As he prepares for potential prime ministership, Andy Burnham is having to face a lot of questions, and please lots of different people. Yet, he has been explicit that it is his mother and father’s opinion of him that he most minds about. When asked who he looks up to, he responded: “Ultimately, my parents have always been the final court of opinion… family is really important to me.”
Burnham has talked about what the influence of his parents, Eileen and Roy, had on every stage of his life. The couple, who met in Liverpool at the Maghull telephone exchange, where Roy worked as an engineer, and Eileen worked on the switchboard, are now both in their mid-eighties. They live in a bungalow in Culcheth, the same village near Warrington where they brought up their three sons, after moving there from Aintree, Liverpool, when Roy got a job as a telecom engineer. They downsized to this house from the bigger home they raised their family in. Burnham’s childhood home – now owned by a new family – is nearby, in Common Lane, an enclave made up on big, detached properties with big gardens. The house is now thought to be worth around £1.3m. Property records show that the cost of the houses have risen exponentially, with one detached home on the road selling in 1996 for £57,000.
