The House Opinion Article | Worker Bees: Inside The Burnham Operation

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Last October, Andy Burnham was a badly damaged figure. A series of high-profile interventions in the run-up to and during Labour’s conference – widely interpreted as a soft coup – had misfired.

Keir Starmer’s allies mocked the so-called ‘King of the North’ as a presumptuous, vainglorious blowhard, a risk to the UK’s financial credibility and a political dead-end for Labour.

At this low point, an old friend offered some comradely advice to the Greater Manchester mayor. “Remember what Lenin said in 1917 as he waited for a train in Switzerland,” David Blunkett recalls telling Burnham. “Timing is everything in politics.”

The timing – six months on – looks rather different. Labour is braced for heavy losses in elections in Scotland, Wales and England’s local councils. And while the Iran conflict is dampening speculation around Starmer for the moment, it is likely to reignite soon enough.

And while Angela Rayner has ensured she remains part of that conversation in recent weeks, many MPs believe that only one figure can save them. As one ally puts it, “It’s Andy Burnham or bust.”

Supporters believe he continues to hone his strengths (communication), jettison past mistakes (support for the Iraq war), and is building a coherent political philosophy (Manchesterism).

Quitting Westminster for the mayoralty is cited as the best move Burnham made to rebuild his profile. It is now, ironically, a major obstacle between him and the job of prime minister.

Ahead of the Gorton and Denton by-election, Burnham put his hat in the ring to stand as a candidate but was rejected by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) officers by eight votes to one, with only deputy leader Lucy Powell on side. The House understands that, despite boldly resolving to apply to stand, Burnham made little to no effort ahead of the vote to lobby any of the NEC officers who declined to back him.

Polling by Britain Elects suggests Burnham would have won the parliamentary seat comfortably.

Insiders working on the campaign say internal figures were even more positive, with one believing he would win with almost 60 per cent of the vote, as voters saw him as the obvious ‘Stop Reform’ candidate.

It is a thesis now safe from contact with reality. But Gorton is unlikely to be the last Labour-held seat to become free this Parliament.

To find out whether the twice-failed leadership hopeful has what it takes to return and topple a sitting Prime Minister, The House spoke to a wide range of Labour sources, Burnham allies and close friends.

Burnham, a local journalist for a short while, sees policy through the lens of how it will land in the press. “It is all media,” says a senior former aide, who helped run one of his failed leadership campaigns.

They added: “He was always very good at ‘the story’: where can I go, or what can I go and do, so that I get noticed?”

Burnham read English literature at the University of Cambridge after devouring the collective works of Philip Larkin and Shakespeare. Despite this, his friends are unsure if he continues to read for pleasure anymore.

“I can’t see Andy reading Jane Austen,” says a long-standing ally and Labour MP. “It would be interesting to know why he did English. Usually, lads would do history or PPE at Oxford. Maybe it would be the Morrissey type thing, the Oscar Wilde’s, that more romantic side of things.”

A minister adds dryly: “He travels lightly: both intellectually and politically.”

Nonetheless, he has a deep love for romantic poetry and Irish history. Steve Rotheram, Burnham’s best friend in politics, recalls the Manchester mayor chatting away with Michael D Higgins – the former Irish President and poet – about poets and ancient philosophers.

Burnham is a Roman Catholic. His Irish ancestry has been researched by Liverpool Central Library. “He does feel firmly attached,” says Rotheram of his Irish genealogy, “but he’s also one of those people who… is very patriotic as well.

“Andy’s always nailed his colours firmly to the mast. I think he’s a royalist, he loves the country.”

Burnham begins his mornings running regularly while listening to music on a predictably ‘Madchester’ playlist featuring The Stone Roses – his favourite band – as well as Joy Division, Oasis and New Order.

He works on his box over breakfast while preparing for a full day of meetings and events, which stretch into the afternoon and evening. Accompanied by his political aide Kevin Lee, Burnham drives around Greater Manchester in a run-down Volkswagen usually littered with disposable coffee cups.

You won’t find many of these speeches published because most of them are written and delivered from a set of notes that he’s made – they are his thoughts

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Working late makes family life more difficult, but friends say he and his Dutch wife Marie-France van Heel remain close. The couple, who first met at university, live with their children and dog Axel in Leigh. Even at home, however, Burnham is said to chase colleagues and advisers over the weekend with questions arising from new academic reports and what he is reading in the papers. This is in contrast to the disengaged attitude the Prime Minister is accused of adopting.

