Andy Burnham reveals wife’s reaction to third Labour leadership bid

Burnham said his wife, Marie-France van Heel, took some persuading after he ran and lost in contests in 2010 and 2015

Andy Burnham has revealed his wife’s dismayed reaction when he told her he wanted to make another attempt at becoming Labour leader.

Burnham said that his wife, Marie-France van Heel, had been surprised by his decision to run, having lost contests in 2010 and 2015 to Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn respectively.

“She was like: ‘Not again; they’ve told you twice they don’t want you,’” Burnham told Elizabeth Day on the How to Fail podcast.

“She took some persuading to be honest, because I guess she didn’t want to see me go through it all again and then end up the wrong side at the end of it, but she gives me good advice,” he added.

Burnham recalled being an MP in his early 30s and thinking he had done well in interviews, only to find a text message from his wife that said, in capital letters: “ANSWER THE F***ING QUESTION.”

“That’s the kind of feedback I’ve had from her,” Burnham said. “She’s quite forthright, she’s Dutch and they don’t hold back, they’re pretty plain speaking and I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of that over the years.”

Burnham said his failed leadership bids made him “a much better politician” in the end and that losing in 2015, standing to be the mayor of Greater Manchester and challenging himself “really strengthened” him.

Last week, Burnham promised to work collaboratively with other parties to find a lasting solution to social care. He told Day: “I feel that my generation of politicians is guilty of a shameful dereliction of duty, political cowardice of the worst kind in saying that this issue is too difficult and we’re not going to touch it.

“In fact, social care has gone backwards and doesn’t that just say something how politics has really fallen? It has to be radical, we’d have never created the NHS if we weren’t radical as a country at times.”

The prime minister said there was a need for radicalism in politics now “given where we are”, adding that neoliberalism and trickle-down economics had not been kind to a lot of places across Britain, particularly former industrial hubs.

“Sometimes in politics you have to say: ‘I’m going to break out of the consensus and start talking about those things in a different way’, and it’s what I’ve started to do,” he added.