Josh Halliday

Thank you.

Andy Burnham is quite unusual for a top politician.

He actually responds to your text.

He picks up the phone.

He calls you mate when you answer.

He's very sort of chummy.

But I think, you know, that is very much seen as quite an affable politician.

You know, somebody who could walk down the street, have conversations with ordinary people, which not that many politicians in this era can.

He's not a suit and tie sort of politician.

I've seen fashion articles about him, which is odd for a mayor, because they're very unsexy roles.

He's kind of built his own brand, I suppose, in the last 10 years as mayor of Greater Manchester.

I think he's built up this persona and he's very deliberately done this over the course of his time in Greater Manchester, but particularly during COVID as speaking for the world outside Westminster.

And that's led to some calling him the King of the North.

Some wrongly say self-styled King of the North.

He's never styled himself as King of the North.

That would be quite shameless, wouldn't it?

But I think he likes the title.

He's expressed multiple times that politics doesn't work for most of the country.

We live in far too much of a London-centric, over-centralised political system.

But over the last few weeks, Burnham has been telling people that he's the only person who can save this country from Reform UK, which sounds like a big claim to make in a time when reform's so far ahead in the polls and Labour looks doomed, to be honest, in the next general election.