Ready and Willing podcast: Andy Burnham

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is questioned by a Wigan and Leigh College student in Coun Chris Ready's Ready and Willing podcast

Transcript

00:00And another point is, when you have an issue and you have to resolve it, but you may have

00:05people that don't have the same view as you, how do you work around that and maybe work

00:09with them to resolve the issue?

00:11That's a really, really important question, because at the moment in politics there's

00:16a little bit of people sort of grandstanding, you know, they take a position on social media

00:21just for the show of it, but don't actually sit down and try and move something forward.

00:27You learn in politics, though, if you actually want to move something forward, you do have

00:32to sort of meet people in the middle, and that seems a bit out of fashion at the moment.

00:36You know, everyone wants to, as I say, stick in their own little place and, you know, sort

00:42of, you know, take a really, you know, moral high ground position, but actually politics

00:47is compromise, and it does require, doesn't it, sometimes to sort of find where you can

00:52agree with people.

00:53It looks like these days people are looking for where they disagree and making a big

00:56deal out of that.

00:57Well, actually politics should really be the art of finding agreement.

01:02So the big example I could point you to in my career was Hillsborough when I tried to

01:08reopen it following the 20th anniversary, and I realised, you know, I was so emotionally

01:12and completely invested in trying to achieve this for the families, but I quickly realised

01:17when I got back to Parliament that not everyone thought the same about it or prioritised it

01:22in the way that I did, and I kind of felt I had to sort of build bridges, and to be

01:28fair to her, Theresa May began to become interested in it and started to ask me something about

01:36it because she'd heard me speak in the Commons on it, and I realised that that was a really

01:40– if I could persuade her to become more involved as Home Secretary, that would be

01:43like massive for the campaign, really, and she absolutely did and became as committed

01:50as I was to the whole thing, and I don't think we'd have made the achievements that

01:53we did without the help of what was then a Conservative Home Secretary or a Conservative

01:57Prime Minister.

01:58You know, the younger me wouldn't have imagined working with people like that, but in the

02:02end in life you do have to reach beyond your own comfort zone and say, well, okay, I do

02:08need your help, and if we're going to do this, it's stronger because we're coming

02:11at it from different places, but we're going to meet in the middle, and the power of that,

02:15of us coming together, will actually hopefully unlock it, as it did.

02:19So, you know, it's a really good question, and I think your generation, if I could put

02:23it this way, I personally think that my generation has messed up politics and left it in a pretty

02:30bad state, and I think your generation, I've got real hope that you're all going to come

02:35through and fix it again and make it work better again, because I think you see the

02:39world in a good way.

02:40You don't see the world through the same eyes that we were brought up to sort of see

02:45it.

02:46You see it in a different way, in a more, you know, more equitable way, and if you can

02:52kind of carry that.