Burnham and me
An interview with the PM-in-waiting
For this morning’s Times I interviewed Andy Burnham on his last afternoon of freedom.
We sat beside the counter of the galley kitchen at the very top of Admiralty House. He made the tea, but, mindful of the controversy and offence he caused the other day, paused and forced himself to pour the water before the milk.
The stools were fashioned from broken old LPs: mine was an Acker Bilk album, his a compilation of songs by the Band of the Royal Yeomanry. They weren’t his – they were there already. He joked that they must have belonged to Anneliese Midgley.
Almost all of our conversation is reproduced across the front page and a full spread of this morning’s paper, which you should subscribe to read in full. It was my second extended conversation with him in a little over seven weeks and what struck me most about this one is how little his critique of politics has changed from the one he advanced in the beer garden at Stubshaw Cross. I won’t attempt to reproduce it here, but here’s a brief summary of what I learned.
It’s all about the cost of living. Burnham told me he has devised a “ten-year plan” to rewire the British economy but was candid on the political limits of such grand designs. He admitted that people won’t feel the benefits of public control and state intervention overnight, for most of it won’t and can’t happen overnight. Digital ID got whacked because he wants to “repriotrise” resources towards “the real show in town, which is the pressure people feel around their finances”. I thought there were shades of Nye Bevan in that phrasing – because, after all, the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, business-friendly or otherwise.
He spent this weekend in the Treasury. He was full of prase for Antonia Romeo, the cabinet secretary, and the access talks she’s run as cabinet secretary. It sounds like he wants to move to put money in people’s pockets this week. “I think we’ve got to a really good place. Everyone’s aligned. I’ve just been at the Treasury this morning, dealing with some of the announcements we’re making next week, and there’s no sort of tension in the system.”
Manchesterism can work for the bond markets. To spend an extended period of time with Burnham is to be reminded just how frustrating he finds Westminster discourse, not least on his economic agenda. He argued at length, indirectly, that his policy of public control of the essentials and commanding heights is actually one of fiscal restraint – “not just control of the cost of utilities to people, but also control of public spending”. He said: “There’s a critique here that is a more sophisticated critique than some people think. I think you have to rethink how we run things to get a different approach to public spending, and to running the economy — more focused on early investment, early intervention, setting people up for success, and much less paying for failure.”
His constituents think taxes are too high for low earners. And he clearly sympathises. I think this quote speaks for itself: “One thing I heard most on the doorsteps in Makerfield was frustration about the personal allowance, frozen at £12,570.” Those complaints are “lodged in his mind”, he said. Though he stopped short of promising an immediate assault on his particularly front, he is clearly aware of every longstanding criticism of the relationship between taxes on income and the strength of incentives to work.
He’s willing to praise Kemi and Nigel. To do anything else, he said, would be “a pointless sort of thing”. He thinks voters are bored – indeed, repulsed – by that familiar, knee-jerk, disingenuous criticism that’s motivated solely by partisanship and oblivious to objective reality. So he said of Badenoch: “I think Kemi is probably much more capable than some of her predecessors. She’s certainly impressive in some ways.” On the Reform leader, he said: “You’ve got to admire Farage’s communication skills.” I asked if he’d have them for a pint at the famous Stubshaw Cross club, and the answer wasn’t a no.
He’s keeping his seat at the Hill Dickinson. Listening to Burnham talk about the “shock” of the transition reminded me of this verse from A Shropshire Lad: “That is the land of lost content/I see it shining plain/The happy highways where I went/And cannot come again.” He’s not been for a run by himself for four weeks, will never drive his own car again, and managed to become the main event at his own daughter’s graduation at Cardiff last Wednesday. But the cops have agreed to let him sit in his own seat in the stands at Everton next month. It’ll make for a “mega focus group” on his premiership, he said.
He thinks Westminster has changed for the worse. The largely innacurate briefing and backbiting over his cabinet appointments came as “a bit of a shock”, he said. When he left, he thought the Commons had a largely “collectivist” and “stable” culture. Now all anyone does is feed the algorithm. Hence why he kept the “black box” of his thinking firmly shut until this morning. He didn’t want to feed the beast and make himself a prisoner of that “feverish” atmosphere, nor “cut across” Keir Starmer’s last weeks in office.
His dad doesn’t know he’ll be prime minister. Burnham loves his parents very much. Like Starmer, his relationship with his father – a man of the Labour left – was clearly formative. But the Burnham home in Culcheth was a happy one and he told me his first speech tomorrow will be discoloured by a little sadness, because Roy, his dad, has Alzheimer’s and does not know he is leader of the Labour Party. Anyone whose relatives have suffered from dementia will recognise this, and it’s for that reason I think he was more stoical than sad when we spoke about this. “It’s a family achievement,” Andy said. “Although he doesn’t know it, it still makes me feel that we’ve kind of done something together.”
Andy Burnham is a Catholic. He had to tell officials that he still professes the old faith, who’ve drawn up constitutional workarounds on Anglican bishops and the like. Though he’s no longer a regular at mass, there was no way he’d have answered that question in the negative. “My mother would never forgive me if I answered no to that question,” he said. Eileen Burnham will be “wearing out her rosary beads” this morning. Guy Garvey of Elbow texted Andy to say his mum would be the same. I wrote about how much this means to him last month.
He wanted to know if Tommy Fleetwood could win the Open. Didn’t we all. It’s a wool thing. I was at Royal Birkdale on Saturday and told Burnham, with some regret, that Tommy hadn’t had a great back nine that afternoon. “He’s a classic Evertonian,” Burnham said. As a Kopite, I think it’s best that I allow that observation to speak for itself.
Anyway, you should read all 2,500 words of the interview in The Times, where there’s much, much more. What most struck me is how utterly relaxed he seemed for a man – and I said this to him – who will be signing the letters of last resort this morning. He’ll certainly need a pint by the end of this week, and he’s determined to keep up the habits that keep him grounded. The only question is where he’ll be able to have one. And that question was one he – probably wisely – avoided answering.