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{"id":24561,"date":"2026-06-19T19:32:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-politician-who-kicked-his-way-to-power\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T19:32:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:32:42","slug":"the-politician-who-kicked-his-way-to-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-politician-who-kicked-his-way-to-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The politician who kicked his way to power"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Britain wouldn\u2019t have its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/why-britain-uk-struggles-hold-onto-pm-prime-ministers\/\" target=\"_blank\">latest likely next prime minister<\/a> if not for soccer.<\/p>\n<p>Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.<\/p>\n<p>The pivotal moment of Burnham\u2019s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.<\/p>\n<p>The 1989 event remains Britain\u2019s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.<\/p>\n<p>The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.<\/p>\n<p>Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool\u2019s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway \u2014 and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team\u2019s loudest supporters congregate. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-z3mBIi084Q\" target=\"_blank\">The video<\/a> of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)<\/p>\n<p>Burnham \u2014 until then a typical career politician in Westminster \u2014 has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners \u2014 of police failures and a scandalous cover-up \u2014 had been true. The government was forced to apologize.<\/p>\n<p>Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. \u201cI always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,\u201d he wrote in his memoir, \u201cHead North,\u201d penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. \u201cThings were never the same after that day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.<\/p>\n<p>Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position \u2014 an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk\/news\/greater-manchester-news\/andy-burnham-go-jogging-vintage-33954827\" target=\"_blank\">regularly photographed<\/a> jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It\u2019s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Read Jack&#8217;s Blue Light News Magazine <\/i><\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2026\/06\/14\/andy-burnham-makerfield-election-profile-00960693\" target=\"_blank\"><b><i>profile of Andy Burnham here<\/i><\/b><\/a><b><i> and Blue Light News&#8217;s <\/i><\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/makerfield-by-election-its-the-final-campaign-day-live-updates\/\" target=\"_blank\"><b><i>full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here<\/i><\/b><\/a><b><i>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Britain wouldn\u2019t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer. Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}