The Rest Is Politics - Becoming Burnham: The Manchester Arena Call, Westminster Plotting, and Keir vs Andy

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

To hear the full episode, and the whole series, sign up at therestispolitics.com How did Andy Burnham learn about the Manchester Arena bombing? Would he still have tried to become PM had Keir Starmer let him stand in the Gorton and Denton byelection? And when did tensions between Keir and Andy really begin? 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 episode three of our mini-series Becoming Burnham. We're now into the Manchester era. We're into the time when he's left Westminster. He's become mayor of Greater Manchester. He has a baptism of fire, I think you might call it, because the Manchester Arena bombing comes fairly early in his tenure. We have COVID. We have another big moment in Andy Burnham's rise

when he directly takes on Boris Johnson's government and attacks the way that Johnson is handling the COVID pandemic. We're going to talk a little bit about some of the challenges he faced and the promises he made and the extent to which he delivered on them. We're going to try and analyze what is Manchesterism and what does it mean if he tries to translate that to the whole of the UK. And we're going to talk about how, as we all know, he got blocked from standing in a by-election, but then he managed to stand in the next one and he won it and he won it big. And that was the breaking point for Kea Stama. Kea Stahma's gone. Andy Burnham is now

Prime Minister and delighted, as over the last two episodes, to be joined by Steve Rotherham to talk about all this and more. The next defining moment was COVID. Yes. And in particular, this very instinctive response when he's on the steps talking to the media. And Kevin Lee, his advisor, comes up and shows him something that central government has announced that basically says, Manchester can leg it. That's when the whole King of the North thing started, wasn't it? really. This is no way to run the country in a national crisis. It isn't.

This is not right. They should not be doing this, grinding people down, trying to accept the least that they can get away with. $22 million to fight the situation that we are in is frankly disgraceful. What was he feeling and communicating in that moment? The frustration of a prime minister, you know, the political leader in this country, playing politics

during one of the most difficult times that any of us have ever been through. There's not many people alive at that time who'd gone through a world war and yet this was devastating for us. None of us knew when it was going to end. And there was Boris Johnson trying to play me and him off against each other

stupidly believing somehow that we weren't phoning each other every night every time I had a conversation with Johnson that'd be telling Andy and vice versa. And so we knew what the offers were. We knew what was on the table because I'd negotiated. I started with them offering $20 million because we were going to go into the highest tier. And I said, that's nowhere near for the compensatory payment that we need because the businesses that would have been affected.

So we had a figure in mind. But Andy and Greater Manchester had already been in the top tier for, I think, about eight weeks. and they hadn't had a penny. So quite rightly he was saying, you know, we need our chunk for being in the top tier. Liverpool City region is now going into it. Steve Roderham has told me that they're getting,

and every time we went backwards and forwards, he'd get a more substantial offer. And I'd go back and say, well, hang on a second because you're asking us to it, well, you're telling us that we've got to go on this top tier, but we don't know when it's going to end. So we need X amount. And it was that really, I think, scupper Johnson

because he thought that he could play games. He actually went out in a Downing Street conference, press conference, said, I've done a deal with Mayor Steve Rotherham in the Liverpool City region, blah, blah, blah. Basically, Andy's on the naughty step. He's not playing fair and isn't he a terrible person? And so the first thing is that Andy was getting credit, sort of withstanding the pressure off Johnson.

but my social media feed when mental and all of a sudden I've got this voice impact with Boris Johnson of all people. The person who wrote the Spectator article that had attacked all those years ago and it looked as if somehow I'd betrayed people. So that's how vile Johnson had become

where he was prepared to use any tactic to try and position Andy so that he had to accept less than what we would accept. Do you think by then, and he's starting to think about labor positioning, because I met him a few times fairly early on, both when Keir was opposition leader and afterwards when he became prime minister, where I got the feeling he wasn't impressed,

and I got the feeling as well that he really didn't like the way that they did politics. He really didn't like the briefing stuff. He really didn't like the fact that he was constantly being, because they put him on the naughty step along quite a lot as well, didn't they? Yeah, that speech that Keir gave to the press lobby where it was almost like a roasting of Andy Burnham, but without the ability for him to answer those barbed things. Do you think he did deserve any of that?

Do you think he was sort of prodding, poking, trying to project himself as a national leader, No, because he'd been doing it under Boris Johnson and he'd been doing it way before Keir came onto the scene. It tried twice and successfully to run for the Labour Party leadership before Keir was even in the Labour Party. So it's not that. It wasn't the Keir thing.

I think what had happened at that stage was that we were starting to look as if we could gain power and then we won that landslide. And we met Keir in the first three days, I think, of a new Labour government, all the metro mayors were invited to Down the Street. And the message from the top table was, we're going to hit the ground running, and we need you. And you can get this delivery for us and you can accelerate this and all that.

