Burnham's best mate on what the PM does now

**Steve Rotheram** (0:02)
This is a Global Production. I know he's got an imposter syndrome, or he's had an imposter syndrome for many years, just like most people from working class backgrounds who still think he's got it. I think there's always that little, you know, that voice, as you say, that's saying, you know, can you believe it? Well, I'd look seriously at our wealth tax. I mean, you've had even wealthy people saying that there could be a small additional tax on them, perhaps even for a limited period, but to try and dig us out of a bit of a hole.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
Do you think Andy Burnham will be the most transformative, or at least has the potential to be the most transformative political figure or prime minister that we've had since Maru Thachia?

**Steve Rotheram** (0:38)
I hate to compare anybody with Thachia because she's an attachment to me, so.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:43)
One week ago, Andy Burnham became prime minister. He has already proved himself a deeply adroit communicator, flooding the zone, as Steve Bannon might say, being everywhere, commanding the political conversation in a way that Keir Starmer never quite managed, perhaps never wanted to manage. There are already tentative signs of some political dividend being paid. One poll today from War and Common showed that Labour lead reform by four points, their biggest lead, their only lead, for well over a year. For many outside of the Northwest, though, he does remain somewhat unknown. This is his reintroduction beyond Mr. Manchester to the wider nation. On The News Agents, we've been trying to fill in those gaps. On Friday, we spoke to one of the central thinkers of the Burnham Project, Neil Lawson, to try and establish what, if anything, Burnhamism might be. But what of the man himself? What is there beneath the t-shirt, the new order Spotify playlist, the terribly short running shorts? If anyone can answer that, then it's Steve Rotheram, the Mayor of Liverpool City Region and Burnham's closest friend in politics, someone who helped persuade him to leave Parliament altogether, to run for their respective mayoralties, who has been with him on every step of his recent political journey. He co-authored a book with Burnham a year or so ago, Head North, which is nothing less than a manifesto for the economic rebalancing of the UK, taking inspiration from the integration of the old West and East Germanies after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So this is, in a way, the part two of a mini-series. Who is Andy Burnham? Not just the politics, but the man, from the man, the politician, who knows him best? Welcome to The News Agents.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:32)
The News Agents.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:34)
Well, Steve Rotheram, thanks so much for joining us. And I don't know what London is these days. Is it the second city, the third city, fourth city, whatever it is?

**Steve Rotheram** (2:42)
There's a famous argument, so you probably know about it, when people in Manchester were asked, which was the second city, they said Manchester. When you were asked in Birmingham, which was the second city, they said Birmingham. When you were asked in Liverpool, what the second city was, the Scousers said London.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:56)
There you go.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:57)
And that seems to fit. I mean, I think in Birmingham, honestly, we'd probably say sixth.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:01)
Of course.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:02)
That's our sort of self-effacing nature, which the Manx and the Scousers could learn something from. But let's not get into more of that.
It's obviously, it seems almost hard to believe that it's only a week ago. Your best friend in politics, Andy Burnham, became Prime Minister. It must have been quite dizzying for you. What's it been like?

**Steve Rotheram** (3:20)
Yeah. Dizzying.
You're right about the speed and the pace of things. It seems a lot longer than just last Monday that Andy was walking in Downer Street. And as you'll probably have seen, I had my little grandson, Harley, with me. And that's something for him to look back on for the rest of his life.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:40)
And there's surely some more to come.

**Steve Rotheram** (3:42)
But isn't it more that there's been things that have been said in the short intervening period, when we had seemingly a vacuum at times when Keir was in with the government that he had, which he chose, of course, but it was just that I don't know whether people were fearful of saying something in case it was misinterpreted, but it just seems that there were long periods of no announcements.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:07)
It feels like, yeah. That's one of the contrasts it's felt to me with the first week of the Stammer government, which obviously came in with a lot of hope and anticipation and excitement around it. But it feels to me that, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but it feels to me that what Burnham is trying to do is learn from some of the mistakes that were made obviously in those early weeks and not least by, it feels to me he's doing that thing which I think Stammer was often reluctant to, which is as the Americans would say, he's flooding the zone. I mean, he's just everywhere. He's talking about everything, his communication is everywhere.