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Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham explains why financial education should form part of a “curriculum for life” in schools, how Labour’s defeat in the 1992 General Election motivated him to pursue a career in politics, and why his children go to their mum for money advice rather than him.
Join Gabby Logan every week as she speaks to some familiar faces about their relationship with money, the financial lessons they've learned on the road to professional success, and how they're investing for their family's future.
Visit ii.co.uk for more investing ideas and information.
Gabby Logan: Hi I'm Gabby Logan, and this is the ii Family Money Show. In each episode, I speak to a familiar face about the role money has played in their family life and professional success. And this time I'm joined by the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. Andy became the Member of Parliament for Lee in 2001, and served as both Culture Secretary and Health Secretary under Gordon Brown. In 2017, he left Westminster to successfully run for the new role of Mayor of Greater Manchester, and he was re-elected for a second term last year.
Described unofficially by some as the King of the North, Andy has been a vocal advocate of the north of England, holding the government to account over its levelling up agenda in particular. Away from politics, Andy is a huge football fan and has also been President of the Rugby Football League. He lives in the northwest with his wife and three children.
In our interview, he tells me why Labour's defeat at the 1992 general election motivated him to pursue a political career, the financial lessons he learned from working in The Treasury during the financial crisis, and why his three children call their mum when they need money advice, rather than him.
Andy Burnham, this is the Family Money Show, the ii Family Money Show. So, I usually ask guests to go back to their childhood and tell me a little bit about where money came up in your life. Was it a point of concern? Did you ever feel your parents were struggling? Or did they talk to you about money at all?
Andy Burnham: Yeah, it was always an issue Gabby, so I wouldn't want to claim that we were really hard done by, but it was always a concern, if you like, in the family. And we were, I guess, careful with everything that we did. So, we didn't have foreign holidays as kids, it was a case of if you're going to have something you're going to have to also save, or work a little bit, for it. So, I think that was the context in which I grew up.
But just to add a broader point, there was always a feeling as well for my mum and dad that money is definitely not everything, and –
Gabby: Right. But they both worked didn't they? Both your parents worked.
Andy: They did. So, my dad was a telephone engineer. Well, my mum and dad met working for what was the old Post Office. My dad was an engineer, my mum was an operator, and they met an Maghull telephone exchange. And over the years, my mum did different jobs, she was a GP receptionist for a long time. My dad got a job in Manchester, so they moved us all from Liverpool to Manchester, hence that connection.
So, we were in a home where I would say we were comfortable but not well off, I guess, is the way I would describe it.
Gabby: So, money wasn't abundant to the point that you didn't have foreign holidays. Did they ever save anything? Did they ever talk about pensions? Were they relying on state pensions?
Andy: So, no, I think my dad had an occupational pension, but there was always a feeling that they did have to be careful about things. And that was, if they led us to pick up something from them, it was always, always that. You know, keep a steady approach to your work, always put something aside. And for us as kids, it was always a case of if you want something, it's not going to land out of nowhere –
Gabby: No.
Andy: – and you're going to have to contribute yourself. So, I think myself and my two brothers, we always did little jobs, if you like.
Gabby: For them, or did you work outside the house? Did you have a paper round?
Andy: Oh, outside, no, no.
Gabby: Yeah?
Andy: Well, a bit of that, washing the car and all that usual stuff, but a paper round, I sometimes look back and wonder how it was possibly legal to do a Sunday paper round because I used to be on my Grifter with a bag that probably – you know, with your neck like that. The paper were that thick in those days.
Gabby: With those Sunday supplements as well, they were heavy.
Andy: I know. I know. You couldn't get one through the letter box without taking the front cover off the paper, which … Well, I did a paper round for many, many years. Yeah, we all did. I did a pools round at one point when I was in my more teenage years. We all worked in a supermarket. So, I think, yeah, my mum and dad always sent created a sense of things don't just land on – you know, you will have to contribute yourselves.
