Kevin Fitzpatrick

They are just on the edge.

There's a huge stretch of land really between the big conurbation of Greater Manchester from the outskirts of Salford into Bolton and it comes down into Wigan there and parts of it are quite rural in this constituency.

So there you have a real sense of

their identity over there.

But Andy Burnham, you know, the Labour candidate, does have links there.

He lives in the constituency.

He has done for a long time.

And even though he is the mayor of Greater Manchester, and that's what he's seen as now, he was for 16 years the MP for Lee.

And since the reorganisation recently, some of his old constituency have come into it.

So while you have got a conversation about, you know, the mayor of Greater Manchester dropping into a place on the outskirts, potentially, it is where he's from.

And I guess people there would identify him as that.

But clearly, straight away, two of the main candidates, the frontrunners, Andy Burnham and the reform candidate,

Robert Kenyon they put out promotional campaign videos and the real theme is I'm from here this is my this is my area I know the people I know the issues so there's a clear identity and all the candidates I'm sure are going to be trying to say listen I get this place I understand what you feel and what you need.

Yeah, and Andy Burnham's story essentially is that he went to Parliament, had 16 years there.

He was cabinet ministers under Gordon Brown and then Labour were out of power and he tried to be leader a couple of times and he left Westminster.

He said frustrated that it just didn't seem to be working for the rest of the country in a way that he thought it should and then he came to be mayor again.

and his job there was to battle the Westminster system to try and get the things in Greater Manchester and the north of England that sometimes people in London take for granted like a fully funded integrated transport system and he's been at the forefront of the whole devolution conversation Greater Manchester's often got things first and Greater Manchester has often shown that there are benefits to having devolution and they've

they've done really well but now he's suddenly come to the point and he's clearly been getting there for some time where he thinks he needs to go back to Westminster and he's saying well I'm going back with the lessons I've learned but we've had him on BBC Radio Manchester this morning a half hour grill in his first interview since he was confirmed as the Labour candidate earlier in this week

And yeah, he was having to walk that line between saying, I'm really focused on Makerfield, I'd be a great MP, I'm fully across all the local issues, but also referring to the things he thinks he's done as mayor that have benefited places in Makerfield and how, if he got the chance to go back to Parliament, if he becomes Prime Minister or not, he could try to get Westminster then to start to listen a bit more.

Well, he's very dismissive of them, as you can imagine.