Josh Halliday

speaker

338 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 15 Sep

Josh Halliday’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.

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Today in Focus · Andy Burnham’s (third) bid for the Labour leadership · 26 May 2026 podcast

There wasn't many young people from his part of the world that ended up at Cambridge University.

He joined Westminster, if you like, in the mid-90s when he was in his mid-20s, first as a researcher for Tessa Jowell before the 97 general election, seemed to get a taste for, you know, politics and, you know, very quickly wanted to become an MP.

That was set quite early on, yeah.

He's described it as a, you know, kind of guilty secret that he wanted to be an MP.

And he was a special advisor for Chris Smith, the culture secretary.

And then he got the seat in Leigh near Wigan, where he was elected in 2001.

And then he had various government posts under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, you know, rising to some of the top posts in government.

He was health secretary for a time.

And then later culture secretary.

Yeah, well, Andy Burnham has said previously that all roads lead to and from Hillsborough for him.

On the day of the semi-final itself, he had friends who were there at Hillsborough.

He describes a sort of frantic waiting for news, desperation.

He's spoken about this sense of a police cover-up and the government being against the people, a city that felt a terrible injustice for decades.

So it's personal for him?

It's really personal, yeah.

So when he spoke at Anfield on the 20th anniversary, he was there as the representative for the UK government.

So it was an incredibly tricky position for him to be in personally because of the deep hurt that many in Liverpool felt towards the government still at that time.

That's right.

But it's a very striking moment when he starts to talk.

The crowd starts chanting over the top of him, Justice for the 96.

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