In July 2024, Andy Burnham told me that his favourite Manchester band was New Order. It was just after The Labour Party won a general election with a historic mandate for the first time in over a decade. He was buzzing with excitement, beaming. His people were in power.
We were sitting in the offices of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Burnham, then the mayor for the GMCA, who had been in post since 2017, was preparing for a DJ set at a local club, but he also had policies he wanted to discuss.
Manchester’s then-mayor wanted “change” on the Right to Buy policy and a Housing Revenue Account (HRA), which would give the GMCA income from housing as well as the ability to borrow to build its own housing, which it would then own and manage like council housing.
“Housing is a risk to growth,” Burnham said that day. “If people can’t find places to rent, they won’t move here because it’s too difficult to live.” He did not, he added, want to oversee a devastating “London effect” in Greater Manchester. “Nothing against London, but we don’t want people to be priced out of housing here,” he added defiantly.
Fast forward two years, which in politics is a lifetime. Just ask Sir Keir Starmer, who resigned as Prime Minister just hours before Burnham returned to Westminster as the new MP for Makerfield, and Labour’s new leader-in-waiting.
