Andy Burnham, Britain’s Next Prime Minister, Swayed at ‘Madchester’ Raves and Would Be First To Have Studied English Literature

There have been 58 prime ministers of the United Kingdom since the office was established in 1721 — and not one has focused his undergraduate years on the study of English Literature. That streak appears in danger with the resignation of Sir Keir Starmer and the prospect that he will soon be replaced at 10 Downing Street by the erstwhile mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. He read English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. That, at least, is the stance taken by the chancellor of Cambridge, Lord Smith, who writes in the Telegraph this week that if Mr. Burnham, who was born on the outskirts of Liverpool, succeeds Sir Keir he “may well be our first prime minister to have studied English at university, and that would be a very good thing.” Mr. Burnham received a Second Class degree from Cambridge, which per tradition transitioned to a Masters soon after. One of Mr. Burnham’s professors at Fitzwilliam, John Mullan, writes this week in the Times of London of his impressions of Mr. Burnham when he walked in for his entrance exams: “Smart clothes, a northwest (was it Liverpool?) accent, considerable verbal confidence.” He remembers that “we discussed a Shakespeare sonnet that he had been given a few minutes before the interview.” Philip Larkin, a northerner, is now Mr. Burnham’s favorite poet.Mr. Mullan recalls Mr. Burnham as “a footie lad in a college with lots of footie lads. It is hard not to see him in the Everton shirt he often wore, enjoying post-match beers in the college bar with the boys.” He also “took being anti-Tory for granted.” Liverpool has long been a stronghold of Labor. Mr. Burnham’s girlfriend, Marie-France van Heel — now his wife — “was the coolest girl in the college — she was even Dutch.”A more formative influence on Mr. Burnham than his literary studies at Cambridge could be his passion for what the Financial Times calls Manchester’s “legendary 1980s and ’90s music scene.” That scene, known as “Madchester,” emerged from a rave club culture that vibrated with the drug MDMA. That energy eventually gave way in the early 1990s to the Britpop phenomenon, headlined by the Mancunian band “Oasis.”Mr. Burnham has made his roots in the north of England core to his political persona. He is reportedly set to deliver a speech on Monday outlining his plans to found a “Number 10 in the north,” whereby part of his prime ministerial operation would be devolved to Manchester from London. Mr. Burnham, who won a by-election last week to return to Parliament, has declared that “voters have a problem with an out-of-touch elite who don’t seem to care.” Mr. Burnham would hardly be the first prime minister to delight in words. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli — the son of an Italian Jewish writer and the first person caricatured in the London magazine Vanity Fair — published in nearly every literary genre. With “Coningsby,” “Sybil,” and “Tancred” he pioneered the political novel. In “Sybil” the aristocratic Mr. Mountchesney opines that “I rather like bad wine. One gets so bored with good wine.”Prime Minister Boris Johnson was a prodigy at Balliol College, Oxford, earning a scholarship in Classics and winning prizes along the way. Like Mr. Burnham he received an upper-second class degree and is known to recite the “Illiad” in Greek. A better student than Messrs. Johnson and Burnham was another Scouser, Prime Minister William Gladstone, who secured a Double First in Classics and Mathematics from Christ Church, Oxford. Less academically accomplished was Lord Salisbury, who served as prime minister three times. Descended from advisers to Elizabeth I, his creed was “Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible.” He, too, attended Christ Church, but received an honorary fourth class in Mathematics due to “nobleman’s privilege.” The historian Andrew Roberts calls him a “Tory Titan.”Another subject of Lord Roberts’s biographical attention, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, did not attend an Oxbridge college but instead Royal Military College, Sandhurst. That did not stop him from becoming a prolific writer. Among his works are a six-volume memoir, “The Second World War,” and the four-volume “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.” In 1953 he became the only prime minister to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Andy Burnham, Britain’s Next Prime Minister, Swayed at ‘Madchester’ Raves and Would Be First To Have Studied English Literature

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