The Rest Is Politics - Becoming Burnham: Thatcher, Hillsborough, and the Anger that Shaped Him | Part 1

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

To hear the full episode and the series as it drops, sign up up at therestispolitics.com Alastair is joined by Andy Burnham’s closets confident, friend and former colleague, Steve Rotheram – the Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region to discuss…  Who really is Andy Burnham, and how is he going to change Britain? How have events like Hillsborough, and Thatcher’s Northern neglect shaped him? And, how does he contend with his imposter syndrome, his ‘Catholic guilt complex’, and his restless desire to be liked? Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Josh Smith Social Producer: Celine Charles Executive Producer: Emily Kent Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a word. world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Andrew Murray Burnham, known to most of you by now as Andy, our seventh prime minister in just over a decade. King of the North to some, all vibes to others. But what kind of leader will he be? What drives him? What does he actually want this country to do and to be? And how did he go from being a parliamentary assistant? to Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in around a quarter of a century.

I've known Andy Burnham for around 30 years. He crops up a fair bit in my diaries, often talking about his anxieties, his fears, his frustrations, also about his ideas and his ambition. So I do know some of the story. I know quite a lot of the story, but today I've been sitting down talking to somebody

who probably knows Andy Burnham better than anybody outside his family. That's Steve Rotherham. Steve, former MP, left Westminster with Andy Burnham to go off and become mayors, Andy in Manchester, Steve in Liverpool's city region. So they've worked together, they've navigated Westminster together, they've left Westminster together, they've become mayors together, they've fought for the Hillsborough families and victims together, and now they're probably as close as you can get as friends in politics. So here is what you're going

to hear about in this series. You're going to hear from Steve about Andy Burnham's imposter syndrome. You're going to hear about his Catholic guilt complex. You're going to hear about Andy the family man, the DJ, the footballer and all that stuff. You're going to hear about the humiliation. That's Steve's word. The humiliation he felt on losing those two leadership elections, in particular, the one to Jeremy Corbyn. You're going to hear a really deep-rooted dislike of Margaret Thatcher radicalised by her. You're going to hear how he responded to the Manchester arena bombing and a truly extraordinary story about how he found out that it had happened. You're going to hear why he went absolutely ballistic with Boris Johnson during the COVID pandemic.

We're going to talk about Manchesterism, what it is, and maybe more importantly, how it can be applied to the whole country. And you're going to get Steve Rotherham's pretty well-informed predictions about what a Burnham government wants to do and will be like. That's all coming up on becoming Burnham. So Steve, thank you for being here. Great pleasure. Listen, let's start with his childhood. You were one of eight. Yeah.

Right. So also a Catholic, I'm guessing? No, we had no religion whatsoever. But you've got eight kids. Yeah, yeah. And you're growing up in a pretty, very well, an absolute working class part of Liverpool. Would you say your childhood was very different to Andy's?

I'd say it was similar in many ways, but they had their own home, whereas we had a council house, which actually was my mum's home, believe me. It wasn't a council's. My mum used to decorate that. My mum decorated, not my dad. He was at the Labour Club, having a few drinks, of course,

and enjoying himself. But I think the similarities of most people are that when you brought up in that sort of a community, that neighbourhood, you don't know what other people are living like, because all you can see is the people around you, and they're all living a very similar standard of life. And so his dad was an engineer, it was a telephone engineer. His mom, Eileen, was a GP receptionist. They're now in their mid-80s and his dad of course has dementia which is really sad to think he doesn't know just how far

Andy's gone or doesn't understand how far he's gone. Some family. Tell me whatever you feel comfortable saying about Andy's family. Parents, wife, kids. He's a real family man. I'm not just saying that because we can all say we're family men, can't we all? People who love our families

who doesn't love the family. Boris Johnson. But no, there's There's some formative things, I think, in his childhood, such as that moving from the first house and entry and then going to Coulcheth and then moving again and then going to the schools there rather than to a school in Liverpool. So I think all of that was formative.

