Becoming Burnham: The Manchester Arena Call, Westminster Plotting, and Keir vs Andy

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Alastair Campbell?

  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 analyse what is Manchesterism and what does it mean if he tries to translate that to the whole of the UK?

• 0:53Alastair Campbell?

  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 Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer's gone. Andy Burnham is now Prime Minister. I'm delighted, as over the last two episodes, to be joined by Steve Rotheram to talk about all this and more. The next defining moment was Covid. And in particular, this very instinctive response when he's on the steps, talking to the media and Kevin Lee, his adviser, 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?

• 1:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:55Alastair Campbell?

  What was he feeling and communicating in that moment?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  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, I'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

• 2:42Speaker 02

  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 Rotheram 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,

• 3:24Speaker 02

  because you're asking us to, 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 that really, I think, scuppered 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 Rotheram 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 went mental and all of a sudden,

• 4:05Speaker 02

  I've got this foisty impact with Boris Johnson of all people, the person who wrote the spectator article that I'd 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 were accepting.

• 4:30Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think by then Andy's starting to think about Labour positioning? Because I've 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?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  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.

• 5:18Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think in any way Andy did deserve any of that? Do you think he was sort of prodding, poking, trying to project himself as a, as a national leader, not just a...

• 5:28Speaker 02

  No, because he'd been doing it under Boris Johnson and he'd been doing it way before Keir came onto the scene. He 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, the Metro mayors were invited to Downing 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

• 6:12Speaker 02

  can accelerate this and all that. We came away like punching the air. We go, wow, this is exactly what we've asked for. No government had even listened to us, never mind invited us to Downing Street. And that's by the way, the Tories who were there at the time. So 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.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  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 of the way. Give us the flexibilities and claim the credit at the dispatch box and tell people what Labour 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.

• 7:28Alastair Campbell?

  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.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  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 it up? But none of it came to fruition.

• 8:04Alastair Campbell?

  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, he's prodding. And then when do you think he 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.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Well, I don't accept the premise of he was forcing it. But just going back to Labour Party Conference, in that build up, 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 fuck's this about? You know, it was just like against Andy. It was bizarre.

• 8:44Alastair Campbell?

  What was them saying that he's trying to cause trouble?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  All sorts 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 was, there must have been a fear there that if he got back into Westminster, what does that mean to Keir and his government? But that anonymous briefing, honestly, if Andy gets involved in it, I'll call him out because this is shit-houseery 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 behind my back then and

• 9:30Speaker 02

  said, hey, have you seen what Steve Rotheram said, blah, blah, blah, I'd have issue with that. And it's, 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, Labour Party Conference in Liverpool was there. He...

• 9:47Speaker 02

  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 statesman cover, if you remember at the time, and that was the thing, because that was Kia's moment. If you remember the literature that we'd all got from the Labour Party, it just, it wasn't the Labour Party, it was the Kia Party, it was like everything was change, Kia, Kia, Kia, Kia, 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 cameras to be

• 10:31Speaker 02

  on him, or for them to misinterpret it if he didn't smile at the right juncture. And so he didn't do that. And he did about three or four fringe events, that's all.

• 10:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And then, but then when it came to it, there came a point when he, obviously, and 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 elections to Nigel Farage.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was it. Not even a dawning realisation. The first set of local elections frightened me. The second set literally had me petrified of what might come next. Not because I might lose my seats. I think if I stood, and I haven't decided yet, but if 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 councillors 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

• 11:34Speaker 02

  back. I didn't like all of that. What we both saw at close quarters in May this year was areas in Greater Manchester and areas in the Lippil City region where we literally were wiped out. So we had to do something.

• 11:48Alastair Campbell?

  And what did you think when, when the National Executive blocked Andy in the first by-election, Gordon and Denton?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Just, I mean, these are people who are supposed to understand politics in its wider sense. I bet you'd never have done that as a, if you were advising, 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, then all of a sudden, he then becomes the most important thing because he's, he's been able to overcome blockages. And as he did, he stood in a Reform seat, and everyone's expecting originally that Reform might have done well in it.

