Even Andy Burnham’s fans acknowledge that the Greater Manchester mayor, who’s attempting a return to parliament so that he can become prime minister, is a career man.

“Inside him is a cold-hearted lizard of a politician,” said one of Burnham’s chief cheerleaders in Westminster, granted anonymity to speak frankly about the man whose highest hopes would see him heading to No. 10 Downing Street within weeks of a possible victory in the Makerfield by-election.

“You don’t become a mayor, you don’t go into frontline Blairite and then Brownite politics, without knowing who to speak to, whose hands to shake, at the core of who you are,” the MP went on. “But exterior to that, he’s wrapped around it a genuine human being.”

It’s a duality that’s being put to the ultimate test in the suburbs of Wigan.

Ahead of a high-stakes by-election here on June 18, the Greater Manchester mayor is attempting to cap an audacious reinvention: transforming himself from a classic Westminster careerist into a plucky, anti-establishment man of the people.

Despite the prevailing undercurrent — as in much of Britain — of a loathing of his Labour Party and an appetite for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, even “Andy’s” critics in the northwest feel like they know the fella.

It’s the story of a veteran insider who has seemingly inoculated his brand from the “career politician” tag to emerge as the self-styled protector of the north of England. His team hope he is just weeks away from running the country.

POLITICO spoke to dozens of friends, colleagues, voters and key campaign figures to understand how Burnham has moved so close to pulling off his challenge.

Westminster vs. the real world

“In many ways Andy Burnham has done the same thing as Nigel Farage and present himself as being anti-Westminster despite a lifetime in politics,” said one government official who would work with Burnham if he successfully usurps Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

There is a suspicion in London, even a jealousy at times, that Burnham has been practicing politics on “easy mode.” In leaving behind the Westminster bubble to forge a new path for himself as a regional mayor, he’s been able to shape-shift — while governing a more left-wing population than Labour has to deal with at a national level.

Skeptics don’t think his shift has been all that genuine. He is still pilloried for his “chips and gravy” response to a question on his favorite biscuit during an earlier failed leadership push. It opened him up to the charge of over-egging his northern authenticity.

“The personality he’s currently alighted on seems to be very popular,” said one skeptical but supportive MP.

But this doesn’t seem to routinely register 170 miles north west in the Greater Manchester constituency Burnham hopes to call his own.

Burnham will have to defy recent council election results to win here: Farage’s Reform swept the board in May in what was, until recently, proud Labour heartlands. 

“It’s true he’s just another career politician but he’s got a bit of wisdom,” said one retired physics teacher in Ashton-in-Makerfield this week, who was waiting for one of the price-capped Bee Network-branded buses that Burnham has, as Greater Manchester mayor, rolled out across the region.

A cab driver, who gave his name as Steve, pushed aside his many grievances, local and national, to echo this. “I look at Andy and think can he be PM,” Steve said. “When I look at what he’s done in Greater Manchester I think he could.”

There’s not an analyst in the land who thinks another Labour politician could stop Reform winning Makerfield — but here in Burnham’s north-western fiefdom, his own team describes him as having a “fighting chance.”

The next Boris Johnson?

One of Burnham’s most important backers in parliament is Louise Haigh. The prominent Labour MP gained influence among colleagues by reviving the party’s soft-left Tribune faction, after she was forced to resign as transport secretary over a historic misdemeanor.

“The thing about Andy that should be inherent in all politicians, but is actually vanishingly rare, is he actually really enjoys being around the public,” she told POLITICO over a cup of tea in a cafe in Ashton-in-Makerfield. Haigh was wearing jeans, jumper and white trainers — the informal and unofficial uniform that characterizes Burnham’s by-election campaign.

Haigh reckons the Westminster woodenness that could be observed in Burnham’s two previous bids at becoming Labour leader — in 2010 and 2015 — has been “completely drilled out of him” by his three terms in the metro mayor position he left parliament for in 2017.

“I think this time away for him has just been really instructive, and that ability to connect and feel where the public are I would say is quite akin to Boris Johnson’s abilities, to understand where the public are and respond accordingly,” said Haigh, who alongside fellow MP Anneliese Midgley, is overseeing the by-election campaign. “And that has, I’m afraid, been lacking over the past few years in the Labour leadership.”
Johnson was another popular mayor who returned as an MP before ultimately becoming prime minister, though Haigh would have little positive to say about how the Conservative’s time in office panned out. Like the Farage comparison, there is something to it. The mayor prides himself on being able to convert voters who would otherwise be hostile to their parties.

