There was a palpable feeling of euphoria across my home city of Manchester when the Gallagher brothers finally buried years of ferocious feuding and reunited Oasis. After all, we Mancunians are nothing if not effusive in both pride and ownership when success blooms in our own back yard. We feel it personally. So, as Keir Starmer struggles through the gluey mess of the Mandelson/Epstein (no relation) scandal, are we locals cheerleading Andy Burnham’s mooted leadership plans? Don’t bet on it.
Are we locals cheerleading Andy Burnham’s mooted leadership plans? Don’t bet on it
Our Mayor of Greater Manchester is reportedly circling to challenge the Prime Minister. Burnham has never been shy about his ambitions – even if he seems to detest Westminster – and at Labour’s party conference later this month he is said to be calling for a ‘reset’. One involving himself, perhaps?
Mancunians are hardly thrilled about Burnham’s game plan and with it the possibility of a local(ish) lad in Number 10. In fact, rather than inspiring a plume of civic pride, it feels as though Manchester is nothing more than a stepping stone for the so-called King of the North to march back to Westminster. If Burnham returns to the Commons, it’s unlikely he’ll be focusing on constituency issues, given that his whole purpose in returning to the Commons will be to defenestrate Labour’s already flailing leader.
That Burnham nurses such ambition is hardly a shocker. The 55-year-old father of three has twice before run for the party leadership in 2010 and 2015. What’s more, he’s now backed a soft-left campaign group, “Mainstream,” which is calling for wealth taxes, nationalising utilities and scrapping the two-child benefit cap. To top it off, Burnham has backed Lucy Powell, the MP for Manchester Central, to become the next deputy leader of the Labour parliament. Moves which all conspire to form the groundwork for a leadership bid.
But here’s the rub: Burnham needs a successful Manchester by-election to get him back into Parliament. And while he maintains he is ‘one of us’, it sticks in the craw to think of the deployment of such political choreography to ensure easy passage back into Parliament. That’s why locals like me bristle at being treated as a staging ground for his national ambitions.
Burnham is, of course, a man who has rallied against Westminster politics. He has said SW1 is ‘a living nightmare’ and that politics down shout is ‘deeply dysfunctional’ and ‘poisonous’. Burnham also claimed that Northerners can face discrimination in London, ‘in certain walks of life’. So why does he want to go back?
Burnham certainly has his fans up North. He has been elected three times as Mayor of Greater Manchester, winning a thumping 63 per cent in 2024. And, on the occasions I’ve met him, he’s struck me as personable, affable, even decent. But Greater Manchester constituencies have enough of their own problems to deal with. At a time when trust in Labour is shot, a parachute candidacy is an insult to all of us in this part of the country. It risks alienating the very voters Burnham claims to champion. If he and his supporters want grassroots respect then they shouldn’t be using Manchester as a Trojan horse for political ambition. They should earn our trust.
That’s not to say that, as a mayor, Burnham hasn’t done good things for our city. He has helped introduce the Bee Network, bringing buses back under local control, capped fares, and moved towards an integrated bus–tram–rail system. His ‘A Bed Every Night’ and Housing First pilot schemes have made some inroads into the numbers of people sleeping rough. Burnham was also impressive as he stood up to Westminster during the tier wars of the Covid pandemic.
But there have been some slips along the way. Burnham was at the wheel when Greater Manchester Police was put in special measures in 2020 for not recording tens of thousands of crimes. There has also been slow progress on child exploitation cases. Meanwhile, Burnham’s flagship Clean Air Zone plans lost credibility after being watered down following fierce opposition.
In other words: we see you, Mr Burnham. Manchester knows your strengths – and shortcomings. Taking Northern loyalty for granted is a dangerous miscalculation.
The question of whether Burnham, a throwback politician from a different, Blairite era, makes for a sound opponent to Starmer is for another day. But if he wants to go back to national politics then he must earn that right – not least as Nigel Farage is sure to throw the kitchen sink at any seat Burnham contests. Reform is right to do so: the North deserves more than to be the convenient springboard for a return to Westminster.
Oasis achieved a spectacular comeback on their own merit and once again scorched their names on local hearts. If Burnham wants to do the same, it must be clear it is for the good of the electorate he intends to represent: asking the people of Manchester what he can do for them; not what they can do for him.
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