Andy Burnham reminded me what working-class Britain used to offer, writes Shelagh Fogarty
I worry that too many working-class families today are being asked to do all the hard work while the opportunities that are supposed to make it worthwhile keep moving further out of reach
Andy Burnham feels very familiar to me.
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I spoke to him on Monday, and I very much enjoyed hearing your calls put to him and having the conversation myself. But I have known him, in one way or another, for years.
Since my days at Radio Merseyside in my 20s, then at 5 Live in my 30s and 40s, and now at LBC, I have spoken to him often, particularly about Hillsborough. I was at Anfield the day he made that extraordinary statement from Gordon Brown and was then jeered and booed by the crowd. We all know what flowed from that, and the rest is history.
But there is another reason Andy Burnham feels familiar to me. In many senses, we had the same upbringing. We are from the same kind of people.
Irish Catholic, Liverpool, immigrant families, working-class families who did not have much money but were determined their children would have opportunities.
And I heard so much of that in his speech yesterday.
He talked repeatedly about working-class aspiration, and I think he is right that something has changed. Families like his and mine could look at their children and believe that, with hard work, a good education, and the right opportunities, their lives could be better than their parents' lives.
As Andy put it, “We gave Britain hope again. We made working-class aspiration feel real.”
That phrase, “working-class aspiration”, really chimed with me.
When Nick Ferrari spoke to him on LBC, he asked Andy what he meant.
The Prime Minister talked about his grandparents and his mother, and the way each generation wanted the next to have a better life. His gran, he said, “bought her home by walking across fields from the city and put a deposit down on it”. She was “full of working-class aspirations” and determined that her daughter's life would be better than hers, just as Andy's mother was determined that his life would be better than hers.
That story is very familiar to me.
My parents, Mary and Bill, came over to England from Ireland in the late 1950s. They were in their 20s and came over for a bit of an adventure, to see what they could pull off and how long they would stay.
They stayed forever, as it turned out, and raised all seven of us in Liverpool.
They worked their fingers to the bone. They had no wealth and no social capital to speak of. My parents had no money left at the end of the month. They had to budget seriously all the time.
But the work was rewarded. And this is the bit I think we have lost.
The country offered opportunities that allowed working-class families to turn hard work into something tangible.
When I was growing up, we had easy access to good schools, sporting facilities, great parks and libraries. There was just so much going on for us, and much of it was free.
I was 11 when my oldest brother, Liam, went to university. He went to Oxford.
My parents were so proud of him. Imagine two young people who had arrived from rural Ireland without a bean, and less than 20 years later their firstborn was going to Oxford University.
He was clever then and clever now, and he was a great resource for me growing up. Before Google existed, Fog Facts existed in the form of my big brother Iain.
He was a role model for me. I liked my studies, and seeing what he had achieved showed me what was possible.
And then the rest of us went on to have our own opportunities: nursing, midwifery, policing, law, environmental management, journalism. Two of us became journalists.
Proper opportunities. Proper jobs. The chance to build a life.
And it wasn't unusual at the time.
There was another thing, too. When we eventually reached the point where we wanted to buy a house, we did not need the Bank of Mum and Dad.
We had good jobs. We could save. We could get a decent mortgage. Houses, relative to wages, were actually affordable.
Our parents didn't need to have a big wodge of cash sitting there to hand over to us because the system itself gave us some room to get on.
That is why Andy's comments about housing struck me so strongly.
He spoke about the home on Keeble Drive where he grew up, saying: “With a good home, everything is possible. Without one, it feels like nothing is.”
Chris Chambers, LBC's North West correspondent, went to Keeble Drive in Aintree for us. He found that Burnham's old neighbourhood still recognises itself in him.
One person he spoke to said, “He's saying a lot of sense, and I am actually a Conservative, but I do quite like him.”
But emotion and authenticity will only get Andy Burnham so far. The good vibes will only last for so long if people don't start to feel that things are actually improving.
That is the test.
Because I do think there is something deeper behind what Burnham is talking about than party politics. I have no party political affiliation. But I was brought up Catholic, went to Catholic schools, and Catholic social teaching has probably come closer to shaping how I think about the world than any political doctrine.
And the word at the heart of it is dignity.
Dignity and social justice.
The dignity of the individual, and the idea that society has a responsibility to give people the chance to build a decent life. I hear a lot of that in what Andy Burnham is saying.
He talked about the loss of council housing, a school system too focused on the university route and not enough on technical pathways, and the way those things have taken away what he called “the flame of working-class aspiration”.
Is that flame smaller now?
I think it is.
Nobody should be afraid of hard work. My parents certainly weren't. Neither were Andy's parents or grandparents. But hard work needs something to work towards.
For families like ours, it once felt as though the country met them halfway.
You could work hard, get a good education, get a proper job, save for a house and build something.
I worry that too many working-class families today are being asked to do all the hard work while the opportunities that are supposed to make it worthwhile keep moving further out of reach.
That is why Andy Burnham's speech chimed with me.
Not because we agree on everything. Not because I suddenly have a party political affiliation.
But because I recognised the world he was talking about.
And I recognise the fear that it might be disappearing.
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Listen to Shelagh Fogarty from 1-4pm Monday to Friday on the LBC app.
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