Andy Burnham Audiobooks

Head North: the case for a fairer Britain, argued from the North upwards

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.6/5 average

173 listener ratings

Who is Andy Burnham?

Few British politicians have made the geography of their own career quite so central to their argument. Born in 1970 and brought up in the North West, Andy Burnham joined the Labour Party at fifteen, read English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and worked as a journalist and political adviser before winning the seat of Leigh in 2001.

In government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown he served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, then as Culture Secretary, where he set up the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and finally as Health Secretary. He stood twice for the Labour leadership before leaving Westminster altogether in 2017 to become the first Mayor of Greater Manchester, rebuilding the city region’s buses and trams as the Bee Network and earning the nickname King of the North for his stand on furlough funding during the pandemic. In 2026 he returned to Parliament at the Makerfield by-election, won the Labour leadership unopposed and walked into Downing Street.

Andy Burnham in audiobooks

Head North is where that argument arrives in its purest form. Written with Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, and published in 2024, it reads as a manifesto rather than a memoir: an account of how power and money settled in the South East, and a set of proposals on transport, housing, health, energy and the future of the House of Lords intended to shift them.

Across a little over ten hours it keeps the pace of a stump speech, and listeners here have rated it warmly. It suits anyone curious about devolution, the levelling up debate or the political weather of Britain after the 2024 election, and it works particularly well on a commute, where the passages about buses and trains land with a certain irony. Press play below.