Can Andy Burnham really do it?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Andy Burnham is the man on everyone’s lips in Westminster. As he campaigns to return to parliament in the Makerfield by-election, Tim and James bring you the definitive guide to Burnham – and what could happen next.
They’re joined by Joshi Herrmann, founder and editor of Mill Media, whose profile of Burnham had Westminster buzzing over the weekend. He shares his view of the Greater Manchester mayor’s ‘unusual gifts and glaring weaknesses’, whether ‘Burnhamism’ really exists, and if Burnham’s emotional style of politics could survive the brutality of No. 10.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Subscribe to The Spectator and get 12 weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage, unrivaled books and arts reviews, and so much more, all for just £12. |
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| 0:28.9 | Hello, welcome to coffee house shots. |
| 0:30.6 | I'm James Heel. |
| 0:31.3 | I'm joined today by Tim Shipman, the politicalist of The Spectator, and Yoshi Heroninman, who writes for The Manchester Mill. |
| 0:36.2 | Now, Tim, you've written for this week's magazine where you've talked about who the real |
| 0:39.4 | Andy Burnham is. How did you get on? |
| 0:41.8 | I went back and talked to a lot of the people who knew him when he was younger in Westminster |
| 0:45.4 | to try and find out how much of the Burnham kind of that we know, read about and see today |
| 0:51.3 | is someone who was formed in Westminster or was formed in kind of |
| 0:57.4 | pushing against Westminster. And I think the interesting thing to me was we've got this view of |
| 1:02.9 | Burnham as this sort of slightly moaning character who came to London, didn't enjoy himself |
| 1:07.9 | very much, thought the establishment, Westminster, the game |
| 1:11.1 | was all a terrible thing, and then sort of went off to Manchester to find himself. |
| 1:15.4 | I think the interesting thing is that's not quite right. |
| 1:17.9 | A lot of the people who were special advisors, cabinet ministers with him at the time, |
| 1:22.2 | remember a guy who was still quite focused on his family, where he'd come from in the |
| 1:26.5 | north-west, and didn't really kind |
| 1:28.9 | of embrace that whole sort of Blairite, bright young thing's world that a lot of them kind of fell |
| 1:34.9 | into that generation of people, Ed Balls, James Pernel, the Miliband brothers, they all became this |
| 1:40.4 | kind of, you know, bright young intellectual powerhouses. And I think to a degree, |
... |
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