Connor McCabe

As seen in the New Statesman I t’s a quarter to midnight on a hot July evening when the text from Andy Burnham comes through: ‘Guess who just messaged me. Susie Wiles. Trump’s chief of fookin’ staff. Get over here right now, Connyboy.’ I murmur an apology to Aditi, asleep beside me, and slip off. I had been advising Burnham on comms in an informal capacity since last year, and this looked to be my biggest assignment yet. In an age of fracturing global order, geopolitics can hinge on a single WhatsApp. I arrive at ‘Camp Burnham’, the suite in the Heathrow Radisson Blu where Andy is preparing for government.

As seen in the New Statesman ‘A garlic naan for every curreh, and a sofa for every telleh,’ says the new Prime Minister, concluding his first address in front of No. 10. That’s it? He hasn’t said very much at all. Ending homelessness, and a ‘Ten Year Plan’, the details of which will only be revealed later. I’ve got to file first thing tomorrow, and I can’t spread this across 3,000 words. Time to make use of The System: my foolproof formula for an ‘Ideas Essay’ when I’m up against it.

As seen in the New Statesman (Cont. from pages 1-13)… as V.S. Naipaul once remarked in The Road to Wigan Pier. And so I’ve come North. To see if Leviathan still has legs in a country shaken by global tremors. And if the rise of Reform owes anything to the Tolpuddle Martyrs. But above all, I’ve come to Manchester in search of Andy Burnham’s roots as a politician, and as a person. ‘Me stomach’s rumbling,’ says Andy, insightfully. ‘I want chips ’n’ greveh. But I spent me last quid down bookies’  Burnham’s almost Silicon Valley-like brio for the ‘White Heat’ of technology sits alongside a thoughtful Roman Catholicism, grounded in a rich social democratic tradition. Not Methodism, nor Marxism, but MotherMary.