Burnham: 'People in Britain can't afford a good life'

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has said national politics has reached a "dangerous place" where "people in this country cannot afford a good life".

The Labour candidate for the Makerfield by-election next month told BBC Radio Manchester Britain had been "on the wrong path for 40 years".

Burnham was speaking in the first of a series of interviews with the major candidates for the poll, set to take place on Thursday 18 June.

Asked by listeners why he was potentially stepping away from his mayor role, he said: "I really believe that politics in this country is at a moment where we either change it or it really becomes quite, quite broken and people lose faith completely."

The 56-year-old, who held senior cabinet positions in the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown governments, stepped away from Westminster politics in 2017.

However, he announced his candidacy after sitting Labour MP for Makerfield, Josh Simons, resigned his seat to allow Burnham a chance to rejoin the Parliamentary party.

Burnham is widely expected to challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership - and become Prime Minister - if he can first convince voters in Makerfield.

He told the BBC he was proud of his record in Greater Manchester, but added: "There's only so much I can do from this role."

"If I want life here to be what it should be for the people of the communities in the Makerfield constituency, but more broadly across all of Greater Manchester, I know we need to change politics at the national level so we can change the economy at the national level and just make it work for people, make it life more affordable for people."

Among questions from listeners, the former minister was asked about his stance on the European Union - an issue brought to the fore after former Health Secretary and potential leadership rival Wes Streeting said he wanted Britain to re-join the block.

As recently as September last year the mayor said he would like to see Britain back in the EU "in my lifetime".

However, he said his position had been obscured by "skewed" media coverage.

"Ten years on, I'm going to be really blunt; I don't think Brexit has improved things," he said.

"The economy is smaller and we have weaker control of immigration. That is my view.

"However, I've not said that we should now focus on re-joining. You know, we had a vote, we shouldn't keep re-running the arguments linked to that vote."

He said instead, he wanted to see a "relentless" focus on domestic issues over the "next five or 10 years".

"Let's get this country functioning again, let's get the basics right for people," he continued.

"Focus here, get things sorted out here. Let's not worry then about our relationship with other places until we fix our own situation."

Burnham was also asked on his view on the HS2 rail project, which was repeatedly cut back from its original plan to extend all over the country.

"The frustration I feel about that is massive," he said.

"This is a classic example of Whitehall trying to run things from 200 miles away, telling, dictating to us, getting it so drastically wrong."

He was pressed on whether, if he were to make it into Number 10, he would approve billions of pounds of extra funding to extend the high speed line north to Manchester - as well as building an underground station beneath the city's current Piccadilly hub.

Burnham stopped short of committing to ploughing additional funds into the project, but said he had "put forward a different way of doing things that's more local - work from the ground up".

"If you focus on what gives the maximum boost to the economy. So at Piccadilly, if you had an underground station, you could have more economic development around Piccadilly, and then you capture that value to help pay for the infrastructure," he said.

"There is a different way of doing it, which is what I would pilot."

Six parties have so far announced their candidates for the Makerfield by-election: