Andy Burnham's Manchester has a defining spirit and Britain could do with a lot more of it | John Harris

London depicts a Mancunian boarding a train to the capital with ambition and hope, while also feeling gnawing ambivalence. Andy Burnham’s connection to the song is linked to his decision to pursue a path toward the House of Commons. Burnham previously sought Labour leadership, staging a launch event at Ernst & Young’s City of London headquarters, where he suggested backing further benefit cuts and criticized Labour’s association with enabling people who would not help themselves. In 2022, he said the stance came from bad advice and lacked authenticity. Over the following decade, his political trajectory is presented as increasing certainty and self-confidence, with deeper engagement on the centre-left and improved ability to connect with crowds through platforms such as Compass.

"Among the underrated later work of those revered sons of Manchester the Smiths, there is a completely jaw-dropping song simply titled London. Full of fury and excitement, it depicts a Mancunian as he boards a train, travelling to the capital full of ambition and hope, but also gripped by a gnawing ambivalence. Andy Burnham, whose love of the band is hardly a surprise, may well recognise not only its defining theme, but the song's accidental encapsulation of his decision to try to make his way to the House of Commons, in a line crooned by Morrissey in slightly mocking tones: And do you think you've made the right decision this time?"

"Eleven years ago, let us not forget, a somewhat different incarnation of the future Greater Manchester mayor was one of four candidates for the Labour leadership, along with Jeremy Corbyn, and chose to stage one of his launch events at the City of London HQ of the auditing firm Ernst & Young. There he said he might back further benefit cuts, and claimed that too many people associated Labour with giving people who don't want to help themselves an easy ride. In 2022, he told me this was the result of bad advice: I listened to people that I shouldn't have, really. It was tone-deaf it wasn't me. It wasn't authentic."

"Some look at the 2026 model and see the same brazen shape-shifter. But having watched him closeup, I would argue that his progress over the last decade or so he first became mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017 has really been a contrasting story of rising certainty and self-confidence, deepening engagement with some of the more vibrant forces on the centre-left such as Compass, the pressure group that gives a platform to both Labour and non-Labour voices and the resulting ability to connect with crowds that most political figures would leave cold."

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