Josh Halliday

You know, the signs, clean air zone signs that went up across Greater Manchester were only taken down last year and they became kind of totemic of this big failure of politics.

Right.

And it sort of speaks to that thing that people say about him, is that, you know, he really wants to be liked.

He doesn't like being disliked.

you know, it's about devolving more powers to regions across the UK.

It's about making life more affordable for people.

He's spoken about taking public control of essential assets like water, energy.

He thinks the privatisation of the bus network is one of the biggest flaws of the, you know, the past two, three decades.

And I think much more focus on these post-industrial areas across the Midlands, North and Wales, which haven't seen proper investment for a long time.

And

And where there is huge opportunity to build the industries of the future, clean energy, it's something that he's really keen on.

That's his message, essentially.

He wants to get rid of this kind of myopic government that lives by the hour, that doesn't think about long-term investment in particular areas and seems out of tune with the cost of everyday items and people's lives.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hung in the background of his leadership ambitions really before this campaign even kicked off.

I mean, people don't really believe that he set out a proper agenda yet on how he would deliver all this kind of long-term investment, this radical change in society without increasing borrowing or taxes.

You know, those are the two options.

You know, there are various smart people who said that, you know, there'll be ways that he could do it

Jim O'Neill, the former Goldman Sachs banker, who's one of the country's most respected economists, was supportive of Andy Burnham's ambitions for long-term borrowing to increase investment because that's kind of the only way that you can make these radical changes unless you're drastically raising taxes, which is just not going to wash.

at the minute you know that is a very jittery bond market there's a lot going on in the world to be kind of nervous about and and and the idea of some kind of radical firebrand coming into number 10 is going to put some people on edge

It surprised me.