You hear the word ‘empathy’ a lot when people talk about our next prime minister. I can see why
My contribution to this summer’s modest avalanche of Andy Burnham stories extends to only two. One is about Glastonbury, and the time that he and his wife, Marie-France, came for a three-day stay at the festival, which included his appearance on the Left Field stage, organised by the songwriter and activist Billy Bragg. I help with the bookings and chair some of the debate sessions: Burnham’s was titled State of the Nation: Politics in Crisis.
It was the summer of 2022 – the prologue to Liz Truss’s five minutes in power and (somewhat amazingly) Burnham’s first visit to Glasto. As well as seeing bands – the Irish funsters Fontaines DC were among his favourites – and wandering around the perfumed fields, he had come to make the case for a lot of the stuff he has been talking about in the buildup to him entering Downing Street on Monday: “rewiring” the UK by changing our systems of politics and authority, collaborating on that task with other parties, and taking away as much power as possible from Westminster. Open, self-questioning and a talker rather than a shouter, in front of 1,000 mostly hungover people in a giant tent, he passed with honours; he was even nice to the obligatory disruptive Trotskyists.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
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