Gabby: So, the jobs they did would imply that they didn't go to university. They went from school straight to the workplace.
Andy: Yeah.
Gabby: You did. You went to a very good university. You went to Cambridge. So, tell me about that. I know somebody, who's the first person in my family to go to university. When there isn't an history of graduates in the family it takes somebody, doesn't it, to break the mould a little bit. And then for you to go to Cambridge as well, how did that happen, and who was encouraging you?
Andy: Well, it was my English Teacher, Steven Harrington, who I met recently actually. It was pretty much all down to him. I never thought I could aspire to Cambridge, and he built me up into a position when I did actually apply. It was brilliant on one level, but completely disorienting on another, in that arriving in Cambridge in the late 1980s from the northwest you just couldn't relate the world you'd gone into from the one you'd come from.
And it actually would have a later bearing in my life. Hillsborough happened when I was at Cambridge, and I always remember being at home for the Easter holidays here and everything related to that was happening here, and all the feelings about that. And I went back to Cambridge for the summer term, and it was if it hadn't happened, and that was a hard thing really to relate where I'd grown up to the university that I was then a part of.
Gabby: Was it the privilege? Did you feel a sense of being detached from what you saw at Cambridge?
Andy: Oh, definitely. I mean, I loved it as well, but I also had that imposter syndrome that people would have, if their parents hadn't been to university, that feeling that somebody's going to tap me on the shoulder here and throw me out at any given moment. And I was surrounded by these very confident people who spoke in a way that I'd never really heard before, and it took me about, I would say, 18 months, two years to work out they were talking complete rubbish half the time, but it sounded so good for that first few years.
Gabby: Did you feel like you had to adopt their traits? Because I've always found that quite interesting as well, that do I morph into them to fit into them to fit in, or am I going to carry on being true to who I am and where I’m from, because that’s really hard for a young person.
Andy: It really is. It's probably a bit of both, isn't it? You do. I can remember going home from university and my brothers would, and friends in the pub, would spend a good week completely rinsing me and taking me the mickey.
Gabby: Until you get your accent back.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. So, you had this readjustment thing. And anyway, so, yeah, it was hard living between those two worlds, but I think you eventually find a confidence, don't you, and you realise that you should be true to who you are. I was at a college in Cambridge which was renowned for being a bit more state school college, Fitzwilliam College, so we had a slight – a bit of a Wimbledon mentality, if that makes sense, of the old … You know, whenever we played football, we always kind of – that’s the general mood we had when we played all the posher colleges.
Gabby: So, you went and did English, and then ended up eventually as Chief Secretary to The Treasury, right? So, there's a big learning that needs to go on there.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah.
Gabby: You think of somebody that works in The Treasury as being somebody that might have done an Economics Degree.
Andy: Yeah.
Gabby: So, let's start talking about your political ambitions and where they became a real thing.
Andy: Yeah.
Gabby: Was Cambridge the place where you started to be a lot more active politically?
Andy: So, I'd always already been active in my teenage years in the Lee area where I grew up and ultimately became the MP for, and actually got to Cambridge, it was the opposite. I went along to some of the university political societies and felt it was not real, you know, it was different, and people were playing at it. I always remember there was a really solitary moment in my university days when I was getting a grant. So, I got one of the old – it’s barely believable, isn’t it, that once a month … I tell my kids this, that once a month I went to the Bursar’s office and had to pick up a cheque from Cheshire County Council, you know, to me. You know, it’s just unbelievable that, isn’t it? And they’re like, “What?”
And I used to get a grant, you know, a maintenance grant, and I remember when my younger brother came to stay with me, and he was not so much on the university route and quite sceptical about it, so he was staying with me in Cambridge. And I remember saying to him, “We’re going to go on a Grants, Not Loans march today, and are you coming with me?” And he was like, “No chance. All of my mates who are training to be mechanics,” or whatever, “and they don't get a grant, so I’m not going to get out bed and walk around Cambridge calling for one for you.” And I was like, “Hmm. OK.” So, yeah, it was a very … Yeah, I think I was at university in a very different time as well, and life’s moved on a lot since then.