‘Uncle Andy’ and the authenticity gap

Reform chose a local plumber to stand against Burnham in the party’s own search for authenticity. So far Robert Kenyon’s campaign has been marked by the raking up of a controversial social media posts from before his candidacy.

Burnham’s team have polling suggesting their man is “very far ahead amongst women” in Makerfield. “Maybe it’s those shorts,” Haigh joked, in a reference to Burnham’s leg-baring running gear.

The campaign is wondering if not just Kenyon’s comments but a general “grubbiness,” as one of the camp put it, of Reform’s politics — like Farage offering to buy a pint to a van driver who heckled Chancellor Rachel Reeves — might be cutting through.

Burnham’s campaign HQ is positioned in a community club that’s a hive of activity. Here, allies plot not just a by-election victory but a policy program for government, and his team is braced for a vicious final fortnight. “We can see where they’re going to go for the next two weeks — I think it’s about to get very, very nasty indeed,” said a senior campaign official of Reform.

They are particularly braced for Farage’s forceful campaigning on the murder of Henry Nowak.

Nowak was arrested by police in Southampton — his injuries seemingly unnoticed — as he lay dying from a stab wound inflicted by a Sikh man who falsely claimed the 18-year-old had racially abused him. Rioting has already broken out after Farage called for people to respond with “pure cold rage,” and Reform has re-upped its claims that racially-distinct, “two-tier policing” operates Britain.

On Thursday, Burnham gave his first response to the case, linking Farage’s rhetoric to the unrest. “If you give a preordained statement at 8 o’clock in the morning, believe me, you are well aware of what you say, and what might happen later in that day,” he told BBC Question Time. “Those consequences were seen on the streets of Southampton, and the ringleaders of that violence used exactly the same words as the leader of the Reform Party when they were orchestrating that violence.”

Kenyon, the Reform candidate, also said violence was not the answer — after his leader Farage ignored calls to condemn the scenes in Southampton in the House of Commons chamber Wednesday. But he leaned into Farage’s rhetoric challenging people to watch the footage of the police response to the murder “and tell me that you don’t feel rage.”

Labour is also waiting for Reform to up its attacks on Burnham’s more accommodating stance towards immigration, and his handling of grooming gangs. A damning official report last year found some U.K. authorities failed take on the perpetrators of organized child abuse out of a fear they would appear racist.

Burnham’s team is confident the attacks focused on Labour’s grooming gangs record are not cutting through. Their candidate deftly handled one camera-wielding critic’s confrontation on the issue — a critic haranguing him came away with a fist bump and an “appreciate that, bro.”

Burnham has put this approachability at the center of his by-election drive. He is at least striving to meet every undecided voter in Makerfield before polling day. The team is even speaking to non-registered voters to “make sure they feel heard,” as the campaign official put it.

“There’s just no sense of being on edge with him, he puts you at ease,” said the parliamentary cheerleader quoted at the top of this article. “It’s like talking to one of your uncles about something. Uncle Andy.”

It’s this kind of appeal — rather than any stark policy differences — that Burnham’s backers think sets him apart from Starmer, who despite similar working-class roots and a meteoric rise through the establishment, gets zero credit for that trajectory.

To demonstrate this, one of Burnham’s old friends recalled how the music fanatic went to see Mancunian dad rockers James at a Manchester arena: “They said no probs, we’ll sort you a box. He said, no, no I want to be on the floor.”

Political class CV

Burnham’s newfound familiarity with voters comes in spite of the kind of CV that would get most politicians derided.

From the prestigious Cambridge University, Burnham entered Westminster politics as a parliamentary researcher in his 20s. He became a special adviser — a powerful government aide — in 1998, then worked his way up the ranks of the governments of Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown to peak at health secretary.

It was under David Blunkett that Burnham, then the MP for Leigh, earned his first public-facing governmental position. As parliamentary private secretary to the home secretary, Burnham helped navigate getting unauthorized Channel crossings down. “He was a bag-carrier but he was also the back-watcher so his job was to find out whether what I was doing was carrying the parliamentary party,” Blunkett said. 

That, according to Blunkett, gave Burnham a great “grounding,” as he liaised with backbenchers on contentious policy.

As health secretary, however, Burnham faced acute criticism over his handling of the Mid Staffordshire hospital neglect scandal. Before that, as culture secretary, he was repeatedly booed and heckled from the Liverpool terraces as he gave a speech on the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster that killed 96 fans.

