In the People’s History Museum in Manchester, there is a jacket belonging to Andy Burnham.
He was wearing the navy zip up when he delivered a blistering speech against Government-imposed Covid restrictions in October 2020. The clip went viral, with admirers branding him the “King of the North”. And the myth was born.
Nearly six years on, he chose the museum as the setting for another consequential speech – this time as a Prime Minister-in-waiting. Clad in what he dubbed his “Manchester clothes”, a dark T-shirt and jacket, he quipped, “sorry Kemi”, in a riposte to the Tory leader calling him “a pair of eyelashes and a black T-shirt” at last week’s PMQs.
He was relaxed and confident, displaying the easy charm that his supporters say makes him able to win people over on the doorstep. Unsurprising maybe, as he was on home turf, surrounded by his backers like Deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell and long-time friend and ally, Steve Rotheram, the Mayor of Liverpool City Region.
But he’s clearly comfortable in his own skin, and in what he stands for. He’s spent years away from Westminster working that out.
“He’s got more about him than people give him credit,” one Manchester ally told me. “The idea that he’s changed since being here isn’t right. I think he came back to who he always was.”
His speech began to sketch out a picture of what a Burnham government would look like. It starts with the promise of the “biggest rebalancing of power we have ever seen”, driven by a new No10 North. Place first, with local leaders deciding what’s best in their area on key issues like housing, infrastructure, utilities and welfare.
And it’s a decade-long vision. That might sound a bit entitled considering Keir Starmer was ousted in less than two years despite leading his party to a landslide election win. But it’s because some of the problems gripping Britain are so deep-rooted and structural that it would take more than one term to fix. Starmer understood this too, and talked about the need for a “decade of national renewal”.
Laudable as that is, he’ll need some eye-catching wins in the short term to convince voters and MPs that it was worth changing Prime Minister.
His programme is ambitious and there’s a lot of detail missing on how he would achieve it. But for now he’s trying to give a sense of what he wants to do with power.
It might feel a little jarring to the public watching him talk about a programme for Government only a week after Keir Starmer resigned. But it’s necessary when the transition of power is moving at lightning speed.
A week ago Burnham was on the train to London to be sworn in as an MP, and now he’s preparing to become Prime Minister on July 20, if no rival emerges. He urgently needs to explain what he plans to do with that power.
There are a lot of unanswered questions – and Burnham didn’t take any from journalists after his speech. That was a mistake. He needs to demonstrate that he is open to fair scrutiny.
We don’t know what he thinks on foreign policy, defence, immigration, the NHS, social care. We don’t know what his tax plans are, or who would be in his Cabinet. He will need to come up with answers on some of these questions and fast.
But one of the criticisms levelled at Keir Starmer was that he struggle to articulate what he really stood for. Burnham isn’t planning to make the same mistake.
His message was loud and clear. People might not agree with it but he made it clear the political direction is set.
It’s easy to be sceptical of politicians promising hope and change. Leaders of all political stripes do it, and few really deliver. Burnham will have a job of work to do to persuade jaded voters that he’s different to the PMs that came before.
But that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t hope for better. What is the point in politics otherwise?