Gabby: Yeah. So, could your career have gone a very different direction then? Were there other things you thought about doing? I mean, one would think that you were interested in journalism and writing being a student of English.
Andy: Yeah, so I started as a journalist, my very first job coming out of university. I came back to the northwest and wanted to work in the media, and the only thing I could find was as an unpaid reporter on the Middleton Guardian. So, I started on the Middleton Guardian in Manchester, but quickly realised I couldn't support myself without a salary. And I did, I think what many people of my generation did, eventually realised that you had to move south if you really wanted to get on. And so, I carried on working in London as a journalist, but it was around the time of the 1992 general election, and I was very much involved in that, emotionally involved in it, and did a little bit of campaigning.
And it was at that time, I was so devastated by the defeat for Labour in that election, that I was at work one day, I was working for something called Baltic Publishing which was a trade magazine publisher, and I was saying how devastated I was, and this person next to me said “Oh, you should apply to work for my stepmother, she’s just been elected as a Labour MP.” And that person who said that turned out to be Helena Mills, who subsequently went on to edit the Sunday Times magazine. And her stepmother, she was talking about, was Tessa Jowell, and that was one of those moments in life, Gabby, where you can't legislate for that, can you?
Gabby: Mm. No.
Andy: But if someone says something like that to you … So eventually I did apply, and I did get the job, and that’s when I jumped from a very early career in journalism to politics.
Gabby: Things could be so different for you, couldn’t they? When you think about those – you know, it’s really interesting talking to people on this podcast about starting out with one idea, perhaps, about who you are and where you’re going to go in life, and then being open to those kinds of conversations. And perhaps your experiences at Cambridge actually might have helped you be more open to those possibilities and opportunities, even though at the time you might not have seen it quite so directly.
Andy: Yes. I remember though, as a young man, even in my twenties, certainly through my time at Cambridge, I probably wanted to be an MP from probably my middle teenage years but wouldn't have dared say it in front of people. And that went on quite a long time, even when I was working in parliament, because you always feared the “What, you?” kind of reaction. So, I feel sometimes people from let's say a less university background in terms of their family feel it harder to go out there over the line and say, “Yes, I want to be an MP,” or a doctor or a lawyer because you fear that somebody would knock you down for saying that.
Gabby: You must see more diversity now though in politics? It can't be quite the same now when you see young politicians coming through, across both sides of the house. Or do you still think it’s that way?
Andy: Oh yeah, I’m not sure it has moved forward, because I was of, to be honest, the generation of more career politicians, wasn’t it? That was the change that was coming at that time.
Gabby: And that is totally steeped in privilege, isn’t it?
Andy: Yeah.
Gabby: Because you have to be able to afford to sacrifice a career, effectively, don’t you?
Andy: When I went to stand to be the MP for Lee, I mean talking about money, you need a lot of money to stand for, firstly, selection, to be the selected candidate for your party. You have to step away from work, so I stopped work for the time, I went back to live with my mum and dad. I remember that as a really tough time because I’d just had my first child at that – not me, but we had our first child at that point. So, yeah, it's standing for selection I think is a very costly thing to do, and that weeds out a lot of people who've got less access to money or a supportive family.
And the old trade union route, certainly on the Labour side of politics, isn't supporting – you know, that doesn't bring as many people through as it used to. So, I'm not sure it has actually moved in a positive direction when you look at the backgrounds of people who make it to parliament.
Gabby: So, let's talk about the man who did an English Degree working under Gordon Brown, working at The Treasury. We know that politicians obviously have brilliant briefings from their civil servants, and you get very much up to speed with what's going – how difficult was that to get your head across everything from the health of the nation to the wealth of the nation?
