I worked for Andy Burnham for nearly five years when he was Mayor of Greater Manchester.
As a senior local government officer who sat outside Burnham's office, it was my job to lead the media team to communicate what we were delivering for the people of Greater Manchester. He was the first to introduce a £2 cap on bus fares, the first to take buses back under public control through the Bee Network, he introduced the Manchester Baccalaureate that gives equal weighting to technical and university education, he introduced a Good Employment Charter and Good Landlord Charter, he increased frontline police officers by raising funding locally, and reducing homelessness has always been one of his top priorities.
There were also some surreal moments like the time he appeared on American TV’s Morning Joe show where he talked about football and New Order – a favourite band of Kamala Harris’s husband. Or when he was launching the Greater Manchester Music Commission, he decided to do an acoustic rendition of Wonderwall – including looking up the lyrics on his phone. Or when he took to social media to question if skateboarding should be a part of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and following the predictable outcry, he went to a skate park for a beginners lesson and found that it was a lot harder than it looked.
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There were also difficult things we had to deal with. With a population of nearly three million people, Burnham led the region’s response to the Covid pandemic using his experience as a former health secretary dealing with the swine flu pandemic. His mantra of putting place first over party is what led to all 10 council leaders in the region – including Conservative-led Bolton – to back his high stakes confrontation with the Boris Johnson government.
I was there when Burnham gave his unscripted speech outside Central Library in Manchester where he accused the Government of treating Greater Manchester like “canaries in a coal mine” when they proposed moving us into a regional lockdown with the toughest restrictions when a national lockdown was needed.
He stood up for the region again when Nicola Sturgeon’s Government imposed a ban on travel to Manchester and Salford without any warning. This puzzled Burham as he was often supportive of the Scottish Government’s battles with the UK Government during Covid.
My experience of working with him is that he gets things done. He has a strong work ethic, he’s very driven and he’s ambitious about what he wants to deliver. For those of us who had to get on and do the delivering, it could be tough with long hours, and we were being constantly stretched to go further and faster. However, Burnham’s strength is that he keeps people motivated, he takes people on the journey with him, and he always went out of his way to thank and acknowledge colleagues for their work.
He’s likeable and he makes people feel that he’ll stand up for them which is why the showdown during Covid resonated with a lot of people outside of Greater Manchester and led to the moniker “King of the North”. He reminds me of the late Charles Kennedy who had the charm to put people at ease, he could speak human and he had the ability to transcend party politics.
He also has a bit of Vince Cable about him. Having worked for both, I never knew what they were going to say in a speech until they said it because they didn’t use notes. It may sound like I’m a Burnham fangirl but I’m not. I’m actually a card-carrying member of the Liberal Democrats and I worked as a political adviser to Nick Clegg when he was Deputy Prime Minister during the coalition years. I met Andy Burnham in 2019 when I moved from my home town of Glasgow and started working for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority led by the directly elected Metro Mayor.
In terms of what kind of Prime Minister he’ll be for Scotland, Burnham is not a stranger to the country. He visited Scotland a few times as Mayor, including a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon when she was First Minister – which can best be described as frosty – but he received a warmer reception when he met with Humza Yousaf when he was First Minister. Because he’s moved away from the tribal way of doing politics, Burnham is very comfortable working with any politician to get things done. From working with Michael Gove to improve housing standards following the shocking death of toddler Awaab Ishak in his mould infested home in Rochdale, to working with Lib Dem-run Stockport Council to extend the trams there, to sharing platforms with Glasgow City Council’s SNP Leader Susan Aitken.
While many in the SNP have dismissed Burnham’s pitch to give more powers to local government in Scotland, there is clearly a desire at local level to take on more powers and have what Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds have, which is what Aitken wants for Glasgow.
While it looks like Burnham will not agree to a second Scottish independence referendum, where he can find common ground with John Swinney – and also the Lib Dems and Greens – is on a written constitution to set out the relationship between Westminster and the devolved parliaments, reform of the voting system through PR, and abolishing the House of Lords and replacing it with a Senate for the Nations and Regions. There are also obvious shared ambitions to end the cost of living crisis, reform of essential utilities, reindustrialisation and safeguarding critical industries such as farming and defence.
One of the earliest tests for Burnham with significant Scottish and UK implications, will be the decision he takes on Rosebank and Jackdaw. Many commentators have said that he says "yes" to everything to be liked, but whatever he decides on this, he won’t be able to please everyone.
Shabnum Mustapha was assistant director of news and media for Andy Burnham when he was Mayor of Greater Manchester
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