The Rest Is Politics - Becoming Burnham: People Pleasing, The Shadow Years and Losing to Jeremy Corbyn

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Who are the political figures that shaped Andy Burnham? How far will the new PM go to be liked? And what impact did losing to Jeremy Corbyn's popularity 'tsunami' have on his career - and confidence? Join Alastair Campbell and Steve Rotheram as they address all these questions and much more on Becoming Burnham Producer: India Dunkley Researcher: Miranda Crawford Video Editor: Josh Smith Social Producer: Celine Charles Executive Producer: Emily Kent Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to part two of the Restis Politics series on Becoming Burnham. He always was Burnham, but he's become the Prime Minister, and we've been very lucky to be able to talk to Steve Rotherham, his close friend, and Metro Mayor of Liverpool region about his rise from, the young man we talked about at the end of episode one, who was just coming out of Cambridge University. And now in episode two, we're going to be talking about his political career. where did he get the ambition and the drive to become not just an assistant to a politician,

but a politician himself? How did he cope with losing, losing his leadership defeats, and also labour losing, and him suddenly finding he was no longer in a winning environment? And what was it that made him in the end say, Westminster is no longer for me, I'm heading north? Let's just go through where he went. So we had his two leadership elections. Yeah.

We'll come back to when he goes off back to the north with you. But do you think in either or both of those he thought he could win? I think the first one was just a bit of a stab in the dark. You know, I want to put my name forward. You've seen that subsequently where people have just associated themselves with a campaign so they can raise the profile. I think that was what that one was. So 2010, Ed V. David is the sort of main focus.

And Andy was second to drop out, I think, after that's done. But then 2015, and Miliband goes, and I don't think even Jeremy Corbyn thought he was going to win when he started. Andy was almost, was he favourite with the bookies at one point?

So in my office in Westminster, in the Palace of Westminster, I had this whiteboard up and with all the names that we had got, we'd gone and gathered these names all going to support Andy. This is 2015?

2015, yeah. And... You're running his campaign, yeah, well... You're managing his campaign. Yeah, managing. But he had Michael do.

You had some people who understood how to win campaigns around them. And he was so far ahead. We'd run out of whiteboards and so we'd happen to put stuff, pieces of paper with their names. And then the left chose their candidate. We thought it was going to be Diane again. So we weren't really fearful. Not because Diane isn't a brilliant candidate, but because she hadn't ignited the left and the appetite for a change of politics.

in the previous one. So we thought, you know, if it's dying, if it was John. John's really cany, as you know, I've got a lot of respect for John McDonnell. I think he's a brilliant political operator. We thought more to it. But anybody else, we thought we wiped the floor. And then he'd come up with Jeremy Corby and we thought,

no one's going to go for that. And one by one, I was rubbing or crossing off the names of people who were coming to me and saying, listen, I'm going to support Jeremy. And I was asking people why. And for loads of spurious reasons, people were coming up with, I'd say, excuses really, rather than the rationale. And we were crossing them off. What was the sort of thing he was saying?

Well, some people, because they'd sat by him in Parliament and stuff like that, and he'd heard him. And he was a decent orator. So he could carry an argument. One, who'd actually started their political career working in his office. And so there's loads and loads of different reasons why they gave, but I don't think any of them were politically concrete enough to justify why they weren't now supporting Andy. Anyway, he's still got miles more than the numbers that he needed. But I had somebody at the PLP when Jeremy was getting close to the final numbers. I'm trying to think of exactly what was the 30-something at the time.

Well, 38, I'll just say that. And so we was on 35 or whatever. And so we're waiting for, this is when Margaret Beckett and Sadie Kahn and they came in and said, we've got to get him on the ballot, have a proper contest. Yeah.

So even then, people like Margot would be thinking it will be better for Andy if he's got Jeremy to fight. Yeah. And they were thinking also that we needed to lance this boil, which was that sort of dichotomy between the left of the party and the rump of the party. and we thought the rumple obviously come out the top

and it wasn't until we heard that he'd got over the line I phoned Andy and said listen that he's got the required numbers and all that and there was just a bit of a silence and I knew and he knew that it was going to be a lot more problematic than with first thoughts how did he deal with that sense of so there he is you've got your whiteboard and you've got your post-its and they're all going across the wall because you've got so many MPs

backing you and then suddenly they start falling off and then suddenly he realizes oh I thought I was in with the shout but this is probably going away how did he deal with that at first not brilliantly in regard to um you know you almost go through the the stages don't you with disbelief and all that we we were quite clear that there was still a campaign to win but there were some things that happened that you just think oh everything's conspired against us. There was once where he was doing a speech in a church and it was one of us better performances

because I actually said to him at one stage, Alison, and I bet you've said this to people that you've worked with, maybe to Tony Blair, but I said, you know what? I said, you're a very good Andy Burnham but you're a shit, phony politician so don't try and be one.