And he's got two brothers who he really is close to and two great lads. And if you think about the family from that background, Two of them teachers, you know, head teachers and all that in schools. And Andy, who became a politician, obviously, but has done all right from himself as well. I think that's from his mum and dad. I think he'd get your values from your mum and dad. And Eileen, who's his mum, is just such a lovely woman.

And before his dad got dementia, obviously, I used to have chats to his dad. His dad's a big Evertonian and again formed that sort of, you must. following the family tradition of support in Everton but he has carried that forward to his own family and the closeness of him and his lad and the two girls who he's immensely close to and you can see that with the shows of affection but behind all of that just the way that they act as a family

it shows it that that is the basis of who he has become It's that strong bond. And then Mary Franci, who's Andy's wife, who, by the way, if anybody out there is somebody who liked a tweet, which is critical of her dress, I think shame on you. This is a woman who fought breast cancer, a woman who, again, is just from an ordinary background. Okay, she's from another country, she's from Holland. but she came over as well to the UK and did very well for ourselves and ended up in Cambridge. So it's not like she had all of the trappings of wealth.

They've created that by their intelligence and their determination. And a really, really good unit, a solid unit. And that's why I think Andy's being able to do some of these things. I can remember actually having dinner with him, this is when he was shadow education, I think. and Mary France was having the operation and I can remember him feeling guilt. Yeah.

That he was, yes, he was there as much as he could be, but both for her and for the kids, this sense of I've got to be in Westminster to sort of, you know, take on Michael Gover over some stupid new idea he's got when I've got all that going at home. And everyone's got a bit of that, haven't he? I mean, again, anybody who's away with jobs

in the armed forces or wherever, he's away from family, has got those contentions. He dealt with it really well, I think. And whilst he's doing all of that, trying also to have a bit of fun time, if you like, a bit of him time. So as you know, he's a lover of live music.

And we've been going to gigs probably for 15, 16, 17 years, whatever it is. And he's going to find that almost impossible. Now is the Prime Minister, isn't he, to go to a live music venue? Well, if he does go. He's got to do better than he did on his little dad dancer. Is it?

Oh, he's terrible. Should he just better not do it at all? Well, his taste in music sometimes is just depressing. So we do these DJ officers. I don't know whether. You know, we have a DJ battle. And I'll be playing, you know, something really upbeat. And then he'll put on the smits, you know,

heaven knows I'm miserable now or girlfriend in the coma. And I'm like, yeah, that keeps the vibe going. Doesn't it? Well done that. Yeah, so I'll put something else on then to get it going again, but if Frankie or something up it goes again, yeah, he genuinely believes that we've had these DJ battles, and he's won some of them.

Oh, okay, okay. Not a chance. I mentioned Catholicism. Did you ever have a sense that Andy's religion was important to him? Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. He does have that sort of Catholic guilt complex, you know, that many people have. He's very similar to what he made to were Catholics as well,

in their attitude to life, their beliefs, their values, principles. So what does the guilt complex mean that he sort of feels if somebody's not doing as well as he should? He's got a responsibility. He's always got that sort of, you know, the Catholicism looms large. If he is believing that he should do something,

then I think he'd be steered away from it because of his beliefs. He once said, he read the catechism and he felt that the enfranchisement of it on earth was the Labour Party. Do you kind of feel that? Do you feel there's an moral, you know, It's either a moral mission or it's nothing.

Yeah, I do. I think it's a crusade, yeah. I think that the Labour Party is the greatest organ for social change in this country since its inception. And religion, of course, can be often compared to that, because if you truly believe in the teachings of the church, then it's about being good to other people and all that. That's what socialism is to me. I mentioned in the introduction Liverpool back then.

