Steve Rotherham

Liam Thorpe is political editor at the Liverpool Echo.

who also worked on Head North, a rallying cry for a more equal Britain, with Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham.

I suppose, first of all, Liam, I have to ask, which teams do you support?

Oh, you've landed me right in it there, Matt, because I am in Liverpool, but I am not originally from Liverpool, so I am more affiliated with the team at the other end of the M62, but I can't believe I've just admitted that on national radio.

the...

Steve Rotherham.

Listen, we could do a whole podcast on him and the council and everything else.

The state he's left us in.

It's that there's, uh, about fifty people, largely unelected, in Whitehall who have a enorm- enormous amount of power, who run the country largely in the interests of the southeast of England and the City of London.

I mean, in, in his book, Head North, that he wrote with Steve Rotherham, he talks about there being literally sort of about fifty people.

I mean, it's, it's not a conspiracy theory 'cause it's all based on, you know, evidence and argument, but it's, it's, you know, heading in that direction.

And that's often actually what you need, if you look back into our modern history, is that kind of really compelling, blunt story to try and force change.

We, I know after the break we're going to talk a little bit about the Middle East.

We had that wonderful pairing at the Royal Festival Hall at the weekend, Maoz Inon, whose parents were murdered by Hamas in the October 7th massacre, joined by his fellow peace campaigner, Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah, who lost his brother to torture in Israeli jails, and do you remember they were bas- We were asking them about what's going to happen in the Israeli election, what's going to happen in the Palestinian elections, and they were saying, "Well, it's kind of important, but far more important is actually what people do in their own lives and what differences they can make." And I actually think there's something that joins your book, Middleland, to Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham's book, Head North, which we talked about a lot in the miniseries we did on Andy Burnham with, with Steve, is this sense that the gap between politics as practiced in Westminster and Whitehall, politics as conveyed by, I guess, people like us and the media more generally, is so divorced from politics as a force for good in local communities, and I think that's what you're trying to do with your book, and also that Andy and Steve are trying to do in theirs.

And, and it's not just a negative story.

It's not just that we've sort of ignored people.

I want to see businesses making a profit, he says very clearly.

Now, he will announce... new partnerships between the National Wealth Fund and four new regional authorities, including one for Liverpool and his biggest mayoral supporter there, Steve Rotherham.

There's a line in the playbook on this, which leapt out at me from Andrew McDonald, who said rather dryly, Sam, it sounds very Andy Burnham and maybe even a little Rachel Reeves.

And that underlines the part of the challenge facing a new chancellor.

Look, we've all got family members and we all have to decide how close we are with them, how much we listen to them.

I mean, there's no doubt that if you read Andy Burnham's book with Steve Rotherham, what his closest friend is his brother.

His brother is a head teacher.

They go to football matches every week.

Why do we need to have more elected people? Why do we need to have mayors to do this? Why can't we just put people back together again? Why does it involve devolution? Pepe, can you, I don't know, can you convince me this is a better way of doing things?

I think having decisions made closer to the geographical area that they're going to impact on has got a sound intellectual theory behind it.

But the reality of this, look, Laura, I know you grew up in the North West and I know you now live in London and you've hinted there already that this is so this this thinking has been based on what Andy Burnham has done and what Steve Rotherham have done in in the northwest around Liverpool and Manchester and it does it does have some credibility but there is a massive difference between the urban areas of Liverpool and Manchester and let's just say North Yorkshire, Humberside you know even London now has How we get over that and how we organise that and how we plan for that, you've already hinted, they just don't have the structures.

These places don't have the infrastructure necessary to do the sort of things that we talk about here, about young people moving around, connecting better to business and industry.

Andy Burnham is now prime minister.

And delighted, as over the last two episodes, to be joined by Steve Rotherham to talk about all this and more.

The next defining moment was COVID.

Yes.

Mm.

And they hadn't had a penny, so quite rightly was saying, you know, "We need our chunk for being in, in the top tier." Liverpool City Region is now going into it.

Steve Rotherham has told me that they're getting...

And every time we went backwards and forwards, he'd get a more substantial offer, and I'd go back and say, "Well, hang on a second, because you're asking us to...

How would you summarise Andy Burnham's theory of power?

Well, his theory of power is curiously close to the yes minister theory of power, actually, which is that there are a few people in Whitehall who sometimes in his book Head North that he wrote with Steve Rotherham, former Labour MP and mayor of the Liverpool sort of city combined authority.

In that book, you know, they talk about how there are basically about 50 people who are mainly unelected in Whitehall who govern in the interests of the city and the southeast.

Now, and the whipping system, which he's clearly chafed against as a young MP in the 2000s, the whipping system basically is used by the executive to enforce compliance on backbenchers.