Manchester is a city that deserves a better mayor than Andy Burnham

I loathe the way Burnham has set out his stall by shamelessly resorting to the hackneyed cliché of a national cultural divide

Andy Burnham has announced that he will run for Mayor of Manchester (Jason Alden)

Labour MP and shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham has belatedly announced he plans to run as the first elected Mayor of Manchester. The other two candidates (both Labour) – interim mayor and Police Commissioner Tony Lloyd, and Ivan Lewis, MP for Bury South – declared their candidacies back in February. Why has dithering Andy left it so late? Is it because he sees no future in Westminster?

As in the London Mayoral election, none of these candidates are particularly charismatic, but of all three, Andy Burnham is a shameless opportunist. Put simply, the wonderful city of Manchester deserves better than a second division Labour politician, someone who came fourth out of five candidates in his party’s leadership contest back in 2010 and couldn’t even manage to beat Jeremy Corbyn last year.

Burnham (born in Liverpool, but a Manchester MP for 15 years) has had a lacklustre Ministerial career – one year as Secretary to the Treasury and one year running Culture Media and Sport. Hardly the CV of a bloke with the drive to make Britain’s second city the best place to grow up and work, even if his heartfelt speech about the victims of Hillsborough moved the Commons to respectful silence (and tears) the other week.

This week, Manchester’s first openly gay Lord Mayor was sworn in, one-time winner of the Mr Gay UK title back in 2001. Labour councillor Carl Austin-Behan, co-owns a cleaning firm and is married to his partner. At 44, he’s the youngest Lord Mayor in Manchester’s history – just two years younger than Andy Burnham, but with a very different life experience. Mr Austin-Behan was thrown out of the RAF for his sexual orientation, something the staunchly catholic Cambridge educated Mr Burnham would not have experienced.

Mr Burnham’s manifesto – if you can call it that, unveiled at a hastily assembled press conference this week – consists of announcing a ‘mayoral music competition’ to give local bands a boost. On the radio, journalist Terry Christian was utterly dismissive – "if you lack the charisma to beat Corbyn, then you shouldn’t be mayor", claiming that Burnham did "nothing" for culture in the North during his time in office and was a ‘northern tourist’.

I loathe the way Burnham has set out his stall by shamelessly resorting to the hackneyed cliché of a national cultural divide – claiming that in the north "you get the mickey taken out of you if you have ambitions for a career in medicine, law or politics". I can’t believe in 2016, some people are still harping on about the "deprived" north – Burnham says he’s “sick of the London-centric mentality, London’s not the only place that matters”.

He promised “an apprenticeship for every pupil who wants one” and to wrest social and health care back from local councils to the NHS, run by a single organisation in each borough; big woolly plans that are hard to achieve.

The Mayoral election will not be held until May 2017, with Labour deciding on their candidate later this year, but the job of Mayor of Manchester should be above party politics. With the government devolving increased powers to the region as part of George Osborne’s "Northern Powerhouse" this is a massive job, overseeing an economy the size of Wales or Northern Ireland. Under the newly devolved powers, responsibility for a huge range of services from planning, offender management, development and regeneration, adult education and transport will all be within the remit of the newly elected Mayor. Manchester is not a regional city; it’s an international centre of excellence, a place that already attracts world-class academics, sportspeople, musicians and artists, so Andy Burnham needs to take off his cloth cap and ancient overcoat, and start thinking forwards not backwards.

I’ve not encountered anyone in Manchester who thinks their city is anything other than great, and comparisons with London are not on their radar. What Manchester needs is a man or woman who can manage 10 councils, a crime problem, a vibrant gay economy and a distinguished cultural heritage. A mayoral music week sounds like offering Einstein a bag of crisps and a pint.