Andy Burnham is very much the flavour of the month in Labour circles at present. Having left Westminster in 2016 when it became clear he wasn’t going to become leader any time soon, he has undergone something of a renaissance as mayor of Manchester.
In this capacity he gets to govern an overwhelmingly left-leaning city and enjoy the tributes of cooing London based journalists who declare him the ‘king of the north.’ The contrast between Burnham and his struggling leader was most apparent in the aftermath of May’s local elections; whereas the former was re-elected with 67 per cent of the vote and bagged himself a column in a London newspaper, the latter gave a dreadful pool clip and then disappeared for the following 48 hours.
Now Burnham has done yet another interview, highlighting once again his Northern roots and the inequities of Westminster. Appearing on – where else? – Channel 4, Burnham told an attentive Krishnan Guru-Murthy about all the doors he thought his education at Cambridge University would open for him:
When I graduated, it was that moment of graduation that brought over to me that it wasn’t quite what I thought.
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