• 12:30Alastair Campbell?

  But if you're Keir Starmer,

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:32Alastair Campbell?

  You know by now that for Gordon and Denton as well, it happened to you in Makefield, but Gordon Denton as well, Andy was hoping to win.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  He would have won.

• 12:41Alastair Campbell?

  And then become an MP and then take out Keir.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Well, this is where I think the politics comes into it. Where, what, 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 Gordon and Denton and all that, but we have to have a serious conversation first about what comes next.

• 12:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  That never happened.

• 13:00Alastair Campbell?

  No, no. They never, they never had a conversation.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Not a serious one about, you know, what does Gordon and Denton 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 see the whites of somebody's eyes and, and say to them, you know, this is what I expect. I, I think the circumstances would have been completely different if that had happened.

• 13:22Alastair Campbell?

  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.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I wouldn't say a bad one. I'd just say it was a non-existent one at the end.

• 13:35Alastair Campbell?

  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 Gordon Denton, and they had have had a conversation, that you might have had Andy back in, and there wouldn't necessarily have been the, the immediate challenge?

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. If I look at the ruins now of what's happened, you can trace it back, can't you, to, to that blockage and the feeling that they didn't want all the best players on the pitch? That, that surely tactically was a poor decision. As I say, what I would have done, and like, I'll, I'll do this with anybody now, if they want, if they want to be the Metro Mayor of the Lippil City region, right, 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 sixty odd now, you know, 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, the people who were standing

• 14:43Speaker 02

  for Labour? That surely is the overriding concern of any leader of a party, not the Prime Minister, the leader of the party.

• 14:50Alastair Campbell?

  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 this by-election, he's home and dry?

• 15:06Speaker 02

  No, because of what happened in 2015. I'm always very positive, so I'm a glass half full 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 Makefield. That's the only contest that we're in. Let's win that one. And I went out with him most Sundays, and we just did the undecideds.

• 15:38Alastair Campbell?

  Out on the doors.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. I can only tell you that that face-to-face contact with the undecideds was inspiring. Because it wasn't that they were opposed to Labour, or they were opposed to Keir, or whatever, lots were. But it was like, you're all the same, what's the point? You know, 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, ah, you're all a load of shysters, you're all the same and all that, to, are you, are you going to do it? Will you promise that you're going to do it? And he said, yeah. And he, obviously he's delivered in the first few days.

• 16:16Alastair Campbell?

  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, he's Prime Minister. And of course, I was, I saw it with Tony Blair when he, as he was becoming Prime Minister. And you see big moments, and you, there definitely comes a moment where you're thinking in your mind, this, this is happening. How do you think that will change him?

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Hard one that, to tell you the truth. I, I don't know. I am hoping that not too much. How did it change from Tony that you knew to Tony Prime Minister?

• 16:50Alastair Campbell?

  I think he had to become a lot tougher.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:52Alastair Campbell?

  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, I think it does change. And then I think just the sheer volume of stuff that comes at you.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:03Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, at the moment, I mean, look, he's, he's, he's sort of making the news every single day at the moment. You know, thus far, touch wood, thank God, he hasn't had a sort of terrible thing to deal with and.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:16Alastair Campbell?

  So.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  That's a real test though, isn't it?

• 17:18Alastair Campbell?

  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, you having seen him in all these different circumstances, you, you think he's got the metal?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  I think he's become more of a pachyderma as time has gone on. He's not as fearful of, 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, 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 go, yeah, we've been waiting for people to say that, or to do that, or to 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, the

• 18:15Speaker 02

  schooling 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, as a Metro Mayor. So we've had to work within the constraints that were foisted on us.

• 18:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  But he's started to find ways in which he 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.

• 18:57Alastair Campbell?

  If you want to hear the rest of the episode and the whole series as it drops, just go to the rest is politics dot com.