Try to be yourself and authentic and all that. And he did this speech and he was asked he was allowed people to ask questions and one of them said Andy I don't know whether it's sort of totemich but you've

delivered a fantastic speech for the last 35 minutes behind a sign at a big banner that says repent for JC is coming and we just went oh my God I can't believe you didn't spot that

I cannot believe nobody spotted that so it would have happened in my day Yeah, so that was a difficult one. You knew your luck was out. We was just thinking, oh, dear me. And then we went around some places and it was almost as if a beetle had walked,

a John Paul George or Ringo type beetle had walked into the room with the response for Jeremy. It was one of the most bizarre things that I've ever seen. And what do you learn from that? What did you learn from people saying that actually somebody was, who none of us really saw coming, let's be frank, what did he learn from thinking, we've taken this for granted that somebody like me is going to become the next leader

and this guy's come from left field. And not only has he come from left field, but he's genuinely exciting a lot of people in the Labour Party. Yeah. And beyond. Absolutely. So what did you learn from that? Well, I think it was that.

Taking the message to people is really potent because what Jeremy was saying and by the way, I went to work for Jeremy as you know, so I didn't just hear this during the leadership campaign. I heard the same thing for speech after speech after speech with Jeremy and he basically had a little

book and he had some and none of it excited me in regard to wow, this is I've just seen the light and you know, it was like what? But when he'd finished I've never seen ovations like Jeremy got and he really did connect with

people whether you like that or not. He did connect. I did a thing in Liverpool when you and Tony Blair were in Liverpool and he was in the Devonshire and he gave the speech and genuinely even I was going, I'd vote

for him just because he was able to connect at that level with people and Jeremy was doing that with big chunks of Labour supporters. You know we were miles ahead and then we were marginally ahead and then you just think Oh dear.

And then he announced in the QE2 theatre in London, who the winner was. And I was still hoping that if Jeremy got 47, 48, that nobody who support the other candidates would singly transfer to Jeremy and then Andy Somer would, and I think he got 60% in the year? We don't have to be unequal. It doesn't have to be unfair.

Poverty isn't inevitable. Things can and they will change. Thank you very much. Do you think the general public would choose Jeremy Corbyn as a prime minister? Well, we'll have to see you, won't we? But what they do want is politicians of conviction. People who say what they mean. They are sick to death of people coming on looking like they're reading off a script.

Well, that's clearly not Jeremy Corbyn. So what do you think that did to him? It's not just that he's lost. He's kind of lost to Jeremy Corbyn, as you say, when his name first started to get thrown in the ring. people thought, this isn't going to be a problem. So what sort of soul searching went on with Andy after that?

For a lot of people outside of the Westminster bubble, and it genuinely is a bubble, it was Jeremy Who. And then all of a sudden, he loses badly to Jeremy. And I think there was a lot of soul searching from Andy, you know, how has it gone from being so far ahead

to losing so badly? And everybody does a bit of naval gaze in those moments. don't, you know, what did we do wrong? But it was literally a tsunami that we couldn't hold back. It started almost immediately that he got the required number of nominations for him to enter the contest. And we just found that it was overwhelmed. As you lose his 2010, he has this period.

He's not really happy. He's also got this situation with his, wife and her health challenges. And then we lose 2015 as well. And he loses that. And then we have Brexit. Yeah. Do you think you ever thought of packing it all in?

It must have crossed everybody's mind at that time. Did you think of packing it? Yeah, I was thinking, well, what's the point in this? Because I've always believed in the European Union. And I just think that, well, my belief was they shouldn't have asked that question. And he asked the wrong question anyway. if they had asked were people more likely to withdraw from Westminster and Whitehall than Brussels or Strasbourg, I think you would have got an equally negative response from the country.

But the way in which our party was positioning itself was fairly nuanced. And I wanted to just go out there and sing from the hilltops. Look, this is fantastic. A place like the Liverpool city region, we got object of one, when we weren't getting anything because of the Tory government at the time. We didn't get anything. And that objective one monies was a facilitator and a catalyst for massive regeneration in the... But the bit that I think the European Union did poorly was the communicator.

Remember eventually we started putting the stars around stuff. So we're getting million pounds or 10 million pounds project. And he had a little... I was like, get out. they didn't tell people. It was too late. So I do think the whole European angle to this was a missed opportunity for us because there was certainly some light between the different parties and you had the Tories and the Lib Dems then on either side and we were trying to straddle two horses. Totally.

To hear the rest of the episode and the whole series as it drops, just go to the rest is Politics.com.