In the years since, Burnham, a fan of rivals Everton, has become a key figure in fighting for justice for the Hillsborough families. He has gained their respect for, among other things, helping to get the original inquest verdicts overturned. On the 25th anniversary of Hillsborough, the boos had turned to rapturous applause, with Burnham praising the Anfield crowd for helping him to find his political “courage.”

It was Burnham’s decision to quit parliament in 2017 to successfully run to become the first mayor of Greater Manchester that gave him his real power-base.

Burnham had been on the job for just two weeks when Salman Abedi blew himself up at an Ariana Grande concert, killing 22 people and injuring more than 1,000. Burnham rallied the response, helping a grieving city through Britain’s worst terror attack in over a decade.

“That attack was extremely significant in terms of being very formative for him as mayor and the role of mayor itself,” said one official who worked with him in the early days.

His devolved powers from Westminster may have only extended so far, but Burnham quickly became a figurehead and champion for local causes. There was fighting to rectify a chaotic rail timetabling change, rallying in support of thousands of sacked Thomas Cook staff, and pioneering of a “Bed Every Night” strategy to alleviate rough sleeping. 

The single moment that did most to craft his title as “King of the North” came in the Covid pandemic.

In a socially-distanced press conference, his most trusted adviser, Kevin Lee, showed him a message revealing that Boris Johnson’s government was imposing a lockdown on the region — with far less funding to support shuttered businesses than had been demanded. As the watching public cried disgrace, Burnham riffed: “It’s brutal to be honest, isn’t it? This is no way to run a country in a national crisis… They should not be doing this — grinding people down.”

Burnham wasn’t the only Labour mayor who railed against the lack of support during draconian restrictions — but it was Burnham who earned the credit.

Who will Andy Burnham be next?

Burnham’s tendency to perform convenient “u-turns” is cited by some voters here in Makerfield. He is shifting from governing a left-leaning city region to trying to win a Reform-tilting constituency — and then nation.

There’s been the mutating stance on rejoining the EU. He has supported, to an extent, the government’s more hard-line immigration reforms. And, after railing against timidity in the face of the bond markets, he has signed up to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ “fiscal rules” on public spending that so frustrate left of Labour.

Haigh, the soft-left power-broker and Burnham organizer, insists there is no disappointment and that his backers acknowledge the need for tight fiscal policy.

“It doesn’t mean that there isn’t more room for maneuver than we have at the moment,” she tells POLITICO — arguing there are taxes outside of the red lines set in the current Labour manifesto that could be raised. Burnham has spoken of taxing landowners, for instance.

“The economic reality hampers any administration,” said Haigh, who would likely expect a prominent Cabinet role in any Burnham administration, said. “If they ripped up the fiscal rules, then the borrowing costs would spiral, and their hands would be tied even more.” 

Whether Burnham gets his hands on the levers of power in Westminster is, by and large, now up to the voters in Makerfield. If he becomes an MP he would be outright favorite to win any leadership contest that may be triggered.

In private, Burnham’s camp hopes it doesn’t come to that. “We’ll have to see where Keir will land,” said a close ally who’s helping on the plans for Burnham’s entry into No.10. “There’s any number of scenarios. Keir might want to speak to Andy at that point — in an ideal world obviously there wouldn’t be a leadership contest because those things are never very edifying.”

In a way, Labour has already chosen.

Starmer didn’t have the power to block a Burnham candidacy like he did in an earlier by-election just months ago — and MPs and Cabinet ministers are going up to Makerfield in droves to campaign for Burnham. In doing so, they’re paying homage to the man hoping to be their next leader.

The real hard work starts for Burnham if he takes the Labour reins: trying to govern a nation, in the middle of an affordability crisis and with little sign of economic growth, that quickly turned on its first Labour administration for 14 years.

The ally working on Burnham’s future plans said trying maintain his “outside status” will be essential if he becomes PM, “making sure his personality still shines through and he’s not dragged into being a Westminster automaton.”

He would try to maintain public “face time” and be “totally focused on the domestic as much as possible,” this person claimed, hinting that Burnham will do fewer of the prime ministerial foreign trips that quickly earned Starmer the moniker “Never Here Keir.” Global events could play out very differently, of course.

Burnham may well lose on June 18. That would leave Labour — and the country — in disarray: A deeply unpopular leader stuck in office, with perhaps only centrist former Health Secretary Wes Streeting able to challenge for the throne.

“I think we’ll be back in another existential crisis,” said the close ally on the prospect of Burnham losing in Makerfield. “But I’ve not accepted that there’s anything other than Plan A throughout all of this period.”

Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.