Burnham has long traded on being a lifelong Evertonian. “You’d always see him in animated conversation with the doorkeepers, and then when you eavesdropped, it was always about football,” says an MP. He had a season ticket at Goodison Park in the Gwladys Street end and renewed his ticket when the club moved to the Hill Dickinson stadium at the start of the season.

The mayor of Manchester is also a real ale enthusiast. Another MP friend reports that, although “not a piss artist”, Burnham does enjoy a drink: “You could see him drink eight or 10 pints without appearing to be pissed.”

Outside of his day-to-day schedule, his inner circle, like all metro mayors, remains small. Lee, Burnham’s political secretary, is a Manchester United season ticket holder who has been working for him for 16 years.

Amy Davies now runs his office and his diary. Kate Green, Greater Manchester’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, is also a close associate of Burnham’s, having left Parliament in 2022 to join ‘Team Andy’.

The list of those in Burnham’s orbit but outside the inner circle makes for more interesting reading. It includes around 14 experts working on policy to flesh out his own political offer.

A close confidant of his remains Neal Lawson, director of centre-left pressure group Compass, who continues to introduce the Manchester mayor to more left-wing voices. Lawson and Burnham first met playing for the Labour football team Demon Eyes; the Compass director was goalie, Burnham up front.

Other influential voices close to Team Andy include Mathew Lawrence of Common Wealth, Zoë Billingham from IPPR North and Andrew Carter, CEO of Centre for Cities.

Lawrence has recently been tasked, alongside the Mainstream group, with fleshing out Manchesterism. His phrase “the Privatisation Premium” was used in a recent speech of Burnham’s – which the mayor continues to write himself, often in bullet point form.

“You won’t find many of these speeches published because most of them are written and delivered from a set of notes that he’s made – they are his thoughts,” Lawson says.

Lawrence is in the middle of writing a separate upcoming paper, which will flesh out Manchesterism in more detail. It will attempt to connect the affordability crisis and related pressure on public spending to the structural retreat of investment in energy, housing and water.

A sympathetic minister tells The House: “What we are building is a movement, so it doesn’t matter about the individual, it’s who can drive it.”

Aides of Burnham say civil servants attend his events and snoop at his press conferences as he critiques Whitehall and lays the foundations of his political position.

Critics of Manchesterism – which, paradoxically, were once associated with free trade and laissez-faire economics – believe it lacks any meaning apart from nationalisation.

His supporters contend that the framework is meaningful while reflecting his pragmatism and keen eye for the most useful political fights. Capping bus fares across Greater Manchester to £2 is a perfect example, they say, as it brings in a visible change to the daily lives of so many.

“‘Transport is number one, transport is key,’ he would say as the gamechanger for Greater Manchester,” another former long-serving aide of Burnham tells The House.

He surrounded himself with a bunch of yes people, which is a challenge in itself

But there are long-running criticisms of Burnham, including from allies. The most notable is his tendency to be indecisive at key moments. Former colleagues point to his failed leadership campaigns as evidence.

During the 2010 leadership race, Burnham’s campaign was split over whether to take money from Unite, then run by Len McCluskey. One person who was working on Burnham’s campaign recalls: “We had a very, very polite but nonetheless heated discussion. He believed the right-wing press during the leadership camp would assert the fact that they’re in the pocket of [Unite]. My contention was I couldn’t give a monkey’s – the membership of the Labour Party [is] what matters.”

In the run-up to the 2015 leadership election, there was still considerable discontent despite being a leading contender.

“He surrounded himself with a bunch of yes people, which is a challenge in itself,” one former aide tells The House. A crucial downfall of the campaign was when he could not decide whether to rebel after the then-acting leader Harriet Harman urged colleagues to abstain on a controversial welfare bill.

Jeremy Corbyn was one of the 48 rebels who voted against the bill, which is commonly thought to be a major factor in his subsequent victory. The former aide says: “Classic Andy, he found a reasoned amendment which didn’t mean anything to anyone, while Corbyn was explicitly against it.”

Allies acknowledge he has made mistakes yet believe he is now more comfortable in his own skin.

“He doesn’t have to think about slicing and dicing for particular audiences in particular ways,” Lawson says. “I don’t think it’s enormously calculated. I think it’s quite authentic and quite genuine.”

Nonetheless, Burnham still faces one problem which could be insurmountable: returning to Westminster.