We came away, like punching the air. We've got, wow, this is exactly what we've asked for. No government had even listened to us, never mind, invited us to Down the Street. And that's, by the way, the Tories who were there at the time. we all came away really jubilant thinking this is a real opportunity for us now to to move our areas forward. Nothing really happened. Nothing really changed. And then we became more and more frustrated because the machinery of government then started to get in our way.

And on several occasions, I said to Keir, by the way, who wasn't Keir, he was the Prime Minister. So he, again, like with Johnson, I always called him Prime Minister. He said, call me Keir. I said, you're the Prime Minister. And that's what I want you to do. I want to act as our Prime Minister. And I said, Prime Minister, what we're finding is that the government isn't facilitating or aiding what we want to do to deliver on behalf of the country.

It's getting in our way. Can you not ask it to withdraw? Take the machinery out the way. Give us the flexibilities and claim the credit at the dispatch box and tell people what Labor are doing. I said there's a message there for us all. There's a win-win out of that one. But nothing ever changed. changed. So were you and Andy sort of sitting there and talking to each other and saying, look, we've got a Labour government tick, got a big majority. That's a good thing to have. But the politics just isn't working. The politics wasn't working. And that was quite frightening as well because being in opposition for 14 years, that's the thing we thought, bang, you know. So what can we do? Where can we do it? What are those areas in the country where?

they've already got plans and where they've started someone is that we can speed her up. But none of it came to fruition. But then there was the party conference where Andy then, you know, doing lots of interviews before it and he's again projecting himself,

he's pushing his prodding. And then when do you think he's sort of in his own mind, he said to himself, this is not working, it's got to change, and there's nobody inside who's going to force it,

I'm going to have to do this. Well, I don't, accept the premise of he was forcing it. But just going back to Labour Party conference, in that buildup, if you have a look to the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, there was all sorts of briefing coming from number 10. And we were like, what the fucks this about?

You know, it was just like, against Andy. It was like, it was bizarre. What was them saying that he's trying to cause trouble? All sort of things, but it was all, you know, Andy Burnham this and it was all like bad boy Andy Burnham's doing this from our government, our government, which I couldn't accept or understand. And of course there must have been a fear there that if he got back into Westminster, what does that mean to Kea and his government?

But that anonymous briefing, honestly, if Andy gets involved in it, I'll call him out because this is shit-housery at the highest level. I can't stand it. If I've got a problem with you and you'll know this, I'll say to you, listen, I don't agree with such and such a thing. And you'll say, well, this is the reason I'm doing it. And we might not agree. and you walk away. But if you went beyond me back then and said, hey, have you seen what Steve Ratherum said, blah, blah, blah,

I'd have issue with that. And that's what was happening. And I hated it. And I still hate it now. So he was then having a pop back. It just so happened. Labor Party Conference and Liverpool was there. He could have caused an uproar.

Yeah, absolute chaos and mayhem. Could have. And he chose to do just a couple of things. but the thing that wound everybody up was he was on the new state's uncover if you remember at the time and that was the thing because that was Keir's moment if you remember the literature that would all go off from the Labour Party it just it wasn't a Labour Party it was the Keir Party it was like everything was change Kea Keir Kier and everything

and all of a sudden Andy got the front of a magazine I think that really got to them and that's where he then decided and I said to him don't be going to the leader's speech, which he didn't. Didn't go to the leader's speech because he didn't want the canvas to be on him or for them to misinterpret it if he didn't smile at the right junction. So he didn't do that. And he did about three or four fringe events, that's all. Yeah.

And then when it came to it, there came a point when he obviously, I think you probably agreed with this, that there's a real danger here that we're going to squander this three-figure majority and we're going to lose the next election as Nigel Farage. Yeah, that was it. Not even a dawning realising. The first set of local elections frighten me. The second set literally had me petrified of what might come next,

not because I might lose my seat. I think if I stood and I haven't decided yet, but at this moment I'm going to stand in 2028, I think I'll win even if reform are doing well. The problem was that lots of my colleagues, lots of those diligent counsellors all over the country, were getting wiped out by charlatans and people who didn't have the same values as we've got. So that was the thing that was, I was pushing back.

I didn't like all of that. What we both saw close quarters in May this year was areas in Greater Manchester and areas in the Liverpool City region where we literally were wiped out. So we had to do something. And what did you think when the National Executive blocked Andy in the first by, you can go on and indenting. Just, I mean, these are people who are supposed to understand politics in its wider sense. I bet you'd never have done that if you were advised and you say, okay, if we do that,

what are the likely scenarios? So what are the options? And one of them would have been, if he finds another seat, and all of a sudden, he then becomes the most important thing because he's being able to overcome blockages. and as he did, he stood in a reform seat and everyone was expecting originally that the form might have done well in it. But if you're Keir Stama, you know by now that for Gorton and Denton as well, it happened to in McEfield, but Gorton and Denton as well,

Andy was hoping to win. He would have won. And then become an MP and then take out Kear. This is where I think the politics comes into it. Go on what would you have done in them circumstances? Because I'll tell you what I would have done. I would have said, listen, we will back you and go on the dent and all that, but we have to have a serious conversation first about what comes next.

