The moment Andy Burnham realised Westminster was failing ordinary people

It was a moment that had all the hallmarks of Andy Burnham’s sense of humour. Last October, I was interviewing the then Mayor of Greater Manchester, on a stage in London’s West End. Ostensibly, the interview was about ‘Head North’ - his joint book with Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, on how to rewire the country. But speculation had once again reached fever-pitch that morning that Burnham was about to make a move for the Labour’s leadership. We were there to talk about the book, not political gossip, but Burnham quickly identified the elephant in the room. “This is not the launch of the sequel ‘Head South’,” he said, as the crowd erupted into laughter. “I need to say that.” But of course, Head South was always the sequel-in-the-waiting. A few days ago, in Makerfield, it was clear things were shifting. Burnham gave an interview where he spoke about ‘Head North’ and added “yeah and who knows the may be a sequel in preparation called Head South – but we'll have to wait, won't we, until Thursday the 18th to find out?” Fast-forward to June 23, and Keir Starmer has resigned as Prime Minister. A coronation for King of the North, South, East and West, is potentially weeks away. Burnham climbed into the train in Piccadilly dressed as a North-western football dad, and emerged down South wearing a suit. His challenge now is keep true to the values he has nurtured and the ideas he has developed away from London. Westminster, as he knows from his time as Health Secretary in Tony Blair’s government, has a way of asking MPs to hang their idealism up with their Adidas trainers. But, thankfully, there were signs the mischief remains – when one MP shouted out ‘He’s not the Messiah’ as he was sworn in yesterday, he whispered ‘naughty boy’. Much will be written in the coming days about Andy Burnham and Manchesterism. As a journalist who covers the impact of politics on communities, I have known him a long time. He is a loyal friend to Mirror readers, has supported untold numbers of even our most unfashionable campaigns, and he’s been a regular guest columnist for my Real Britain column, not least because his columns are never boring. Few front-bench politicians come with genuinely ‘normal’ hinterland. Burnham’s wardrobe from Uniqlo to Birkenstocks and every polo shirt in-between, show him at ease in way that’s a relief for us all after the years of Rishi Sunak’s tech-bro hoodies and Boris’ Hawaiian running pants. Meanwhile, the man who brought the Brits to Manchester, doesn’t have to pretend he’s into the Arctic Monkeys as Gordon Brown was once persuaded. I’ve witnessed Burnham’s joyful DJing – Hacienda classics, indie Manchester bands, New Order, and of course, The Smiths. I’ve seen him at Glastonbury with his family, with a full itinerary of bands to see, as utterly enthusiastic as any other music fan. Unlike when Donald Trump tries to use musicians for his videos, Burnham did not have to beg Elbow to use One Day Like This for his campaign video. “Ordinarily, we wouldn’t ally ourselves with a politician,” says Elbow’s Guy Garvey. “But these aren’t ordinary times and Andy isn’t an ordinary man.” But all of this is just window-dressing. To really understand Andy Burnham is to know that his commitment to the Hillsborough families and to a Hillsborough Law is more core to his being than Manchesterism. Burnham’s friends were at Hillsborough that day. The football-mad teenager was at the other semi-final, the Everton game. But – crucially – the moment he responded to the heckling crowd on the 20th anniversary of the disaster, in 2009, was also the moment he understood that Westminster politics with its soundbites and straitjackets is a fiction failing ordinary people. It’s a moment that however many times you watch it still carries immense power, not least because Burnham is an Evertonian. The Mirror has been alongside the Hillsborough families’ fight since the beginning. But few politicians apart from Andy Burnham truly understand how that fight for justice is really a fight against our rigged country. His great skill as a politician has been not just to turn up again and again on issues of infected blood, poisoned nuclear veterans, and those bereaved by Covid, but to link them to a corrupt state that fails victims and survivors. In Head North, Rotherham and Burnham - who grew up in the ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’ years in Liverpool – write “This is not just a deeply unequal country, it’s a deliberately unequal country”. Working class kid Burnham learned this the hard way when he made it to Cambridge, only to find that it’s not enough - you are just looking at more expensive slammed doors. “I quickly realised it was not the degree but the dinner parties your parents had been to,” he said. His route to Westminster included years working on ‘Tank World’, a trade magazine not about warfare but actual storage tanks – a prosaic leap after studying romantic poetry at Fitzwilliam College. In 2017, Theresa May spoke slightly awkwardly of the ‘burning injustices’ in modern society. There is nothing awkward about the Burnham Injustice, burning at the heart of the former Mayor’s politics. This is the passion Burnham brought to the Makerfield by-election, and that people responded to on the doorstep. The kind of passion that can’t be faked. Thankfully, Head North is not a classic, dry political tome. In many ways it’s a love letter to the communities both Rotheram and Burnham grew up in, as well as the moving story of two mayors forged by their friendship across twin tragedies – the Hillsborough disaster, and the Manchester arena bombing. It’s also funny. Like most middle-aged northern men Burnham and Rotheram are not really joking when they heavily hint that they should have been professional footballers. And Burnham secretly loves talking about the moment he saw his wife Marie-France of 25 years – affectionately known as Frankie – appear on Cilla’s Blind Date, in a bid to launch a TV career. The date, he is pleased to recount, was an utter disaster. Perhaps no wonder when ‘Will from Surrey’ ended up working for the Conservative Party. And he remembers making a key rally in his bid for the Labour leadership in 2015 against insurgent Jeremy Corbyn, and realising he was standing under the religious slogan – ‘JC is Coming’. Back in 2015, I chaired the Mirror’s hustings for the Labour leadership, and witnessed Jeremy Corbyn run rings around the then favourite. Burnham looked like a man painfully trapped between party lines as a government minister and his real beliefs. They used to call it triangulating but it was more strangulating. Manchester’s gift has been to let Burnham become himself. Back to our event in October, and what was billed originally as a book launch, had event grew out of all proportion as ticket sales swelled. We ended up in a giant venue preparing to host the massive National Theatre hit, My Neighbour Totoro, yet the two Mayors held an audience who queued for hours afterwards to get their books signed. Even then, it felt as if the crowd of assembled Labour Party members, MPs, trade unionists, Hillsborough campaigners and fans of both mayors, were sizing Burnham up. Burnham deftly avoided all talk of Prime Ministerial ambition, except to jokingly say, “as a centre-forward, I’ve always been one for taking opportunities.” During this World Cup, he is giving Harry Kane a run for his money.