Andy Burnham: In His Own Words
The incoming Prime Minister spoke to Byline Times Editor-in-Chief Hardeep Matharu at the 2025 Byline Festival, in a remarkable interview, now available on the Byline Times Podcast
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A year ago, Andy Burnham only had a rank outsider’s chance of ever becoming Labour leader – never mind Prime Minister. After two previous failed attempts, the former Blair-era Cabinet minister wasn’t even eligible for his party’s top job, having quit parliament to become Mayor of Greater Manchester. Sir Keir Starmer wasn’t exactly a popular PM, but he had the security of a massive majority after winning a landslide victory just 12 months earlier. Little did we know then that a combination of the Mandelson affair, Starmer’s own personal unpopularity and the rise of Reform UK would open the way for Burnham to secure the keys to 10 Downing Street, via the Makerfield by-election, without any formal challenge from within his own party.
This is what makes Byline Times Editor-in-Chief Hardeep Matharu’s conversation with him so valuable. Recorded after he’d given a rousing closing speech at last year’s Byline Festival at Keele University, it is now available to watch and listen via the Byline Times Podcast.
At the time, Burnham may have harboured hopes of one day returning to front bench politics, but had no reasonable expectation of doing so any time soon. He could be candid about the failures of Westminster politics without any fear of retribution, and honest about his own failures as both Health Secretary and Culture Secretary. There was freedom to set out an agenda which challenged the Treasury’s London-centric spending rules and scope to explain why – as a working class kid who made it to Cambridge University – he always felt like an outsider among the green benches of the Commons.
Matharu established a rapport with Burnham, who made the startling admission that Parliament’s ‘whip’ system, which has underpinned all governments from time immemorial, stifles free and honest debate in the one place where it matters most.
He said, “The whip system, in my view, is corrosive of people’s independence and, indeed, of their authenticity. The longer you’re in Parliament, the more you are at risk of it making a fraud out of you, because it makes you vote in certain ways, say certain things, take a line in an interview where you may not 100% feel it.”
He added: “We don’t have a political system, like the US, where people are more empowered to act for their area, to act independently. I think the British political system and MPs individually would rise in the public’s esteem if they were able to act with more independence on an everyday basis and say what they really feel. Maybe we’d have a more vibrant political debate if people went into interviews and said what they were feeling, as opposed to what they’ve been told to say.”
How long these views withstand the pressures of high office remain to be seen, but the interview stands as an important document for those seeking to understand Burnham’s motivations and the route map of his government.
Watch or listen to the Byline Times podcast here.