Becoming Burnham: Thatcher, Hillsborough, and the Anger that Shaped Him | Part 1

**Alastair Campbell** (0:00)
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**Alastair Campbell** (0:23)
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 by 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 Rotheram. Steve, former MP, left Westminster with Andy Burnham to go off and become mayors.
Andy in Manchester, Steve in Liverpool city region. So they've worked together. They've navigated Westminster together. They've left Westminster together. They've become mayors together. They 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, radicalized 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 Rotheram'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.

**Steve Rotheram** (2:43)
Great pleasure.

**Alastair Campbell** (2:43)
Listen, let's start with his childhood.
You were one of eight, right? So, also a Catholic, I'm guessing?

**Steve Rotheram** (2:50)
No, we had no religion whatsoever.

**Alastair Campbell** (2:54)
But you've got eight kids and you're growing up in a pretty, well, an absolute working class part of Liverpool. Would you say your childhood was very different, Mandy?

**Steve Rotheram** (3:02)
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 the 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 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.

**Alastair Campbell** (3:37)
His dad was a telephone engineer. His mum Eileen was a GP receptionist. They're now in their mid-80s.
His dad, of course, has dementia, which is really sad to think he doesn't know just how far Andy is gone or doesn't understand how far he's gone. Just on family, tell me whatever you feel comfortable saying about Andy's family, parents, wife, kids.

**Steve Rotheram** (3:59)
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 some formative things, I think, in his childhood, such as that moving from the first house and entry and then go into cultures and then moving again, and then go into the schools there rather than to a school in Liverpool. So I think all of that was formative. 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, head teachers and all that in schools, and Andy, who became a politician obviously, but has done all right for himself as well. I think that's from his mum and dad. I think you 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 with his dad. His dad's a big Evertonian and again, formed that sort of you must follow in 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 you that that is the basis of who he has become. It's that strong bond. And then, Mary Frances, Andy's wife, who by the way, if anybody out there is somebody who liked the 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 herself and ended up in Cambridge. So it's not like she had all of the trappings of wealth.