100 DAYS IN OFFICE
POLITICAL HISTORY WAS MADE WHEN ANDY BURNHAM BECAME OUR REGION’S FIRST MAYOR. NOW 100 DAYS ON, M.E.N. POLITICAL EDITOR JENNIFER WILLIAMS LOOKS AT CHALLENGES HE HAS FACED
THIS week marks 100 days since Greater Manchester made political history.
On May 5, Andy Burnham swapped the ancient corridors of Westminster for the Victorian surroundings of Oxford Street to become the region’s first elected mayor.
From his office at Churchgate House – a hive of officials covering transport, investment, fire, policing, health and planning buzzing around building a brand new £1bn mini-government – Burnham has been learning and creating a system at the same time.
It is a big job, but one he believes ‘100 per cent and more’ was the right one for him.
“More than anything it’s the people,” he says. “It’s like when I was an MP for Leigh – people were challenging, they’d stop you and talk to you about things.
“But you get the feeling people are wanting you to succeed and it’s great. It just feels so different to Westminster.
“It’s that feeling in here – but even outside – that people aren’t waiting to trip you up.
“They want you to do what you said you would do and if you do, they’ll support you. It’s kind of refreshing really.”
Burnham’s first 100 days has been nothing if not busy, making progress on a string of pledges, building and navigating delicate political relationships and appointing a series of figures to oversee everything from policing to housing to the region’s new approach to extremism. The latter was borne out of an event no leader wants to face, but which those with any sense are always prepared for – a major terror attack.
Burnham had been playing fivea-side football, a newly rediscovered Monday night pleasure since leaving Westminster, on the night the Manchester Arena bombing happened.
It was a fortnight to the day he started as mayor.
Watching Newsnight, he initially ignored a call from a friend, thinking they would catch up the following day.
Then the friend rang a third time to say his daughter was caught up in the attack. And then Burnham saw chief constable Ian Hopkins was on the other line.
“It was the hardest thing on every level,” he says.
“I’ll never forget that phone call. Up all night, driving in here 4.30am or 5am, feeling sick to the pit of my stomach. What I was going through was what everyone was going through.”
His response to the bombing was helped by his experience at the higher levels of Westminster, he believes.
“That’s what your brain does when you’re a cabinet minister: ‘what do I have to be ready for?’ That’s what I learned to do,” he says. “Sitting in this very room I said to Ian Hopkins on the first day of the job – are we ready if there’s an attack? Because I was thinking what are the big things that could happen that I need to be ready for. “So it was quite eerie really two weeks later.” In the midst of seemingly endless problems that need tackling, Burnham’s big passion – tackling homelessness – remains. While he admits rough sleeping has not vanished since May 5, he says his mayoral fund is now starting to take effect – and issues a renewed plea to the public to help. “Stuff is happening,” he says. “We’re on with it and have lots of offers of help. If I’m honest it’s more challenging and complex than I realised. It relates to housing policy, mental health. But I’d make two pleas. “Firstly, if people can give me time, I’m totally committed to it. “Secondly, if people can continue to help – because we’ve cleaned out the fund.” While he admits that some areas, particularly housing and homelessness, required him to learn on the job, Burnham says overall life as mayor has been as expected, terror attack aside. He says the ability to speak more directly to people as mayor, to be Andy Burnham closer to the ground, is a major benefit of being away from Westminster.
“I’ve always found from my political career that that’s the best way to work, because you just pick up straws in the wind, don’t you,” he says.
“If two or three people have come up and mentioned something you think ‘hmm, I need to have a think about that.’ It’s an early warning system and I like that.
“Also, taking it a stage further: it’s about new politics isn’t it. We’ve got a chance here to rewrite the whole script.”