And I mean, you obviously lived it much more than Andy, who's, you know, just outside and he's, but he's looking on in. Give us a sense of it. You know, we did the stats there, but also the politics of it were brutal as well, weren't they? Oh, dear me, yeah. So the thing that he talked about is boys from the black stuff. And actually, that's through a conversation that we had that I teased out of him how fundamental that was to his belief that the normal. wasn't getting a decent enough deal from that particular government, the Thatcher government. But we all knew that. It was writ large, wasn't it? Nearly 100,000 jobs gone. And those people,

you know, left with no alternative. So it was a seminal piece of television for lots of reasons, but also, I think quite clearly formed that important instinct within him, which was about injustice. And he could see that the things that were happening to Liverpool were wrong in so many ways, but also the damage that it was due to people's lives was something worth fighting for. How do you think that whole Liverpool, demise of Liverpool, joblessness in Liverpool, social unrest in Liverpool, what lasting effect do you think that had any way he thinks about politics? A lot of the stuff that happened in the earlier years sometimes still comes out, if we're having a conversation about something.

So it very much forms part of the politician he's become and has been very formative in some of the bitterness that he feels against the way in which the state has conspired against certain areas. I do believe that this is why when I was trying to persuade him to be the Metro Mayor or standards of the Metro Mayor for. greater Manchester, I think this is why devolution became really important. So it's no good to have a moan about things not going brilliantly well in Westminster. If that's all you do, you're just there and not trying to change it.

He looked from the outside, the mechanisms by which we can start to use devolution to change politics. And I think that's why you want to go back in because he can do that on a national scale now. and he has spoken openly about using devolution as a way in which every area in the country can start to benefit from growth. And Thatcher was, how do we put it? Anatomy. Hate figure? Yeah. I'd say another thing that you get taught off your parents, my mum said never ever say hate because it's a useless emotion.

It doesn't actually do anything. So it was difficult for me to actually say that I hated Thatcher, but I disliked here immensely. And she did so much damage to our area, both to the economy and the way which we operated, but also to the reputation. And would you say, so when she won, I think particularly the second election, 83, and then meanwhile, Liverpool is electing a really, really far left. council. Yeah. Do you think to some extent that was a product of her, a response to her, or was it just that Liverpool's always been more left wing than the rest of the country?

No, I think it's an absolute response to Thatcherism and to what was happening. There were people who joined Labour Party politics there. He wouldn't have been associated with our party. You know, there was a broad church of everybody from communists and socialist workers party and everything all joined in with militants, of course, and then some people who were just mainstream labour. They had the sort of the same values and principles that historically people would join our party with.

But it became really, really toxic, of course, because that injustice burns brightly, and I believe that at that time, the politicians in Liverpool wanted to take on the role of the aggressor against the government that they believe the whole country should follow them with. Andy said during the recent by-lation, he said this,

I saw what Thatcher's government did to places like this, de-industrialisation, draining away of economic, social and political power. It left places like Make a Feel behind, and Britain has been on that path for the last 40 years. Look, I like Andy, and I've known him for a long, long time, I get a bit narched by this 40-years thing. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me.

But, you know, the neoliberal, like, And it feels to me like, okay, Thatcher's this terrible, as you say, even though your mom doesn't like it, hate figure who comes along, damages places like Liverpool. But it always feels to me from this that Andy's saying, and then you have this long period of a Labour government, and they did NAFOL as well. Yeah, but I think you'll admit this. What Labor tried to do is to repair the damage of the Thatcher years, but it didn't do in an instructed way.

Often we had pilot schemes. So I remember the sort of the top-down approach to this, that, we'll tell you what's good for your area and we'll give you some money to do it. And I don't think they really worked. Most of the time, that money wasn't spent in an appropriate way that you would expect. He's trying to do with things on the New Deal for Communities.

Yeah, well, there was a load of it, wasn't it? There was all the stuff that they did on housing. And that was really good. But of course, it wasn't looking at the peculiarities or the individual needs of an area. It was a policy at a national level, foisted on everybody in it. So it was a one size fit all.

