Andy Burnham, Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, revealed that his time at Cambridge “radicalised” him and led him to go into politics, in an interview on The News Agents podcast last Friday (28/07).

Burnham said that seeing the disparity between Cambridge and a “North West in real decline”, coming from his home in Leigh, was a “radicalising experience”, and led him to have difficulty relating to life at the university.

The Greater Manchester mayor described how Cambridge students “weren’t aware of the issues involved” in the Hillsborough disaster and blamed the Liverpool fans.

Burnham said that the “treatment of the North of England, [and] the attitudes you got confronted with” shaped his desire to get into politics.

He described how his university contemporaries’ views that “the North of England [was] something to be patronised and stereotyped” have been mirrored by colleagues in Whitehall over the course of his career.

Burnham, who matriculated with an English degree from Fitzwilliam College in 1988, said he occasionally struggled with imposter syndrome because of his working-class background, but also maintained that the university helped his political career by increasing his confidence in communication.

After graduating, Burnham worked as an advisor to former MP and Culture Secretary Chris Smith, who now serves as Master of Pembroke college.

Becoming an MP in 2001, Burnham held multiple Cabinet positions during Gordon Brown’s premiership, and served in the Shadow Cabinet after the 2010 electoral defeat, before leaving Westminster in 2017 to become the first Metropolitan Mayor of Greater Manchester where he is currently serving his second term.