Cast your mind back to 2015 ,when Andy Burnham lost to Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership election, before fading from the limelight of frontline politics. Well, little did we know he would be back this year, when a Covid second wave would bring about Andy Burnham’s Second Coming.
Lord knows 2020 has thrown us some curveballs, but we didn’t foresee the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester’s very public ascent. Yet, after a stand-off with the Government over lockdown restrictions
– where he fought for financial support for the region – he inadvertently became this year’s most surprising sex symbol. He was fêted as a hero in Manchester, with one pub selling ‘Burnham burgers’, while Loose Women ran a segment asking: ‘Is Andy Burnham the new Brad Pitt?’ What does he make of it all?
‘I’ve been spending the year in my son’s bedroom here in my little loft, almost shut away from the world, and I haven’t expected the way things have panned out,’ he says, with a coy laugh.
He is Zooming from his little loft when we speak: his unmistakable eyelashes, bushy brows and Ken-doll sweep of dark brown hair fill the screen. You’d imagine there to be few downsides to much of the nation falling for you, but the so-called King of the North has been accused of trying to raise his profile. He insists nothing could be further from the truth. ‘I’ve come to a point in my political career where I know how Government works. I know what they do, and I’m way beyond the point where I’ll just go quiet and say, “Oh well”,’ he says.
Some are suspicious he’s angling for a return to Westminster, and he won’t rule it out when I ask if he’ll be back there one day. But he’s keen to stress that this year’s battle hasn’t been about politics. Besides, the day the public’s interest really piqued – after a press conference in October, where he evoked Britpop in a navy anorak – he hadn’t expected to be giving a statement at all. This explains the cagoule, he says. ‘I didn’t expect more than a couple of the media, there were a lot more than I thought. Then people started gathering and it became a bit of an event that I hadn’t anticipated,’ he says.
‘I remember going home on the train and someone texted me saying, “Gary Lineker’s tweeting about you.” I was like, what? A most unexpected turn of events and not something that sits that easily, I’ll be honest,’ he says. How does it sit with his children – Jimmy, 20, and teenagers Rosie and Annie – who are at an age where a heart- throb dad could make or break their street cred? ‘They just find it a source of absolute embarrassment, in terms of the things their friends say to them. They never let me live it down and they’re giving me a hard time,’ he laughs.
I have to admit to him, his eyelashes cropped up in a number of my WhatsApp conversations. ‘[My kids] laugh about that because they find all the worst – what are they called? – memes that go around. I’ve always had this thing with eyelashes. Whenever I used to go on Question Time, I’d get asked, “Do you wear mascara?”
I’m meant to be a slightly elder statesman these days. I was in Parliament for 16 years, I was in the Cabinet. And yet I have these childlike eyelashes. What can I do? They don’t give you great gravitas, do they, Bambi-like eyelashes? I’m more in the gravitas game these days. I want gravitas.’
Beneath those eyelashes, though, perhaps it’s more his reputation as a politician who, from Hillsborough to Covid, fights for the underdog that’s really behind his newfound appeal.