prime Minister, that's not always possible.

[Helen Peard]

I think when he was a younger politician, probably his weaknesses were he kind of was quite keen to be liked and he wanted to get on. And I think he was a. He's a good team player. So I think he probably went along with, as I said, those kind of cabinets, decisions on things that weren't necessarily what he believed in.

He definitely enjoys his celebrity status in Manchester, and the one time he tried to bring in something deeply unpopular, he backtracked or bottled it, depending on your view. He'd been ordered by central government to clean up Greater Manchester's air and spent a hundred million pounds preparing to bring in a clean air zone, which would have banned the most polluting vans and buses from the region's streets and charged quite a lot of people to drive to work. It was a plan that was controversial in London, but highly, highly contentious in a region with very patchy public transport, even with those better buses. He scrapped the plans. At the 11th hour, after all the signs and cameras had been put up. I asked him why, in an event I chaired with him in 2023. What's different about Mancunian's lungs, that we don't deserve the same clean air?

[Andy Burnham]

Well, I don't think it's necessarily, you know, easy at all there, and we're not turning our face away from. From clean air. All I would say is what gets the change as quickly as possible. We've changed. The buses have already been changed and the buses are the biggest cause of.

[Helen Peard]

Ultimately, however, it's clear that his time as Greater Manchester has fundamentally changed him. And after several years of will, he. Won't he return to Westminster?

His expectation is growing that the mayor of Greater Manchester and his Burnham is on the brink of a Westminster comeback.

He delivered a thumping win in the constituency of Makerfield.

Andrew Murray, commonly known as Andy Burnham.

The Labour and Cooperative Party 24927. And it was a couple of weeks ago in the People's History Museum in Manchester that he delivered a speech outlining his vision for Britain.

[Andy Burnham]

The change will be driven through the Prime Minister's office in an extended operation based here in Manchester.

[Helen Peard]

It felt to me as a one time professional Vernon watcher, as a distillation of everything he's learned after almost a decade away from Westminster.

[Andy Burnham]

We will ensure all parts of the UK are able to take greater public control of essential services like war, housing, energy and transport.

[Helen Peard]

In the days leading up to his coronation, he's revealed a bit more about how he'll govern differently from Starmer.

[Andy Burnham]

I know many people feel that at the start of Israel's military action in Gaza, my party didn't get it right and I am sorry about that. The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better.

[Helen Peard]

Yes, we have taken some, but many questions remain unanswered. Who will be in his Cabinet? Who will be his Chancellor? And how will they be different from Rachel Reeves? What will he do about the spiraling welfare bill, about immigration? And how will he deal with Donald Trump? We'll find out soon enough, but in the meantime, we can only speculate.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

Everybody loves eyelashes. I think he goes down well with a whole range of different demographics. All the Nans love Andy Burnham. He's like the Daniel o' Donnell of the Labour Party, isn't he? And he sent an email out to the parliamentary Labour Party recently kind of underlining this, that he is going to have a broad church and that's going to be really important because I think for too many years the party has been broken off into different factions and it's fine having little interest groups, like we always do that in politics, around particular kind of like visions or, you know, policies, that's fine. But when it descends into fighting and trying to kind of like alienate one group completely from the party, that's not healthy. And the country doesn't like that. They don't like to see that division.

[Helen Peard]

It's gonna be a tough gig. But I think he's got what it takes in terms of real commitment, a real ideological sense of what, what the country needs. And he understands about how political systems work. You know, he's worked in the treasury, he's worked in, in the Department of Health, he's been Mayor of Manchester. And I think because of that he knows where the levers are, unlike somebody like Sir Keir Starmer. And I also think Andy has good political antennae. You won't be seeing him taking freebie glasses or suits in the stupid way that Starmer did, and he won't be trashing his own brand.

[David Blunkett]

I think Andy will have counted all that he's gone through, all the, all the risk he's taken as absolutely futile if he doesn't win labor a second term and therefore have a period ahead to be able to deliver. The great strength of anti Burnham, from my point of view, is just how much he's matured, just how much he's learned in the nine years he's been heading the very large metropolitan area of Greater Manchester and how he's developed the public private partnership, how he's brought people in of different political persuasions to work with him to achieve a common goal and being able to determine what that goal is and then focus stiletto heel style on getting it done is what Andy Burnham's currently remembered for, and I hope will be remembered for as Prime Minister of our country.

[Helen Peard]

And that is all for today. Thank you to everyone who spoke to me for this episode, which was produced by Ivor Manley and presented by me, Helen Peard. Sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll be back in your feeds this afternoon with the latest.

This is the Guardian.

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