“Burnham’s, though, is the more interesting career trajectory: Everton scally to trade mag hack to parliamentary assistant to MP, right up to Big Manc“. What isn’t mentioned is that as a trade mag hack, Burnham shared an office with Eleanor Mills, step daughter of Tessa Jowell and daughter of the very well connected New Labour lawyer David Mills. Burnham was parliamentary researcher for Jowell 1994-7, and parachuted into a safe seat by Party HQ in 2001. You don’t get up the ranks of the Labour Party purely on Northern grit.
You don’t get up the ranks of the Labour Party purely on Northern grit.
Probably for the best….
Billy Bob
2 months ago
“It’s easy to mock Andy Burnham”
Fun too!
Albireo Double
2 months ago
“It’s easy to mock Andy Burnham”
Well the author certainly got that bit right!
David McKee
2 months ago
Burnham has been mayor of Manchester for seven years. What has he actually achieved? We’re not told, so we’re left to assume it’s nothing. He might be a bit of a lad, but he’s no Joe Chamberlain.
To be fair no Mayor or city government in the UK has a fraction of the power and budgets of the old County Boroughs.
He has succeeded in re municipalising the Greater Manchester bus network. Whether this is a net benefit or not, it is notable that only London was exempted from bus deregulation by the Thatcher government, because they feared chaos in Oxford Street. But chaos in London Road, Manchester obviously didn’t matter quite so much.
David Giles
2 months ago
Boohoo for the cold-shouldered poor North. Except it isn’t, I live here, home in Liverpool, work divided between Liverpool and Manchester. Boomtown, boom time. I recognise the Northern Powerhouse. I recognise the super-high achieving young graduates choosing Manchester over London. I do not recognise the North described here.
Now excuse me, I’m off to scrub my flat cap clean.
Completely agree. I live near Manchester and regularly travel to Liverpool to visit relatives; both places are transformed and transformative. Of course there are areas to which this doesn’t apply… just like everywhere else, including London.
A chip on both shoulders makes some Northerners think they have a balanced attitude, and the levels of self-pity seem deeply embedded. Burnham’s whole schtick reeks of it; even his face, which looks like he’s about to burst into floods of tears at any moment.
I live in Manchester, but the problem with the North, or at least the North West is that it isn’t all like Manchester city centre. It seems to be boom town until you live somewhere else. After 10 years in London, the difference in Manchester is the areas of poverty in-between bright and shiny parts are much more frequent. London of course has poverty too and it’s difficult to compare anywhere with a world city but it’s a sobering comparison anyhow, as is comparisons with other European second tier cities. All the new skyscrapers and Salford quays apartments don’t hide the Ordsall’s, Openshaw’s and Gorton’s for very long. I’ve never voted Labour but I quite like Burnham. At least he is making an effort.
Alan Elgey
2 months ago
Interesting article as you would expect from a writer with his credentials. But he lost me at:
“He seemed pretty clueless about art, and architecture. For instance, he granted immunity from listing to the brutalist Robin Hood Gardens estate — a decisive step towards its eventual, scandalous pulverisation…..”
What is scandalous about the demolition of buildings like this? They are an abomination as places for human beings to live. There is an excuse for brutalist architecture in some settings (I quite like the National Theatre and parts of the Barbican, though I am sure some will disagree), but not for homes.
I suppose as a hard left socialist Ian Martin can only dream of a future where we are all living in something like this soul-destroying Chinese paradise:
Oh, I don’t know. Put in some nice plants, and stock the water feature with carp, and it’ll be ok.
Andrew D
2 months ago
‘For instance, he granted immunity from listing to the brutalist Robin Hood Gardens estate’
Well he got one thing right then
AC Harper
2 months ago
It is often too easy to call people ‘grifters’ – but I think there is a more even handed way of saying that some people identify a ‘niche’ and make a successful living occupying it.
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Pity h didn’t have as much outrage for the grooming scandals of the northern counties as he did for hillsborough; his gritty northern attitude might actually mean something then.