That never happened. No, no. They never had a conversation. Not a serious one about, you know, what does Gorton and Dent mean if you win it? Because that's what I would have done. And by the way, not on the phone. Face to face so you can see the whites of somebody eyes and say to them, you know, this is what I expect.

I think the circumstances would have been completely different. It's interesting, isn't it? Because Andy's people skills are very, very good. And yet his relationship with Keir, it seems to me, did very quickly become a bad one. Yeah. I don't say a bad one. I'd just say it was a non-existent one at the end. But to Andy, that's bad, isn't it?

Because Andy wants to have that relationship. Keir probably wants to just think, the mayors are over there doing whatever they do. I'm carrying on. Andy wants to be, he wants to have a good relationship with the Prime Minister. Do you think if he had been allowed to stand in Gorton Denton, and they had have had a conversation that you might have had Andy back in and there wouldn't necessarily have been the immediate challenge.

Yeah, I do. If I look at ruins now of what's happened, you can trace it back, can't you, to that blockage and the feeling that they didn't want all the best players on the pitch. That surely, tactically, was a poor decision. As I say, what I would have done, and I'll do this with anybody now. If they want to be the metro-mereld of Pilsons City region,

and they can come and help me, I'd have a conversation with them and say, look, I'm not going to go on forever. I'm 60-yard now. At some stage, there'll be an opportunity for you. But how about if we work together and save the local councillors in our area? So that's what Keir should have been doing. How do we save the people who are standing for labour?

That surely is the overriding concern of an, any leader of a party, not the Prime Minister, the leader of the party. So then Josh Simons steps down, he comes in, local elections have happened, and by now, Keir's, I guess, politically feeling too weak to block him even if he wanted to. At that point, are you thinking, well, if Andy wins his by election, he's home and dry? No, because of what happened in 2015. I'm always very positive, so I'm a glass-half-type person, but on this, I was very, very nervy that there might have been some shenanigans somewhere.

So I didn't take anything for granted and I said, let's just concentrate on the bit that we need to do, which is winning in Maker Field. That's the only contest that were in. Let's win that one. And I went out with him most Sundays and we just did the undecided. Oh, on the doors? Yeah. I can only tell you that that face-to-face contact with the undecisand,

was inspiring because it wasn't that they were opposed to Labor or they were opposed to care or whatever, lots were, but it was like, you're all the same, what's the point? It was like this apathy to politics. I think that's the real loser in these things. So when we went out and spoke to people, the amount of people that he turned from, you're all a load of the sheik says, you're all the same and all that, to, are you going to do that? Will you promise that you're going to do it? And he said, yeah, and obviously he's delivered in the first few days.

Yeah, yeah. We talked in the first episode about imposter syndrome at Cambridge, and you said he probably still has a bit of it now that he's prime minister. And of course, I saw it with Tony Blair as he was becoming prime minister, and you see big moments. There definitely comes a moment where you're thinking in your mind this is happening. How do you think that will change him? I'd want that to tell you the truth.

I don't know. I am hoping that not too much. How did it change from Tony that you knew to Tony Prime Minister? I think he had to become a lot tougher. Yeah. I think he had to become a lot better at what he did. I think he had to become a much better judge of people. So I think it does change.

And then I think just the sheer volume of stuff that comes at you. Yeah. I mean, at the moment, I mean, look, he's sort of making the news every single day at the moment. you know, thus far, touchwood, thank God, he hasn't had a sort of terrible thing to deal with. Yeah. That's a real test though, isn't it? Yeah. I think that's when a government gets tested is when something goes very badly wrong.

And that's when you'll see the metal. But you haven't seen him in all these different circumstances, you think he's got the metal. I think he's become more of a pacidema as time has gone on. He's not as fearful of the odd negative. comment. So that's a good thing, isn't it, that he's starting to develop that. He's very singular in his mind on what he wants to do as well in regard to policy. So there's a whole host of things that I know about, I'm not going to rehearse them today. But some of the things, you know, yet we've been waiting for people to say that or to do that or to him

introduce that. It doesn't necessarily even take him away from what the manifesto is. But as you've seen, you can move things around the system. And the great grounding for this or the school and that he's had as a Metro mayor means that he's tested some of these things out. And you only get a limited budget as a Metro Mayor. So we've had to work within the constraints that were foisted on us. But he started to find ways in which you can get other people to contribute and use the funding in a cocktail rather than just a single point of funding.

So there's loads of things that I'm certain that he'll do. But the one thing you can be assured of is that he's already working on not what next week is, but the week after, the month after, and as I say, year after year for 10 years, that's where he wants to get to. If you want to hear the rest of the episode and the whole series as it drops, just go to the rest is politics.com.