So, you know, the truth. neglect of Liverpool, we then had the minor strike. We've had all the hatred of Thatcher, you've got social unrest in Liverpool, and then he's off to Cambridge, and then life and his anger about what's happening in the world gets even deeper. 93 soccer fans died in today's FAA Cup disaster, Europe's worst ever sporting tragedy. Most of them were teenagers and children. They were crushed to death at the Liverpool-Nottingham Forest semi-final held at Hillsborough in Sheffield. 200 more were injured. It happened when ticketless Liverpool fans

surged onto terraces packed with genuine ticket holders. They'd been let in by police hoping to ease congestion outside the ground. No crowd trouble had taken place. So this is 15th of April, 1989. I was a journalist on the Sunday mirror watching this unfold. It was a Saturday.

97 football fans crushed to death, 766, injured. And there's a deliberate strategy by the government, by the police essentially to say this is a bunch of pissed, scouse football fans that essentially have brought this upon themselves. And you and Andy would be part of what became a 27-year-long campaign. Andy wasn't there. You were at Hillsborough. And I guess it's for both of you in different ways, been an utterly defining event.

So just, you know, say as much as little as you want to about that. the likes of the establishment found it easier to scapegoat fans who'd already been blamed for one disaster. It must be their fault, wasn't it? Things like in a locked room, videotapes went missing. And so this is not allegations. This all came out subsequently in the court proceedings and the second inquest. The police and the police federation were straight in there to blame fans. And there's an old saying, isn't I think it was a Harold Wilson who said that the,

a liking be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. I'm trying to work out when a bit of iron entered Andy's soul. Because I've always felt, I've known for a long time. And I've been saying recently, I've never, I've never seen that much steel in it. If you just said to me back then, no, one day he'll be, it won't just be prime minister, but he'll become private. by de-fenestrating a guy who's got a three-figure majority to his name, and he'll arrange a by-election, he'll manage to get a by-election, and he'll come in,

and he won't even have a contest, and suddenly he's going to be there, prime minister, because that requires a level of politics and ruthlessness, you know, and come from me, this is not, I'm not saying this is an insult at all. There is, you know, I never quite imagine was there. And I just wondered whether that was when a bit of iron ended his soul or whether actually it was later when we had the famous booing and heckling when he was a minister. I do think that when he, I asked him, we were at a funeral for another lad

who was killed in Spain and he wouldn't repatriate his body and the family had to buy his body back and all this sort of stuff. A horrendous story. Anyway, we were both at this funeral. And I lent over to him and said, listen, you know, I'm going to get in an invite into the 20th anniversary of Hillsbury. And he just looked at me. He was like, what do you want me there for? And I said, he's now culture minister.

Yeah, it's culture secretary. Yeah. And I said, because we need somebody at the heart of government who will take this fight forward. Because at that stage, the year before, we probably had, you know, five or six thousand at the 19th anniversary. Because all the doors had been slammed in the face. And it looked as if that was the end of it. and I said we need something, we need this catalyst so that we can get to truth and justice.

Anyway, he did, as you know, speak at the 20th anniversary. But the thing that I watched, because I was the Lord Mayor then, the one with the chain on, I'm sitting at the front waiting to go on after Andy and I'm looking at the crowd and I could see that there was real anger because he wasn't Andy Burnham, he was a representative of the government

and the government hadn't done enough at that stage. Today I represent. the Prime Minister and the government. Twenty years ago. And he talked about Gordon Brown had sent him with a message. And it was a one lone voice. And I don't know whether you'll get it on the tape, but it just shouts justice.

And then it rippled to the crowd. And there were 37,000 people there. And the four sides of Amfield all started singing, justice for the 96 as it was then. But today, as the Prime Minister has asked me to convey, we can at least pledge that 96 fellow football supporters who died will never be forgotten. And he asks us to think at this time. What were you thinking about his position at that time standing there?

He's somebody who likes to be liked. He's somebody who loves Merseyside, even though he's an Evertonian. He's somebody who feels responsibility quite deeply. And there he is representing the government, and he's got 30,000 or thousand people shouting at. at him. And you're the guy who's put him there. What were you thinking about him then? And what defect did you think that would have on him? The first thing I was thinking is, to hear the rest of the episode and the whole series as it drops, just go to the rest of

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