Editor’s note

And Now for Something Real

There was a sentiment Andy Burnham kept returning to when I interviewed him last July at Byline Festival.

“Politics has got to get back to fixing the fundamental things that everybody needs for a good life,” he told me. “Too often, politics is chasing slightly flimsy things at the margins and not dealing with the fundamentals.”

He said it again when he added: “Somewhere along the line, it stopped doing that, and it needs to get back in the business of doing that… politics just really isn’t giving people the answers to some of the things they’re struggling with.”