Andy: Yeah, oh, well, it was … It’s a great privilege, and I don’t think personally you’re going in as a Minister to be the expert. You’re not, I don’t think. The Treasury is full of experts. What you’re going in to be is somebody who’s going to stand for the public interest and test some of that expert advice as regards what’s right, fair, and proper. So, I, as a Minister, never worried. I did read up, I did always do the background, but I think sometimes if you go in there thinking you’re going to be another expert along with all the other experts, you’re almost not understanding what the role of the Minister is, to be honest. In many ways you’re holding that machine to account for the average person, aren’t you, and consequently it’s important not to disappear down the rabbit hole of all of these different bits of expert advice. I mean it’s just a fantastic privilege to do that job.
And it was a difficult time, if you remember. I went into The Treasury when Northern Rock was just happening, and I remember that day very vividly when all of the queues were forming outside those branches. I think sometimes people with accents in politics don’t get the same treatment off the Westminster press, and I do remember the day I was walking up Downing Street to be appointed Chief Secretary to The Treasury, and someone shouted out, “Have you got Maths O-Level, Mr Burnham?” And I just laughed or something, and then they wrote it up that I didn’t when I actually do have a [unintelligible 00:15:32].
Gabby: Extraordinary.
Andy: Yeah, I know. And it became something I had to try and shake off, but yeah, that's Westminster for you.
Gabby: So, all this time, when your careers growing and your working in government, and you've got ministerial posts, how are your personal financial investments going along? And who's in charge of those in the Burnham household?
Andy: Well, I am not, if I’m honest, great on that side of things.
Gabby: You’re not alone, and the incredible people I speak to on this podcast, it’s amazing how many people go, “I don’t really do that.” Somebody else seems to do it.
Andy: I know, and I wondered whether I should say to you “Shall I really do this podcast?” because I am no expert at all. And if anything, I go back to my upbringing, it was kind of … The advice I always got from my mum and dad was “Don't think that it solves everything because it doesn't, and don't fall out over money with any anybody. If there's a dispute, get rid of it, and don't …” You know, and so that was where I came from, whereas my wife’s family were more –
Gabby: Traditional in terms of their investments?
Andy: – aware of investment, and –
Gabby: Yeah.
Andy: Yeah. And, yeah, that was the difference.
Gabby: So, she was naturally going to be the leader on those things in the house then?
Andy: Yeah. Yes. Definitely. And just more – you know, I guess politics like excuses, but the job is so consuming in terms of what you’ve got to do to support your public role, that sometimes the capacity to do all that stuff is a bit limited.
Gabby: Yeah. Well, I’ve spoken to Alastair Campbell on this podcast and, yeah, it might not surprise you to know he doesn’t do anything at all when it comes to the family finances. Fiona does all of that.
Andy: Yeah.
Gabby: So, yeah, you’re definitely not alone.
Andy: We're a pretty good parallel to those two, I think.
Gabby: I'm desperate to know whether Gordon Brown did his own. I mean, that would really then blow the lid off all of this if he turned around and said, “No, I didn’t do any investments, Sarah did all of that.”
Andy: Yeah, that would be a revelation. I don’t know, I think he probably did actually, Gordon.
Gabby: Working alongside and for somebody like him who has such astute and deep financial knowledge, and was steeped in that era, did you learn anything from those conversations about your own personal investments?
Andy: Oh well I learnt a huge amount from Gordon and Alastair Darling who was Chancellor at the time. Because if you remember, it wasn’t just Northern Rock, things then went into meltdown overall.
Gabby: Freefall. Mm.
Andy: And Gordon’s role in providing leadership, you know, because what I learnt was just how quickly I’ve – something I’ve taken for granted as somebody who’d not grown up with a strong financial background who wasn’t employed in finance, you think, don’t you, that the financial systems of the country and the world –
Gabby: Are rock solid. Mm.
Andy: – will be rock solid and they’ll be there, and they’re just like fundamentals of life. And I do go back to the day in the Treasury at seeing how – being alarmed at just how fragile that situation was. And I remember a car crash interview I gave, I think with Eddie Maher on the PM Programme, I just genuinely – I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t know what to say. I mean Alastair Darling said, “Will you go out and do the interview because if I do it, if I say something, it will have a different impact on the market than if you do.” But the truth was none of us, people didn't know what to say at that moment. Because could you say “Don't form a queue outside” if they were logically forming a queue because it was a … You know, it was really, really tough, and I will say hands up, I didn’t understand what was happening and what you needed to do to stop it. And it was only in the days that followed that I began to see how Gordon and Alistair realised that if nobody steps in, this thing does go into freefall and keeps falling.
Gabby: That day, when you were doing those interviews, was your impression that things would right themselves. Did you just feel because of that upbringing where they were rock solid institutions, that this would just be OK? Or were you just not briefed well enough?
Andy: Well, I don't think anybody was, because I don't think – when had we seen that in Britain in living memory, you know, queues outside a bank, as it was? You know, a building society that became a bank. Well, we hadn't, had we? And so, The Treasury didn’t know quite what to say.
Gabby: No. Yeah.
Andy: And I asked them, I remember asking them, “Is this alone? Are they on their own?” you know, is this an isolated thing, it’s just a Northern Rock thing, and again, they couldn’t answer that question. So that was why it was so tough.
Gabby: This is fascinating though, to hear, because obviously from the outside, we're at home watching the telly, getting our information from the radio and the TV, and you assume that the grownups all know what's going on and that they’ve got a plan. And obviously this is a completely new landscape that’s evolving here, and at a rapid pace as well, wasn’t it, you know? It was unravelling really quickly.
Andy: Oh, it was, if you remember, there was rumours about Northern rock, and then it just, on that day when people's … And this is the thing where behaviour takes over the theory, if you like. So, when people just started forming queues outside branches, the image of one queue outside a branch led to another one –
Gabby: Comes another one.
Andy: – led to another one.
Gabby: Well, I mean we saw that in the pandemic as well, didn’t we?
Andy: Yeah.
Gabby: When people were told we’re not going to run out of toilet roll, but they still went and bought the nation’s toilet rolls.
Andy: You look back at that, don’t you, and think “What on earth were they doing with those toilet rolls all through that period,” do you know what I mean?
Gabby: Extraordinary.
Andy: Extraordinary.
Gabby: Yeah, but I mean the psychology of behaviour is fascinating, isn’t it?
Andy: But how do you register for that in those moments? I mean you’re right, it’s a really interesting parallel that, isn’t it? Once that is happening, and it’s the same, I guess, with petrol more recently, isn’t it?
Gabby: Mm-mm. Those crazy two weeks we had where people were queuing round the block for petrol.
Andy: Yeah.
Gabby: So that’s enormous learnings for you as a politician to go through those experiences.
Andy: Massive.
Gabby: And obviously, you were in a – I mean you look back now – a moment in history that will be taught to future generations really, that political time and what was going on with the economy, and banks. And when you came through that and moved on in your political career, what did you take with you there that made you better at your job?
Andy: I think it was something around the unpredictability of events. I think the Northern Rock situation then, the financial crash that we’ve had, has almost become the norm now, hasn’t it, in the times that we’re in. You know at that time; I think that was the first shock that hit what felt to be quite a stable world at that moment in time. But what has happened is they’ve kept on coming, haven’t they, over the decade or more since. We’ve just been hit by repeated shocks.
And I guess what I’ve come to view now is nothing is a given at all, and you need to act with quick judgments in moments that we’re living through, and be clear about what you think rather than caught in the headlights. So, in the pandemic, I very much adopted that approach. You know, even though at times you might call something wrong, it was better to come out and say, “Well, look, I’m in a leadership position. We've not lived through this before, but I'm saying that I feel this is the right thing to do.”