He commissioned the report into it that was released earlier this year when he could have ignored it. Not many come out of it well.
andrew spinoza
2 months ago
An amusingly analytical stab at surveying the Burnham cultural and psychic hinterland. Readers interested to know more about the conurbation’s shape-shifting Executive Mayor can find out more in my 2023 book Manchester Unspun: Including the contrast between the Westminster-centric Blairite Andy and the left-of-Starmer city boss of today; how I brought him together for his first meeting with Tony Wilson (plus a counterfactual about how they could have faced each other, if Wilson had lived, for the first GM mayoral election); his teenage Madchester summer of love, his ‘cool dad’ DJ antics in hipster clubs, and hidden tensions for years between him and long-term kingpins Bernstein and Leese. And, like Ian Martin, despite the all the fun poking, I give him credit for some successes, especially the buses – including of course ensuring his own inevitable walkover in this year’s coming election. Despite the fact there’s a good chance he could succeed Starmer and even make it to PM, at least two serious journalist bids to write unauthorised biogs were rejected by big publishing houses. Too early, they said. Should such a journey end in high(er) office would be a gripping tale. So, for now, Andy gets to tell his own story, and given the contempt with which London treats the Northern cities, I for one can forgive him and Steve Rotherham their chippiness. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/07/manchester-unspun-how-a-city-got-high-on-music-by-andy-spinoza-from-cottonopolis-to-manc-hattan
Pedro the Exile
2 months ago
creating a new green industrial age for the North
Wow-how about taking advantage of some of the largest shale gas reserves in europe located smack bang in the middle of the North West?
Mike Smith
2 months ago
“I’m with the Lads: let’s get the green energy revolution rolling.” – No such thing, just the usual grift. Looks like the Climate Change Committee are in trouble for making stuff up.
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
2 months ago
You know that the barrel is being scrapped when some one brings up the old chestnut of Thatcher and no such thing as society and they always dissemble when dong so
Also what is the author doing writing for Unherd. His film, The Death of Stalin, was a shabby effort to sanitize the man
Oh my goodness! I am sure I disagree politically with Ian Martin on many issues. But….. I thought we the British were supposed to have irony inscribed in our genes, unlike those Americans! You are just totally off the mark to say “The Death of Stalin” was an attempt to sanitise the man!! Have you actually heard of black humour?!
I thought that film captured brilliantly the mixture of (actually reported) crawling and terror – justified and paranoid – the actual Stalin era Politburo experienced. This continued even after the physical (but not psychological) death of the old monster.
It was all done in a slap stick way that made it all rather cuddly.
If someone had made a film The Death of Hitler in the say style the response would have been immediate and hostile
Shrunken Genepool
2 months ago
Yes it is
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
I was intrigued by the article headline but it appears that unless you already knew quite a lot about Andy Burnham you weren’t going to learn anything else here – because you couldn’t understand a single word. sorry… I found it v hard going and stopped.
Well, we learnt that it’s easy to mock the guy> But we already knew that, didn’t we?
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
The problem is we rejected an elected mayor by referendum in 2012. The result? 47% in favour and 53% against. Sound familiar? Yet here we are with an elected mayor.
Sue Sims
2 months ago
The contrast between down-to-earth man-of-the-people Andy Burnham and “his suave, haughty nemesis, Michael Gove” dissolves into nothing much when you look at the two men’s birth, upbringing and career. Burnham, in fact, had a slightly more privileged background than Gove, who was illegitimate and adopted: both men came from the lower middle class. Gove certainly went to an independent school, but he won scholarships to achieve this. Burnham went to Cambridge, Gove to Oxford. Burnham has been in politics all his life; Gove actually worked for a living (admittedly as a journalist, but hey) before going into Parliament. You don’t have to be a fan of Gove to realise that Ian Martin is, shall we say, just a tad prejudiced.
I thought this site was about people being allowed a voice without the validity of their opinions being called into question. I don’t think Ian has ever professed to being objective in his views, but they are his views, and you can disagree with them without having to point out his perceived prejudices. Is he any more prejudiced than you or I? I rather doubt it.
DeMarcus Samms: That’s a fair point. I’m certainly mildly prejudiced in favour of Michael Gove, because, as an English teacher, I thought that some (not all) of the educational reforms he was trying to bring in as Education Secretary were beneficial. And of course I agree that an opinion piece doesn’t have to be objective – many, if not most, OPs are intended to persuade, and the best ones use rhetorical techniques to do just that. But it’s also true that the way Mr Martin was presenting the two men (aristocratic Gove versus pulled-himself-up-by-his-own-bootstraps Burnham) was wrong in what it was implying – hence my post.
J Boyd
2 months ago
As the North’s greatest bard wrote:
“The North will rise again.
But it will turn out wrong.”
Moshe Simon
2 months ago
When appearing on a BBC panel some years ago Burnham expressed himself with unconcealed contempt and hostility against the study of Ancient Hebrew and Latin in British schools. It is strange to learn that as well as being opposed to having foundational languages of Judeo-Christian and Western civilization taught as a part of a British education he is also a Christian who tithes 15% of his earnings to good works. Go figure.
