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When a new prime minister enters Downing Street, observers usually look to those around the cabinet table to see where influence lies. With Andy Burnham, they should look ۲۰۰ miles north – not to Manchester, but Liverpool.
Steve Rotheram, the mayor of Liverpool city region, may not have a formal role in government but he has a strong claim to having the closest personal bond to the incoming prime minister, a man he calls his “bezzie mate”.
A former bricklayer who helped rebuild the Falklands after the ۱۹۸۲ war, Rotheram is something of an unknown quantity for many Westminster-watchers.
He was MP for Liverpool Walton for seven years – including a stint as parliamentary aide to Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour leader – until ۲۰۱۷, when he convinced Burnham they should leave for the newly-created mayoral posts in Manchester and Liverpool.
Nine years later, Burnham is prime minister. Could Rotheram be heading back to Westminster too?
“It’s only ever crossed my mind in a jokey way,” he said of reports that mayors could be appointed to the House of Lords as a step towards making the upper chamber more representative of the nations and regions.
“There is all this speculation,” he said. “I’m gonna be Lord Rotheram of Kirkby, I’m going to be the tsar of such-and-such, I’m going to be the devo minister – all these wonderful things. Great, I wish someone would tell me”.
Rotheram, ۶۴, said he had no intention of leaving the mayoralty, a job he calls the “pinch-me privilege of my life”.
Why would he leave, some may ask, when the riches could soon start flowing to Merseyside thanks to his mate in Downing Street?
Rotheram is quick to shoot that down. “There’s a danger that [people] believe we can circumvent the system just because we’ve got a friendship, and that’s not gonna happen. This is public money,” he said.
“The exact same rules are there to stop Boris Johnson feathering the nests of his mates as they are to stop friendship being the only way to get projects delivered.”
The pair’s political bromance stretches back to ۲۰۰۸, when Burnham was Gordon Brown’s culture secretary and met Rotheram, then Liverpool’s lord mayor, at various soirees during its the city’s year as European capital of culture.
The bond was then forged as Rotheram followed Burnham to parliament in ۲۰۱۰ and the pair became drinking buddies, bound by a shared feeling of being outsiders in Westminster.
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They spend time in each other’s homes and Burnham’s wife, Marie-France van Heel, is friends with Sandra Rotheram. They go to gigs together, sharing a love of Manchester band Courteeners, whose hit Take Over the World became the unofficial anthem of Burnham’s failed ۲۰۱۵ leadership campaign, which Rotheram helped lead. The song includes the line: “I think it’s time for me and you to take over the world.”
But it was the Hillsborough disaster that cemented their friendship. Rotheram was at the FA Cup semi-final supporting his beloved Liverpool, while Burnham – who was at Villa Park watching his team Everton that day – had friends at the Sheffield Wednesday ground. Together they fought the decades-long battle for justice for the ۹۷ victims and their families.
In his first speech as Labour leader on Friday, Burnham name-checked Rotheram as he promised to “take power back from Westminster and Whitehall and give it to the place where you live,” extending the devolution agenda he oversaw in Greater Manchester.
He cited the Rotheram’s ambition to put the Merseyrail network in public ownership by ۲۰۲۸.
Rotheram and other mayors also want the incoming prime minister to go further on devolving powers over skills, particularly control of technical education for ۱۶ to ۱۸-year-olds. Many have complained about their difficulties in dealing with the Department for Education in Whitehall.
Under plans given to Burnham’s team in recent weeks, mayors would appoint health and education commissioners to oversee local schools, GPs and childcare providers in a similar role to that played by police and crime commissioners.
The mayor of South Yorkshire, Oliver Coppard, believes Burnham could be “more radical than most people seem to think”, stressing the importance of local public control of utilities such as energy and water.
This was “a moment to recognise that decisions over everything from planning, skills, education, business rates, growth, transport, health and much more, can be taken at a much more human scale,” he said.