And it would have been the same after the Manchester Arena bombing where I just had to get out and provide that leadership, because people, as you said before, will look to people in positions of responsibility. And the world moves so quick these days that you don’t get the luxury of pondering over it for three or four days, you have to be able to form a coherent response in that moment.
Gabby: And misinformation can spread so quickly as well, can’t it, because of social media.
Andy: Yeah.
Gabby: So, if we don’t have our leaders coming out with something that is – perhaps they don’t have all the knowledge, but there is something that needs to be said, reassuring people, or just making some kind of decision. It is interesting actually how politics has changed so much because of all these kinds of huge things that keep happening and how people trust, or maybe they trust less, who they trust, where they go for their information.
Andy: Yeah, definitely, Gabby. I mean I think social media changed politics, the question is did social media also help change the world, and has it created some of this volatility that we’re living through. I think it probably has to a degree, and the question is what does the politician do in those circumstances, how do you engage in that kind of … I’ve always said that, you know, I was 16 years as the MP for Lee, I kind of say – well I could break it down to if you consider it a game of football, a game of two halves, the first eight years were like playing a more gentle game of football, and suddenly it became – we came out for the second half and it was rugby league, and no one told you, because it just became brutal and you were getting battered from sides that you didn’t know.
That social media changed politics that fundamentally, it really did, because you didn’t get that luxury any more of thinking about things, mulling it over, and you’d make – you just were getting hit repeatedly from all sides. And I think that has changed politics, and I’m not sure we’ve ever acknowledged just how much that has changed politics.
Gabby: Can we go back to your time as Shadow Secretary for Education, and just briefly we’re talking here about family finances, do you think we should formalise financial education for children so that there is time given over in the curriculum to help them understand what is coming down the tracks for them as adults?
Andy: One hundred percent, and actually it’s a call I get from teenagers in Greater Manchester all the time. They talk about a curriculum for life. And I think it does reflect the sense that the modern world has become a lot more complex, and that they feel they need – and I think they’re right – much more guidance to be able to navigate this complexity and develop a literacy about finance and other things. And, yeah, it’s still the case. I remember learning how to make all kinds of strange things at school like a Victoria sponge or a chocolate … I've never made one ever since school, but I did for a while get taught those things, and yet you don't get taught about the basics of a bank account, do you?
Gabby: No.
Andy: Or managing a budget. And definitely, definitely I think that curriculum for life idea should be at the heart of the curriculum. Financial literacy brings emotional and mental wellbeing, doesn’t it?
Gabby: Of course.
Andy: If you don’t give people those skills, I think you're leaving people, young people, quite exposed. And what we observe in Greater Manchester, certainly through the pandemic, btu it was there before, but it has become more accentuated since, that the mental health and wellbeing of our young people is becoming less and less secure, if you like, as we go forward. Something needs to change to bring that resilience back.
Gabby: What about your own children? Do you speak to them about financial planning? Do they have jobs? Do they have to earn their pocket money?
Andy: They do have jobs actually, I’m pleased to say that, because we have adopted the same thing that good things don’t just land out of the sky and people don’t have to work for them. So, yeah, they do all work in different things; one in McDonald’s, one in a bar in Liverpool, another one worked in a restaurant in London for a long time, so I’m pleased to say they are all hard workers.
Gabby: They’re grafters.
Andy: They are, and a lot of the things that they get come from the work that they’ve worked for.
Gabby: As you’ve said that your wife is in charge of all those kinds of things like ISAs and pensions, would they turn to her, do you think, for advice when they get their first salaries.
Andy: Oh yes. They wouldn’t ring me, that’s an absolute certainty.
Gabby: Have you also ignited any political ambition in your children?
Andy: Well, I think they’ve all turned a little bit the other way, to be honest, just because of having lived with it.
Gabby: Through the stresses of it.