“Burnham’s, though, is the more interesting career trajectory: Everton scally to trade mag hack to parliamentary assistant to MP, right up to Big Manc“. What isn’t mentioned is that as a trade mag hack, Burnham shared an office with Eleanor Mills, step daughter of Tessa Jowell and daughter of the very well connected New Labour lawyer David Mills. Burnham was parliamentary researcher for Jowell 1994-7, and parachuted into a safe seat by Party HQ in 2001. You don’t get up the ranks of the Labour Party purely on Northern grit.
You don’t get up the ranks of the Labour Party purely on Northern grit.
Probably for the best….
“It’s easy to mock Andy Burnham”
Fun too!
“It’s easy to mock Andy Burnham”
Well the author certainly got that bit right!
Burnham has been mayor of Manchester for seven years. What has he actually achieved? We’re not told, so we’re left to assume it’s nothing. He might be a bit of a lad, but he’s no Joe Chamberlain.
To be fair no Mayor or city government in the UK has a fraction of the power and budgets of the old County Boroughs.
He has succeeded in re municipalising the Greater Manchester bus network. Whether this is a net benefit or not, it is notable that only London was exempted from bus deregulation by the Thatcher government, because they feared chaos in Oxford Street. But chaos in London Road, Manchester obviously didn’t matter quite so much.
Boohoo for the cold-shouldered poor North. Except it isn’t, I live here, home in Liverpool, work divided between Liverpool and Manchester. Boomtown, boom time. I recognise the Northern Powerhouse. I recognise the super-high achieving young graduates choosing Manchester over London. I do not recognise the North described here.
Now excuse me, I’m off to scrub my flat cap clean.
Completely agree. I live near Manchester and regularly travel to Liverpool to visit relatives; both places are transformed and transformative. Of course there are areas to which this doesn’t apply… just like everywhere else, including London.
A chip on both shoulders makes some Northerners think they have a balanced attitude, and the levels of self-pity seem deeply embedded. Burnham’s whole schtick reeks of it; even his face, which looks like he’s about to burst into floods of tears at any moment.
I live in Manchester, but the problem with the North, or at least the North West is that it isn’t all like Manchester city centre. It seems to be boom town until you live somewhere else. After 10 years in London, the difference in Manchester is the areas of poverty in-between bright and shiny parts are much more frequent. London of course has poverty too and it’s difficult to compare anywhere with a world city but it’s a sobering comparison anyhow, as is comparisons with other European second tier cities. All the new skyscrapers and Salford quays apartments don’t hide the Ordsall’s, Openshaw’s and Gorton’s for very long. I’ve never voted Labour but I quite like Burnham. At least he is making an effort.
Interesting article as you would expect from a writer with his credentials. But he lost me at:
“He seemed pretty clueless about art, and architecture. For instance, he granted immunity from listing to the brutalist Robin Hood Gardens estate — a decisive step towards its eventual, scandalous pulverisation…..”
What is scandalous about the demolition of buildings like this? They are an abomination as places for human beings to live. There is an excuse for brutalist architecture in some settings (I quite like the National Theatre and parts of the Barbican, though I am sure some will disagree), but not for homes.
I suppose as a hard left socialist Ian Martin can only dream of a future where we are all living in something like this soul-destroying Chinese paradise:
Indeed. Alex DeLarge would be right at home.
Oh, I don’t know. Put in some nice plants, and stock the water feature with carp, and it’ll be ok.
‘For instance, he granted immunity from listing to the brutalist Robin Hood Gardens estate’
Well he got one thing right then
It is often too easy to call people ‘grifters’ – but I think there is a more even handed way of saying that some people identify a ‘niche’ and make a successful living occupying it.
Pity h didn’t have as much outrage for the grooming scandals of the northern counties as he did for hillsborough; his gritty northern attitude might actually mean something then.
Well said indeed.
He commissioned the report into it that was released earlier this year when he could have ignored it. Not many come out of it well.
