Truth be told I don’t know much about Andy Burnham, so I can’t really say much about him. He seems to be a nice, level headed Labour MP who I would of course vote for over any Tory. What I do know, though, is that as the former mayor of Manchester, he seems to be quite a steadfast northerner, and has mentioned intending to shift investment away from London. That certainly interests me: for some time now I have been aware what a disproportionate amount of money is being poured into London compared with the rest of the country. I hardly have to leave my flat before I encounter huge building projects; and I regularly cross the capital via transport systems which cost billions to create – the kind of jaw-dropping investment which you just don’t see elsewhere. How Burnham intends to address this imbalance of course remains to be seen, but from what I’ve been hearing he seems to want to shift the country’s economic and cultural centre of gravity entirely. I haven’t been to anywhere like Manchester or Liverpool for quite some time; but if the disparity between London and the rest of the country is now as huge as I suspect it is, there is a great deal of work to do.