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From the pitch at Anfield to the Prime Minister's office - a journey 17 years in the making

This was a journey that started in front of The Kop on a day that changed the new Prime Minister forever.

[Andy Burnham speaks on the pitch at Anfield on the 20th Anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster in 2009]

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Andy Burnham speaks on the pitch at Anfield on the 20th Anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster in 2009

Andy Burnham has had a few different political lives.

There is a joke his critics reference that goes along the lines of 'a Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walking into a bar and the bar man saying, what can I get you Andy?' This is intended to poke fun at the new Labour leader's changing affiliations over the years - one he defends by stressing the value of his loyalty to different Labour leaders.

It was a joke he actually referenced as he was officially unveiled as Labour's new boss at a special conference in London today. Promising to be a leader for all wings of his party, he said: "In future when a Burnhamite walks into a bar, the barman will say, welcome, we don't like factionalism here."

But if you want to look more deeply at what it is that has moulded Burnham into the politician and person that he is today, you should focus on another moment of his speech today - and to a moment in time.

He told the room in London about the time on April 15, 2009, when as a young minister, he stepped out onto the pitch at Anfield to speak on behalf of Gordon Brown's government at a commemoration event for the Hillsborough disaster that had occurred two decades earlier.

He has spoken previously about the profound impact the response of those gathered in The Kop had on him that day, as his speech was frequently interrupted by shouts of 'Justice for the 96' (which became 97) from a community of people that had been let down, lied about and denied justice for so long.

Speaking today, as he assumes the leadership of his party, Mr Burnham said: "The Kop made me confront the fact that this country does not work for working class communities, like the city of my birth.

[Andy Burnham speaking as he was confirmed as the leader of the Labour Party today]

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Andy Burnham speaking as he was confirmed as the leader of the Labour Party today(Image: Yui Mok/PA Wire)

"In fact its worse, it turned its back on them. Political power was used against them to protect vested interests. Economic power cruelly stripped with the deindustrialisation of the 1980s, as it was against so many places up and down the land."

There is no doubt the central thesis Burnham now has, which he has articulated so effectively on his remarkable recent rise to the heart of power in this country, began its genesis on that day in Liverpool in 2009.

It is commonly known that he would use the pain and anguish that he witnessed at Anfield that day to help spearhead - along with the tireless campaigning of so many family members and others - a new Hillsborough Independent Report that would lead to the new inquests that would finally confirm what those families always knew - that their sons, daughters, sisters and brothers were unlawfully killed because of the failures of those who were supposed to keep them safe.

Earlier this week, in what felt like a cosmic full circle moment, Andy Burnham was speaking in the House of Commons in front of members of the Hillsborough families as a new Hillsborough law bill, the same bill he first presented in 2017, finally made its way through the House of Commons.

That new law, which family members have fought so relentlessly for, seeks to try and rebalance the playing field of this country's justice system so that ordinary people are not so powerless to the worst instincts of the state in the future.

This is exactly the sort of thing the incoming Prime Minister talks of when he says that he wants to "pass power power from the authorities to ordinary people."

His diagnosis is that this is a country where too many people have lost power, lost control and lost influence over their own lives. Where too many communities feel the country and those that run it do not have their best interests at heart - and that they lack the means or the levers to seize back that power.

For justice, read Hillsborough Law, for economic power, read public ownership of utilities and for political power read devolution.

This is what he says he wants to change. It is a thesis many will agree with and it all started on a football pitch in Liverpool in 2009.

Now he has to prove he can do something about it and he must be true to his word. There is an awful lot riding on it.

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