An amusingly analytical stab at surveying the Burnham cultural and psychic hinterland. Readers interested to know more about the conurbation’s shape-shifting Executive Mayor can find out more in my 2023 book Manchester Unspun: Including the contrast between the Westminster-centric Blairite Andy and the left-of-Starmer city boss of today; how I brought him together for his first meeting with Tony Wilson (plus a counterfactual about how they could have faced each other, if Wilson had lived, for the first GM mayoral election); his teenage Madchester summer of love, his ‘cool dad’ DJ antics in hipster clubs, and hidden tensions for years between him and long-term kingpins Bernstein and Leese. And, like Ian Martin, despite the all the fun poking, I give him credit for some successes, especially the buses – including of course ensuring his own inevitable walkover in this year’s coming election. Despite the fact there’s a good chance he could succeed Starmer and even make it to PM, at least two serious journalist bids to write unauthorised biogs were rejected by big publishing houses. Too early, they said. Should such a journey end in high(er) office would be a gripping tale. So, for now, Andy gets to tell his own story, and given the contempt with which London treats the Northern cities, I for one can forgive him and Steve Rotherham their chippiness.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/07/manchester-unspun-how-a-city-got-high-on-music-by-andy-spinoza-from-cottonopolis-to-manc-hattan
creating a new green industrial age for the North
Wow-how about taking advantage of some of the largest shale gas reserves in europe located smack bang in the middle of the North West?
“I’m with the Lads: let’s get the green energy revolution rolling.” – No such thing, just the usual grift. Looks like the Climate Change Committee are in trouble for making stuff up.
You know that the barrel is being scrapped when some one brings up the old chestnut of Thatcher and no such thing as society and they always dissemble when dong so
Also what is the author doing writing for Unherd. His film, The Death of Stalin, was a shabby effort to sanitize the man
Oh my goodness! I am sure I disagree politically with Ian Martin on many issues. But….. I thought we the British were supposed to have irony inscribed in our genes, unlike those Americans! You are just totally off the mark to say “The Death of Stalin” was an attempt to sanitise the man!! Have you actually heard of black humour?!
I thought that film captured brilliantly the mixture of (actually reported) crawling and terror – justified and paranoid – the actual Stalin era Politburo experienced. This continued even after the physical (but not psychological) death of the old monster.
It was all done in a slap stick way that made it all rather cuddly.
If someone had made a film The Death of Hitler in the say style the response would have been immediate and hostile
Yes it is
I was intrigued by the article headline but it appears that unless you already knew quite a lot about Andy Burnham you weren’t going to learn anything else here – because you couldn’t understand a single word. sorry… I found it v hard going and stopped.
I’m sure Ian will consider this comment and write just for you and your ignorances in future.
Well, we learnt that it’s easy to mock the guy> But we already knew that, didn’t we?
The problem is we rejected an elected mayor by referendum in 2012. The result? 47% in favour and 53% against. Sound familiar? Yet here we are with an elected mayor.
The contrast between down-to-earth man-of-the-people Andy Burnham and “his suave, haughty nemesis, Michael Gove” dissolves into nothing much when you look at the two men’s birth, upbringing and career. Burnham, in fact, had a slightly more privileged background than Gove, who was illegitimate and adopted: both men came from the lower middle class. Gove certainly went to an independent school, but he won scholarships to achieve this. Burnham went to Cambridge, Gove to Oxford. Burnham has been in politics all his life; Gove actually worked for a living (admittedly as a journalist, but hey) before going into Parliament. You don’t have to be a fan of Gove to realise that Ian Martin is, shall we say, just a tad prejudiced.
Nicely done.
I thought this site was about people being allowed a voice without the validity of their opinions being called into question. I don’t think Ian has ever professed to being objective in his views, but they are his views, and you can disagree with them without having to point out his perceived prejudices. Is he any more prejudiced than you or I? I rather doubt it.
DeMarcus Samms: That’s a fair point. I’m certainly mildly prejudiced in favour of Michael Gove, because, as an English teacher, I thought that some (not all) of the educational reforms he was trying to bring in as Education Secretary were beneficial. And of course I agree that an opinion piece doesn’t have to be objective – many, if not most, OPs are intended to persuade, and the best ones use rhetorical techniques to do just that. But it’s also true that the way Mr Martin was presenting the two men (aristocratic Gove versus pulled-himself-up-by-his-own-bootstraps Burnham) was wrong in what it was implying – hence my post.
As the North’s greatest bard wrote:
“The North will rise again.
But it will turn out wrong.”
When appearing on a BBC panel some years ago Burnham expressed himself with unconcealed contempt and hostility against the study of Ancient Hebrew and Latin in British schools. It is strange to learn that as well as being opposed to having foundational languages of Judeo-Christian and Western civilization taught as a part of a British education he is also a Christian who tithes 15% of his earnings to good works. Go figure.