Andy Burnham was my first boss, he'll make a great Prime Minister
What a relief that Andy won by a landslide in the Makerfield Byelection. I've known him for 30 years and got him his first job in politics. Cometh the hour, cometh the man...
It’s funny when someone you know well suddenly becomes a national figure. But when it comes to Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham I always knew he was made of what astronauts call The Right Stuff.
Over that last few weeks campaigning in Makerfield he has shown his true mettle, winning what had been seen as an impossible seat with a 9000 majority over Reform and Restore. Everyday he has been speaking from the heart, hanging out with his future constituents, driven by a true desire to make Britain a better fairer place for those for whom it no longer works. I know some are frightened about him being too far left because he wants to take energy, transport and other public services back under public control. But this worked on the busses in Manchester and what he is after is a better service at less cost for all of us. His detractors have accused him of being a chameleon or a flip-flopper on policy, because he’s served Labour masters as diverse as Jeremy Corbyn, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. But I would say that is unfair. Having known him for over thirty years I’d say his politics have always been routed in the desire to reduce inequality, to give people from the poor bits of Manchester, Liverpool and other places like them in the UK, a fair crack of the whip.
Andy Burnham, you see, was my first boss.
I can remember vividly arriving at the grotty offices whose windows looked out onto the elevated section of the M4 back in 1993 and Andy getting up from his computer and shaking my hand. Back then, he wasn’t a hot favourite to be British Prime Minister before Christmas, he was the Editor of Tank World - the world’s premier bulk liquid transportation publication (yes I know, very Have I Got News for You).And I was his new Editorial Assistant. It wasn’t a big operation; Andy and I were the only employees - so we spent a lot of time together. Laughing, and writing copy about tank containers and gratings (the glamour).
Like me, Burnham was an Oxbridge English graduate, aiming for higher things. We’d graduated into a recession, in the early 90s, jobs were hard to come by. I wanted to be a Fleet Street Editor, he wanted to get into politics. We spent many lunchtimes popping out to the Esso garage for cheese sandwiches or sitting in a local pub (he liked a pint) putting the world to rights. I would tease him about his ludicrously dark and bushy eyelashes and whether he’d been hitting the mascara again – and his northern accent. He used to love taking the micky out of me for being stupidly posh (I come from a champagne socialist north London background). He would tease me constantly. I thought he took the world a bit seriously; we were both born in 1970 but he had a steady girlfriend Marie France who went on to become his wife, while I just wanted to go to parties.
He talked a lot about having grown up in Warrington (he used to tease me that I had no idea where that was because it was north of Watford), supporting Everton and how people from where he grew up were being written off, left behind. He had a burning desire, even then, to level the playing field, make it more likely that a bright kid from Makerfield (where he just won the byelection so he can challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the leadership of the party) could make it all the way to the top. He talked about kids he’d known at school from families where no-one they knew had ever had a job. He was angry about what Thatcherism and neo-liberalism had done to manufacturing, about the hopelessness he’d seen in his school mates because there was no meaningful technical education for kids who weren’t academic like him. How politicians in Westminster just didn’t get it.. All subjects he is still talking about today. He’s always had a rare ability to be serious but also fun; worthy but not dreary – with an acute sense of fairness and empathy.
At that time, despite having joined the Labour party at 15 and been political at university, he was having trouble breaking in to his chosen profession. Our world of tanks in Brentford was light years away from Westminster and the politics he wanted to change. We would talk endlessly about the way that the British establishment protected its own; I could see contemporaries from Oxford and the private schools I went to getting cushy starter jobs in business or politics, through the old boy network. Andy talked about how the rungs into power were broken. He was angry, not for himself, but for all the clever, talented people who didn’t have a chance because they didn’t have personal connections to get that crucial first break.
Over those Brentford lunches we chatted a lot about how he’d come from a loving supportive family, which was great - but how they didn’t KNOW people in power in the way mine did. At that time, my stepmother, the late Baroness Tessa Jowell, was Labour MP for Dulwich. At Sunday lunch one weekend she mentioned she was looking for a new parliamentary researcher. I immediately suggested Andy – explaining he was bright, committed and a great bloke - and an interview or two later, he got the job. The rest, as they say, is history. In 1997 Tony Blair won a landslide victory and Tessa became a minister. And in 2001 Andy was elected MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester and served in the cabinets of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
In the 30 odd years since Tank World, Andy and I have stayed friends and the man I knew then is still very much in evidence. In Makerfield this week he’s been doggedly knocking on doors despite the heat. He knows he has a big fight on his hands to beat Reform – that, in his words “it’s really hard, not a walk in the park”. These days he doesn’t eat lunch – so was delighted when a nurse came up and gave him an ice cream. She explained that he had her vote because he’d done great stuff as mayor and cared about the NHS; they love him in Manchester because he stood up to Westminster during Covid, fixed the buses and sits down with leaders of all stripes to try and work out solutions. He still cares about those communities and having seen Westminster from the inside, yearns to deregulate power and return it to communities like his.
There have been moments in his career when, in retrospect, he made the wrong call, I know he regrets having to back policies he didn’t believe in while in Cabinet. But he has grown as a man and a politician particularly through the experience of standing up for the Hillsborough families, and for Manchester. Andy is now in his late 50s, he isn’t a young man on the make like Wes Streeting, he’s had decades of experience of how things work both in Westminster and running Manchester. He knows which levers to pull, how the system works, and he isn’t afraid to be his own man, to take the hard choices. Unlike Sir Keir Starmer who hasn’t an iota of political intuition, Burnham has that rare ability to read the zeitgeist, be a leader. He believes in himself and his cause and the people he has served believe in him too.
His mission today is the same as it ever was: to level the playing field so wherever you come from you have a fair chance. “To change things for the better” as he puts it.
In my long career as a Fleet Street Editor I’ve met a lot of politicians – but my friend Andy still stands out as one of the good guys. He understands the problems that needs fixing, means what he says and says what he means. This Labour government still has two years to run - I hope he wins power and brings the change the country needs.
Eleanor Mills is the Founder of Noon.org.uk - to sign up to her regular emails go there