Andy: I don’t know if it’s true in your family, you know, because they see the stresses, and the things, the sacrifices. I remember very vividly at the 2015 election when I was taking Jimmy to rugby training, and it was in the middle of the general election, and I was like stopping at the lights, and I was flashing people to come out, and I was like – you know. And Jimmy turns me and went “Dad, stop election driving, I've got to get to training.” And I remember thinking –
Gabby: How old was he?
Andy: Fifteen at the time.
Gabby: Fifteen. Fifteen?
Andy: Yeah. And I remember thinking –
Gabby: Election driving.
Andy: I know, I know, and you don’t think that they see all of the things that you do, but they do. And I don’t know, I think they’ve just spent their childhoods, if you like, waiting in a supermarket while I was getting harangued by a certain issue. I suppose anyone in the public eye gets this to a degree. So, they’ve kind of grown up with that, and –
Gabby: And it’s put them off a little bit.
Andy: I think so. I think so. Although Jimmy might be turning in that direction a little bit more now.
Gabby: Yeah, maybe as they get a little bit older and detach themselves from those experiences, perhaps they'll see it slightly differently.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah.
Gabby: And finally, this role that you have now as Mayor of Greater Manchester has its own challenges, different challenges to those of being in Westminster, does it feel like you are able to make change quicker in that environment because you're on the ground in the community that you are trying to help?
Andy: Yes, it does. And the change that you make is of often much more of a practical nature. So, we've worked a lot on homelessness, and we've rallied everybody around, and that's been a really fantastic thing to be involved with. And it’s more real change in a way that Westminster can be quite abstract change at times, just passing laws that might take effect two or three years later. The one thing I do find is I'm much happier in this role. I’ve found it to be quite liberating. The thing that I've struggled more and more within Westminster was the kind of told to vote in a certain way, told to say a certain thing.
I think there's a reason why politicians often struggle to come over to people because they can't always answer questions honestly, if you like, or they can’t vote in the ways that they really would want to vote. And I do feel that Westminster politics in the end starts to make a fraud out of politicians because they can’t be truly who they want to be because of the way the Whip system works. And for me, I mean that did all come to a head over Hillsborough where I was invited as the Culture Secretary to the 20th anniversary where the professional me was meant to tow a line of a government that hadn't done enough for the families, whereas the personal me, the private me, knew my heart was with them, not with the official line that I was meant to parrot.
And so that was something of a departure point for me, Gabby, if I'm honest. I broke, if you like, from the path I'd been on at that time, and I became a little more semi-detached really within that Westminster system. I fell out of love with it to the point where this role felt like it would suit me much better, and it does, because I do try and – I am closer to the ground, I do try and call things as I see them. I try not to overdo the point scoring these days, and focus a bit more on practical change. So, it seems to be working OK.
Gabby: Yeah. And I've managed to get through all of this and not talk about Everton. So, shall we leave it on a happy note?
Andy: Yeah, leave it on a positive note.
Gabby: Because the thing about a podcast is you never know when somebody's listening, and things can change very quickly.
Andy: They can.
Gabby: So, for your sake, I hope your premier league status is well and truly assured, and you grow stronger, and the culture of the club turns into a winning one.
Andy: I will take that, Gabby. One thing I do know, with Everton it will be a rollercoaster before any of that happens.
Gabby: And the great thing about being the Mayor of Greater Manchester, you also have some very positive football stories around the corner that you can go and join in with.
Andy: Well, I can be impartial. I’m equally in favour of them both beating Liverpool whenever they play them, so that's the way I generally go about it.
Gabby: Thank you very much, Andy.
Andy: Cheers, Gabby. Thanks so much.
Gabby: Thanks for listening. If you've got time, please like and follow the ii Family Money Show, and leave us a review or rating in your podcast app. You can find loads of ideas on how to plan for you and your family's financial future@ii.co.uk. I'll see you next time.