Read our Monthly Magazine
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
Head North by two Scousers, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, is the most original, interesting and important book by serving Labour politicians that I’ve read.
It was published in 2024 to a pitiful number of mainly patronising reviews in the London media – all of which missed the larger point of its call for a new constitution that enshrines a Basic Law, includes PR, and empowers Members of Parliament. A failure that perhaps confirms the authors’ assertion that London has lost the plot and does not grasp how intolerable our system of government has become for the country as a whole.
Of the two, Burnham is well-known as a high-flying Labour politician, who entered Parliament in 2001, and rose swiftly to become a senior Cabinet member under Gordon Brown. When he tried to become Labour leader in 2015, he lost out to Jeremy Corbyn. A year later, he left Westminster altogether to become the first Mayor of Greater Manchester.
Rotheram is less well-known nationally, but his rise from being a bricklayer to becoming a Labour MP and then Mayor of Liverpool is also impressive.
The book opens with the two of them shaking hands in 2016 and pledging their joint determination to leave the House of Commons and seek election to the twin cities of England’s north-west – where the novelty of elected mayors was about to become a reality for the first time.
The first half of the book is a dialogue between the two of them as they share the experience of their personal journeys close to the heart of power. Again and again, they are shocked to the point of being traumatised by the cold indifference of the centre to the legitimate needs of their communities.
From Hillsborough to COVID, they draw two personal conclusions from 20 years.
First, in a crisis “you have to speak to the soul of the place you are in”.
Second, that the UK has “an unaccountable state that tries to divide and rule and foist decisions taken by a small cabal on millions”. It prioritises private vested interests over the public interest while “Whitehall does not regard all people and places as equal”.
Andy Burnham: These Dangerous, Alienating Times Call for Radical Change of Our Politics
From imposter syndrome and proportional representation, to fixing the fundamentals and the ‘incestuous’ Westminster media-political class – Labour’s Greater Manchester Mayor believes the right can be defeated at the ballot box if bold changes to connect with the public and their day-to-day lives are made now
Hardeep Matharu
The way they share their account of experiencing the built-in failures of the British state is comparable to Rory Stewart’s Politics on The Edge.
Stewart’s is a more sustained blow-by-blow account of his journey, in his case through the ruins of the Conservative tradition. It culminates in his attempt to become Prime Minister and his humiliation. Whereas Burnham’s takes off after his Westminster ambitions are crushed.
The second half of Head North sets out the way in which Burnham and Rotheram believe the country has to change.
They conclude by demanding a written constitution. They spell out the need for a proportional voting system; empowering Members of Parliament by the removal of the whipping system; a senate of the nations and regions to replace the House of Lords; full devolution; two equal paths in education; a Grenfell law for those in public housing; a Hillsborough law to impose a duty of candour on all public servants; and ecological sustainability.
Missing from their list of constitutional demands is the need for a justice system that works for regular people – something, however, that emerges vividly in their account.
Many others have proclaimed the need for systematic constitutional reform in the United Kingdom, going back to Charter 88 and beyond. Burnham’s and Rotheram’s call is unique in that it emerges from, and is rooted in, their …